One Bit More

...on the Cliven Bundy thing.

I seem to recall that ol' Cliven said the only authority he was willing to acknowledge was the local sheriff.

From the Las Vegas Review-Journal:

Rancher Cliven Bundy must be held accountable, Clark County Sheriff Doug Gillespie said Thursday.

But, the sheriff added, the federal agency trying to do it must reconsider its methods in order to prevent the bloodshed that was so narrowly avoided in April.

Gillespie, speaking to a Review-Journal editorial board, minced no words when recounting the mistakes made in the days and weeks before an April 12 standoff between armed protesters and the Bureau of Land Management on Bundy’s Bunkerville cattle ranch, about 80 miles northeast of Las Vegas.

The sheriff harshly criticized Bundy and said his family committed “serious errors” when BLM officers tried to round up more than 500 of the rancher’s cattle. Bundy, who believes the public land is his to use, hasn’t paid his federal grazing fees for 20 years and ignored a federal court order to remove the cattle.

Gillespie said he spoke to Bundy many times in the months before the roundup. He said he made it clear to Bundy that, if his family was going to protest, it must be peaceful.

But Bundy crossed the line when he allowed his supporters, many of whom were armed militia members, onto his property to aim guns at police, the sheriff said.

“If you step over that line, there are consequences to those actions. And I believe they stepped over that line. No doubt about it,” Gillespie said. “They need to be held accountable for it.”

Yer move, Clive.

hat tip = Addicting Info

Kaili's Pissed

One observation - the Hobby Lobby decision is a near-perfect metaphor for exactly the kind of botched abortions that are prob'ly headed our way because of this mis-guided and poorly- informed, deliberately ignorant "conservative movement" that seems bent on pulling down American Democracy and replacing it with Christian Sharia.

But here's Kaili Joy Gray to girlsplain it to us from a perspective that's only shared by - oh I dunno - a few gazillion other women:

Of course I am mad. My vagina is getting uncomfortably crowded, what with all of that compelling government interest to protect me from myself, and those sincerely held religious beliefs, and the counseling, and the men telling me JUST DON’T HAVE SEX. There’s hardly room for my doctor to even get up in there to make sure my oh-so-important vagina is actually in fine working order, which I know is beside the point to everyone else taking up space for freedom and liberty and Jesus. But it’s really the only point that should matter.

But also too - keeping in mind my first basic tenet (it's never about what they tell us it's about):  This decision is being sold to us as if it's Rep vs Dem, or Librul vs Conservadope, or Godless Big Gubmint vs Holy Little Guy Business Owner - that's bullshit - or mostly bullshit anyway.  This ends up being about furthering the cause of establishing and reinforcing the primacy of Corporation-as-Citizen.

SCOTUS just found another way to push the envelope, using the 1st amendment for cover - Corporations are people who now have the right to free speech (Citizens United) and (the right to nullify federal law by claiming) religious freedom (Hobby Lobby)...and at some point I think we can look forward to a lawsuit on behalf of some poor mistreated corporation whose 'freedom of association' is being denied by the mean ol' bureaucrats at SEC and DoJ et al - so we can say good-bye to Anti-Trust laws and every trace of rules and regulations that prohibit the use of important business tools like Collusion and Price-Fixing and Market Manipulation, and all the other elements of a Libertarian Free Market Utopia.

So let's go ahead and fuss at each other about Church and State, and Bodily Integrity, and  Red Team vs Blue Team - all of which are plenty important btw - just let's be sure we're paying attention to what's behind the curtain too.

Logical Fallacy #18 - Genetic

The genetic fallacy, also known as fallacy of origins, fallacy of virtue,[1] is a fallacy of irrelevance where a conclusion is suggested based solely on something or someone's origin rather than its current meaning or context. This overlooks any difference to be found in the present situation, typically transferring the positive or negative esteem from the earlier context.

The fallacy therefore fails to assess the claim on its merit. The first criterion of a good argument is that the premises must have bearing on the truth or falsity of the claim in question.[2] Genetic accounts of an issue may be true, and they may help illuminate the reasons why the issue has assumed its present form, but they are irrelevant to its merits.[3]

Today's Riddle

Q: Why don't blind people go skydiving?

A: It scares the dog.

Today's Pix

Today's Eternal Sadness

From the suburbs of Houston:

HARRIS COUNTY, Texas—Deputies said a 69-year-old homeowner, who died after he was shot by his own gun during a scuffle with a burglar, begged for his life.

Prosecutors said the suspect, Daniel Durham, has admitted to shooting the victim, who was later identified as Don Frazier, a preacher and writer who has made numerous TV appearances.

The crime happened around Friday 1:15 a.m. at Frazier’s home in the 4200 block of Amber Lake Dr. in northwest Harris County.

Sheriff’s deputies said the preacher and his wife heard a noise downstairs in their garage—it was the sound of their generator turning on. Deputies said when the preacher went down to investigate, somehow Durham managed to take the homeowner’s gun.

From Brady Campaign:

Where there are more guns, there are more gun deaths.

• Gun death rates are 7 times higher in the states with the highest compared with the lowest household gun ownership. (Harvard School of Public Health, Harvard Injury Control Research Center, 2009).
• An estimated 41% of gun-related homicides and 94% of gun-related suicides would not occur under the same circumstances had no guns been present (Wiebe, p. 780). 
• Household gun ownership levels vary greatly by state, from 60 percent in Wyoming to 9 percent in Hawaii (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2001).

And the kicker?  Don Frazier (hereinafter known as "the dead good guy with a gun") was a former cop.  He was a chaplain, but he wore the uniform and he carried a badge, and that means he was trained in weapons and tactics, and well aware of the dangers of confronting a perp.  

Obviously, we don't know what all happened, but what we do know - the one fact that we have to own up to and stop deliberately ignoring - is that if there's no gun in that situation, Don Frazier's probably still alive.

Need another kicker - all you steely-eyed pragmatic capitalists?  Doesn't it make you wonder what's happening to certain of your insurance premiums because of your blind unwillingness to recognize and deal with avoidable risk?

When you so eagerly jump into bed with the Ammosexuals, does it just never cross your mind that you're actually insisting on making it possible for outfits represented by the NRA to shift their liability burden onto the families of gun violence victims - the victims you're helping to create every time you vote for a Gun Fondler?

Sunday Evening Tunes

Reminiscing --Little River Band




Fooled around And Fell In Love --Elvin Bishop




Long Cool Woman In A Black Dress --Hollies




Keep Your Hands To Yourself --Georgia Satellites




Short Skirt, Long Jacket --Cake




Bring It On Home To Me (cover)--Dave Mason

'Scuse Me, Mr Erickson?

Exactly what "consequences", Erick?  And when you use the word consequences, aren't you inviting the inference that you think sex is "dirty" and that people who engage in such activities deserve to be punished for it?   What horrible "consequences" do you think should befall us for the sin of enjoying a little adult playtime by way of some mutually consensual sex, you pinch-faced blue-nosed twat waffle?

Are you really so totally muddled with shame (and the crushing guilt that you've imposed on yourself because of a neolithic fairy story about talking snakes) that you just can't help but project all your pre-adolescent sexual-identity confusion onto the rest of the world?

Seriously - I don't mean to Concern Troll you here, but you gotta talk to a professional about some of these issues, man.

Fuck - I get tired of this shit.

Today's Toons

Love Letters --Ketty Lester

Resolving Cognitive Dissonance

Alvin York was something of a rambunctious bad boy in rural Tennessee who got religion and tried to dodge the draft in 1918 by claiming Conscientious Objector status.  The draft board denied his petitions and appeals, and he was drafted for service in WW1.

His religious fervor conflicted with his "duties" as a soldier in the US Army, and since cognitive dissonance generally moves an individual to change his behavior and/or his thinking, Alvin did what most every young man does who gets hammered every day with military training and indoctrination - he (more or less) simply rationalized his way into thinking god wanted him to be a good little soldier, and of course, that led him to alter his beliefs enough to view the German soldiers as a line of turkeys that he then proceeded to shoot one-by-one in the back - and that makes him a true American hero and we all wish we could grow up to be just like him.

Are You Listening, America?

From The Telegraph:

BBC journalists are being sent on courses to stop them inviting so many cranks onto programmes to air ‘marginal views’. BBC Trust says 200 senior managers trained not to insert 'false balance' into stories when issues were non-contentious.

The BBC Trust on Thursday published a progress report into the corporation’s science coverage which was criticised in 2012 for giving too much air-time to critics who oppose non-contentious issues.

The report found that there was still an ‘over-rigid application of editorial guidelines on impartiality’ which sought to give the ‘other side’ of the argument, even if that viewpoint was widely dismissed.

Some 200 staff have already attended seminars and workshops and more will be invited on courses in the coming months to stop them giving ‘undue attention to marginal opinion.’

“The Trust wishes to emphasise the importance of attempting to establish where the weight of scientific agreement may be found and make that clear to audiences,” wrote the report authors. “Science coverage does not simply lie in reflecting a wide range of views but depends on the varying degree of prominence such views should be given.”

What They Say

The guy on the left is Bob Beauprez (running for Colorado Governor), and the other one's just a doofus blogger somewhere in central Virginia.

On occasion, Bob kinda channels Willard Romney and says things like "...we’ve got almost half the population perfectly happy that somebody else is paying the bill..."

Now, there're two guys pictured above.  Half of two is one.  So Bob thinks one of the guys in that picture is a deadbeat moocher who wants taxpayers to pick up the check.

But guess what, Bob; only one of the guys in that picture is trying to get on the government payroll - Bob.

It's not so much that guys like Beauprez love to show just how hollow and superficial and lazy their thinking is; and it's not even the fact that so many of us are willing to go along with it.

What makes me crazy is that the whole thing is just flat false.  Saying "half of the people want a freebie blah blah blah" is another way to reinforce the bullshit about "both sides do it"; "they're all same"; "everybody does it" etc etc etc, in order to keep us all paralyzed, in order to maintain the status quo, in order to keep us from electing people who want to serve rather than rule - you know; people who actually know what the fuck self-government's about and how to make it work.

So no, Bob - we're not all the same, and not even close to half of us are looking for the rest to support them - you are.

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hat tip = Addicting Info

Happy 4th Everybody