Is It Really You, Grandpa?

This is just too weird.  Here's a letter sent to the OpEd page for one of the newspapers in Pueblo Colorado some time in about 1973 - written by my grandfather:

The old duffer's been dead for about 40 years, but reading this makes me think he must've been way ahead of his time cuz he sure sounds like about 80% of the wingnut trolls who show up and leave comments on news sites and Facebook and anywhere you go to try to get something resembling the straight dope on practically anything.

Or maybe he sounds kinda current because a certain mentality just never fucking changes.

If Google Was A Guy #3

Racist Lite

All the stoopid of your regular dumb-fuck bigotry, but with a third fewer IQ points and practically no self-awareness at all.



hat tip = Crooks and Liars

Run It Like A Business

Pre-School may be a slightly different animal, but I think the main point is the same - privatization of any kind of schooling takes the last tiny bit of democracy out of the equation.

Flowery mission statements notwithstanding, if you take a top-down authoritarian thing like a church and mix it up with another top-down authoritarian thing like a business, and then smash-fit it around a school, what you get is:  "Give us your money and either shut the fuck up or get the fuck out".

Via HuffPo:

One Florida mother's Facebook status didn't go over so well with her son's preschool.

Mother Ashley Habat recently complained on Facebook after the Sonshine Christian Academy didn't give enough notice about picture day. Even though Habat said her Facebook post was private, she still tagged the school, and the next day she was reportedly told by school administrators that the school would not be a good fit for her son, according to Jacksonville, Florida outlet WJXT-TV.

In the post in question, Habat asked: “Why is it that every single day there is something new I dislike about Will's School? Are my standards really too high or are people working in the education field really just that ignorant.”A letter of dismissal given to Habat from the school said her “relationship with Sonshine did not get off to a very good start the first day of school," stating that she "utilized social media to call into question not only the integrity but the intelligence of our staff. ... These actions are also consistent with sowing discord, which is spoken of in the handbook you signed."

And from News4Jax:

The principal of Sonshine Christian Academy sent News4JAX a response saying, "This is private matter involving the school and a parent." also saying "Due to my concern for families, I am unable to comment on specifics of this situation."

Epic fail from a Customer Relations standpoint.  Ms Habat seems a bit hyper-critical, and maybe she's just somebody who's always slamming people for whatever reasons.  But there're some important tenets of How Not To Fuck Up Your Business:

• You'll have to go outa your way to accommodate some customers, but it's usually worth the trip.
• "Revenue Reduction" is not part of our business plan...
• ...so don't fire the fucking customers.

And now it's a near-epic fail from a PR standpoint because the word is out on Facebook about how rotten this woman thinks that school is, but the the kicker is the classic Non-Statement Statement from the principal - "Due to my concern for families..."  Yeah, that's it, pal - cuz whenever you've got a problem, it's always a good idea to hide behind the children.  You gutless bean-counting Jesus-pimping phony.

The Milk Carton Kids

In concert in Columbus Ohio from late last year(?)



The Milk Carton Kids perform at the Lincoln Theatre, as seen on the DVD "Live From Lincoln Theatre," available now.

Download on iTunes: http://bit.ly/1n3csfJ
Order at Amazon: http://amzn.to/1i6qDgU
Order at the Anti Store: http://www.anti.com/store

Intro - 00:00:00
Hope of a Lifetime - 00:01:40
The Ash & Clay - 00:05:47
Honey, Honey - 00:10:13
Years Gone By - 0:13:55
Charlie - 00:20:27
Maybe It's Time - 00:24:10
Girls, Gather 'Round - 00:30:14
Michigan - 00:35:37
Snake Eyes - 00:48:47
Heaven - 00:51:40
Stealing Romance - 00:55:27
I Still Want a Little More - 00:58:34
New York - 01:02:51
Memphis - 01:06:12

Official Site: http://www.themilkcartonkids.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheMilkCarto...
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MilkCartonKids
Instagram: http://instagram.com/themilkcartonkids

Today's Quote

"We give the President more work than a man can do, more responsibility than a man should take, more pressure than a man can bear.  We abuse him often and rarely praise him.  We wear him out, use him up, eat him up.  And with all this, Americans have a love for the President that goes beyond loyalty or party nationality; he is ours, and we exercise the right to destroy him." --John Steinbeck

Today's Officer Friendly

hat tip = Addicting Info

Lemme make it real plain - I'm pretty sure the 2nd cop had absolutely no fuckin' business threatening to shoot that guy.

I don't know the whole deal here, but it looks a lot like these cops have a big problem with attitude - their own at least as much as that coming from the young studs being hassled.

And go ahead and argue all you want about how these kids should've been smarter and more respectful and less asshole-teenager-y, but there's no law against being stupid, which BTW is also a fortunate thing for the officers, but it seems to break pretty large in favor of the cops a lot more often than the other way.

The main thing for me is that we're going to get nowhere trying to preach the benefits of being politely submissive to too many black kids who're trying to grow up under the enormous, and often conflicting, pressures they're subjected to pretty much every day of their lives.

What do we expect will happen when the message of self-respect and self-reliance and standing up for yourself and demanding your rights crashes headlong into a real-world encounter with a cop who's been getting messages about zero tolerance, and tough on crime, and obedience to authority etc etc etc?

Add what seems like The Universal Theme - "always assume they're all out to kill your ass" - and it gets pretty easy to see what shitty things are going to happen next.

And that's pretty fucked up right there.

Lee Camp - Redacted Tonite

Yeah, OK - it's Russia TV, so many grains of salt must be taken.  But sometimes, truth is found in unlikely places.  At about the 6:20 mark, Camp gets into one of the big problems with the News As Profit Center thing that's making it harder and harder to know what's real.



He needs a better producer - one who can get him a lot of good writing help - but while this isn't yet as good as his Moment Of Clarity stuff on YouTube, he's making some decent progress.

Logical Fallacy #24 - Middle Ground

  

This is the big one, kids.  We get this one every day in every way.  This is what gives us the bullshit of "Both Sides" that we see and hear from the Press Poodles all the time.

It doesn't mean nobody should ever compromise on anything.  It just means that some things are in fact black or white, right or wrong, up or down, true or false.  And we have to be well-informed enough to be able to spot the Fallacy when it pops up.

Argument to moderation (Latin: argumentum ad temperantiam; also known as [argument from] middle ground, false compromise, gray fallacy and the golden mean fallacy)[1] is an informal fallacy which asserts that the truth can be found as a compromise between two opposite positions. This fallacy's opposite is the false dilemma

An individual operating within the false compromise fallacy believes that the positions being considered represent extremes of a continuum of opinions, and that such extremes are always wrong, and the middle ground is always correct.[1] This is not always the case. Sometimes only X or Y is acceptable, with no middle ground possible. Additionally, the middle ground fallacy can create the rather illogical situation that the middle ground reached in the previous compromise now becomes the new extreme in the continuum of opinions; all one must do is present yet another, radically opposed position, and the middle-ground compromise will be forced closer to that position. In politics, this is part of the basis behind Overton window theory.

Smelt It, Dealt It

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,The Daily Show on Facebook,Daily Show Video Archive

hat tip = Raw Story

Today's Lovable Rube

The ice bucket challenge - redneck style.

Today's Pix

 

Thoughts On The Side

“It is very tempting to take the side of the perpetrator. All the perpetrator asks is that the bystander do nothing. He appeals to the universal desire to see, hear, and speak no evil. The victim, on the contrary, asks the bystander to share the burden of pain. The victim demands action, engagement, and remembering.” --Judith Herman, MD - Trauma and Recovery

Mike Brown gets buried in more ways than one.

We jump up and down on it for a while, but then somebody blows up a building or there's a bus crash or another jack-wad celebrity gets caught nanny-humping, and suddenly we're heading back for the group rate on self-lobotomy at the National Center For Social Amnesia.

Maybe we can get some things done that need to get done in places like Ferguson once some of the glare fades away, but don't count on it.  

If it turns out that Holder and his merry band of FBI careerists find anything that substantively exonerates Darren Wilson, we're right back in some very deep shit.

But if they scorch Wilson, & / or if they confirm what looks to be a pretty obvious pattern of abuse and corruption in Ferguson, we're likely to hear a very loud chorus of Obama The Race Hustler on an endless loop.

Mainly tho', why does it seem like somebody's always pushing us pretty hard to get back to an "equilibrium" that ends up sounding like "Both Sides", and feeling like Paralysis?

You First, Lady

hat tip(s) = Crooks & Liars

Andrea Tantaros wants to lead the parade of Awesomely Slaughter-'Em-All American Exceptionality into northern Iraq to make ISIS respect us for goin' in there and mowin' 'em down.



No wait - she wants you to lead the parade...no wait - she wants your kids...wait...she says it's disgraceful that "we" aren't over there lighting them up, while she sits in a very comfortable TV studio being all 35-ish, and holding a college diploma, and looking for all the world to be in pretty good shape, and so she's obviously the near-perfect candidate for enlistment in the US Military branch of her choice, and with her eagerness and her Gung Ho fighting spirit, I'm pretty sure she could take a few good men over there and clean out every snake in the nest in a blaze of Sgt Rock-level glory that'd give Audie Murphy self esteem issues.

So, no, she doesn't want any of that really.  She's there (ostensibly) to sell Reverse Mortgage scams to the rubes who love to hear her slag Obama at every opportunity, even tho' her real function is to give the Viagra-munching DumFux News fans a little taste of the dark-haired dominatrix of their post-adolescent fantasies so they can rub out a quick one before scootering down to the mailbox to pick up their Social Security checks.

This game gets more than a little boring, but what really grates on my soul is that I have to agree with Dan Rather.



Fuck.

Monday Music

Stand By Me (cover) --John Lennon





Albatross --Fleetwood Mac





Hurt (cover) --Johnny Cash





Tell Me Why --Neil Young





Waiting On The World To Change --John Mayer





Violin --Amos Lee





Sad Eyes --Maria Muldaur