Nov 18, 2015

Ever Mindful Of Poe's Law

I can't wait to hear some knucklehead try to make the argument that we can't allow refugees into USAmerica Inc because it's too easy for them to get guns and start killing us.

Some guys have their heads so far up their asses they can't even see their own shit anymore - and no matter what anybody like me is apt to make up outa nuthin', it'll sound like something one of these mushbrains would say.
Poe's Law (in case ya fergot) is an Internet adage which states that, without a clear indicator of the author's intent, parodies of extreme views will be mistaken by some readers for sincere expressions of the parodied views. 
--update

And then up jumped the devil, via Think Progress:
A Texas state legislator wants the U.S. to stop allowing Syrian refugees into the country. His reasoning: They might be able to buy guns in his state.
Rep. Tony Dale (R) made this argument in a television interview on Monday and in letters to Texas’ U.S. Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz (R) and U.S. Reps. Michael McCaul and John Carter (R).
“While the Paris attackers used suicide vests and grenades,” Dale wrote, “it is clear that firearms also killed a large number of innocent victims. Can you imagine a scenario were [sic] a refugees [sic] is admitted to the United States, is provided with federal cash payments and other assistance, obtains a drivers license and purchases a weapon and executes an attack?” He urged the lawmakers to “do whatever you can to stop the [Syrian refugee] program.”

Paraphrasing

Mr John Fugelsang (every atheist's favorite catholic - well, maybe after Stephen Colbert, but he's right up there too):

"The people who blamed 9/11 on Saddam Hussein, remind you to blame ISIS on the refugees fleeing from ISIS."

--and--

Nov 17, 2015

What He Said

This is how I want Obama to do everything.  And maybe it's just me, but it seems like it's only been in the last several months that he's stepping up and calling the opposition out on their bullshit responses to everything he does or says.

Talking about what needs to be done about ISIS in light of the Paris thing:
What I do not do is to take actions either because it is going to work politically or it is going to somehow in the abstract make America look tough. Or make me look tough.

And maybe part of the reason is because every few months I go to Walter Reed and I see a 25 year old kid who is paralyzed or who has lost his limbs and some of those are people I've ordered into battle.
And so I can’t afford to play some of the political games that others may. We’ll do what’s required to keep the American people safe. And I think it’s entirely appropriate in a democracy to have a serious debate about these issues. If folks want to pop off and have opinions about what they think they would do, present a specific plan. If they think that somehow their advisers are better than the chairman of my Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the folks who are actually on the ground, I want to meet them. And we can have that debate.
But what I’m not interested in doing is posing or pursuing some notion of American leadership, or America winning or whatever other slogans they come up with, that has no relationship to what is actually going to work to protect the American people. And to protect people in the region who are getting killed. And to protect our allies in people like France. I’m too busy for that.
And of course the nutballs went straight into Deliberately Misunderstanding mode anyway.



BTW - We've spent a good 35 years bitching about shortened attention spans, and shrinking sound bites, and news that has a life cycle of about 48 hours - how worried should I be about the 140-character Tweet becoming the dominant debate vehicle?  

Nov 16, 2015

Speak Of The Devil


Google Is Our Friend

Bug brains on "the right" tried to make it a big deal when Obama decided it was time for Mt McKinley to revert to its original name - Denali.  They said it was just another typical dictater-y thing that politicians in far-away federal Washington were alla-time tryin' to pull on the real Americans out here in the blah blah fucking blah.

Guess what. 



So apparently, Obama was trying to get outa the way so the people who live in the state where the fucking thing exists can make up their own minds about it.

I don't know why it didn't occur to me to check it out - which is something I usually do - and maybe a lotta people who know how to think real thoughts knew this all along.  

Maybe I've kinda hit Wingnut Overload(?)  Dunno.

But maybe we really have reached that illusive if not mythical point of Peak Wingnut, and there's just not much capacity for such nonsense anymore.

A guy can hope.

Today's Pix












Nov 15, 2015

Paris

Friday The 13th can't get much worse than the shit that went down in Paris two days ago.

Except that, of course it can get worse - a lot worse - if the Right Radicals are allowed to hold sway.  (Remember that Marine Le Pen and her merry band of Franco-Nasties gained a lot after the Charlie Hebdo thing)

I posted this on my Facebook wall, saying I tho't the French people were pushing back in a good way, and that I hoped they'd keep their shit together.


And wouldn't you know it - as they try to rally and stay together and not let the forces of darkness overtake them, along come the French equivalent of The Trumpkins ...


The banner says something like "Expel The Islamists", but the ralliers chant "fascists go home", and instead of starting any shit (with the help of the cops), they stay together and apply steady pressure until the Brown Shirts back off and quit the scene. 

And it's striking that at the end, we see the "anti-islamists" just kinda dissolving into the crowd - some of them almost acting like they never really had anything to do with anything, and that maybe this whole thing never even happened.  

Run and hide, assholes.

Today's Metaphorical Thingie



And here's a list of schools under federal investigation for mis-handling rape allegations:
  • Allegheny College
  • American University
  • Amherst College
  • Arizona State University
  • Barnard College
  • Berklee College of Music
  • Bethany College
  • Boston University
  • Brown University
  • Butte-Glenn Community College District
  • California Institute of the Arts
  • Canisius College
  • Carnegie Mellon University
  • Catholic University of America
  • Cisco Junior College
  • College of William and Mary
  • Colorado State University
  • Columbia University
  • Cornell University
  • CUNY Hunter College
  • Dartmouth College
  • Davis and Elkins College
  • Denison University
  • Drake University
  • Elizabethtown College
  • Elmira College
  • Emerson College
  • Emory University
  • Florida State University
  • Franklin and Marshall College
  • Frostburg State University
  • Full Sail University
  • Grand Valley State University
  • Guilford College
  • Hamilton College
  • Hampshire College
  • Harvard College
  • Hobart and William Smith Colleges
  • Idaho State University
  • Indiana University-Bloomington
  • Iowa State University
  • James Madison University
  • Johns Hopkins University
  • Kansas State University
  • Knox College
  • Langston University
  • Marion Military Institute
  • Marlboro College
  • Michigan State University
  • Minot State University
  • Missouri University of Science and Technology
  • Morgan State University
  • New York University School of Medicine
  • Northeastern University
  • Occidental College
  • Oglethorpe University
  • Oklahoma State University
  • Pace University-New York
  • Pennsylvania State University
  • Pointe Park University
  • Polytechnic Institute of New York University
  • Regis University
  • Saint John's University
  • Saint Mary's College of Maryland
  • Saint Thomas Aquinas College
  • San Francisco State University
  • San Jose-Evergreen Community College District
  • Sarah Lawrence College
  • Stanford University
  • SUNY Buffalo State College
  • SUNY College at Brockport
  • SUNY Purchase College
  • SUNY Stony Brook University
  • SUNY University at Albany
  • Swarthmore College
  • Temple University
  • Texas A&M University
  • University of Akron
  • University of Alaska System of Higher Education
  • University of California-Berkeley
  • University of California-Davis
  • University of California-Los Angeles
  • University of California-San Francisco
  • University of California-Santa Cruz
  • University of Chicago
  • University of Colorado-Boulder
  • University of Colorado-Denver
  • University of Connecticut
  • University of Delaware
  • University of Denver
  • University of Hawaii-Manoa
  • University of Idaho
  • University of Iowa
  • University of Kansas
  • University of Kentucky
  • University of Massachusetts-Amherst
  • University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth
  • University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
  • University of Nebraska-Lincoln
  • University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
  • University of Richmond
  • University of Rochester
  • University of South Florida
  • University of Southern California
  • University of Texas-Pan American
  • University of Tennessee
  • University of Tennessee-Chattanooga
  • University of Virginia
  • University of Washington-Seattle
  • University of Wisconsin-Madison
  • University of Wisconsin-Whitewater
  • Valley Forge Military College
  • Valparaiso University
  • Vanderbilt University
  • Vincennes University
  • Virginia Commonwealth University
  • Washburn University
  • Washington and Lee University
  • Washington State University
  • West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine
  • Western Washington University
  • Westminster College
  • Whitman College
  • Wittenberg University
So yeah - it's a problem.

Nov 13, 2015

A Podcast

Wanna glimpse of what a CEO Presidency would look like?  Cast your eyeballs on Gov Rauner in Illinois. (at about the 36:00 mark)

Go Baphamet

The Christianistas continue to trip over their own dicks.  They seem to have become completely isolated inside their little bubble.  They've sold themselves on the rhetorical non-sense of "America is a Christian nation and the federal government was founded on Judeo-Christian values etc etc etc".  They believe it, and they're convinced everybody else believes it too, and so they're just charging ahead (like Greaves says) without stopping to think that the all-important First Amendment thing that gives them the right to preach their version of "the truth" cuts the same for everybody else too.

From Raw Story:
This week, the state of Missouri’s draconian 72-hour waiting period for an abortion was in the spotlight again when a conservative state legislator made it clear he would try and stop a graduate student from studying the wait period’s impact on women.
But conservative Christians who have been pushing these ideologically-driven policies may have created their own demise without realizing it. The Satanic Temple sprung up to challenge the attempts to turn the United States into a Christian theocracy. And as the constitutional activists point out, they fight theocracy using the same laws and legal arguments pushed by conservative Christians.
“We’re fighting an enemy now that hasn’t had to think things through, and that’s what gives us such an advantage,” said Temple co-founder Lucien Greaves in an interview with The Raw Story. “They’re used to being the only beneficiaries of the privileges that they have fought for, and that kind of monopoly has made them complacent, stupid and weak, and it’s just made it that much easier for us to come in and assert ourselves the way we have.”
As for me, on the whole Abortion Issue, I think I know maybe 4 things:
  1. A caterpillar is not a butterfly.
  2. A tadpole is not a frog.
  3. A fertilized chicken egg is not a chicken.
  4. Nothing that's going on in my daughter's uterus is any of your god-dammed business, so fuck the fuck off, motherfucker.



Nov 12, 2015

New Music

Madisen Ward and (his mom) The Mama Bear

Silent Movies
Sorrows and Woes
Daisy Jane




Dead Daffodils




Skeleton Crew (full album)





Today's Toons