Zimmerman Walks

I guess I should own up to some things.

• I wasn't very into the Zimmerman trial.
• I half-expected the jury to let him off.
• I'm not overly surprised that the reaction from "the black community" hasn't been too bad (so far), mostly because I fear that reaction is coming in the form of outright reprisal.  So if you're looking for a great medium-to-long-run business opportunity, open a gun store in any Majority Black neighborhood ASAP.

But I'm more than a little bothered about the total lack of focus on the bullshit Stand Your Ground law itself.

There's a lot more to it than this, but the salient points are that Trayvon's walking home a little after dark when some misguided dipwad with a bad case of The Wyatt Earps goes out of his way (and against the cops' direct instruction) to confront the kid on the off chance that Martin is up to no good, and happens to fit with Zimmerman's bigoted imaginings of what a bad guy looks like according to some pretty fucked up cultural history in Sanford FL.

That's the synopsis when I'm feeling charitable; when I'm not assuming Zimmerman was just out looking to goad somebody into a fight so he'd have a plausible excuse to gun him down.

I don't want this to turn into a big long thesis, and I don't know how to make it good and short, so I'll just sum it up:  Without Stand Your Ground, the trial probably turns out differently, but without the gun, everything turns out differently.

One last thing - when we're looking back on the events and the causes leading to Civil War II, this is likely to be a big one.

Ya heard it here first.

Malala Yousafzai

She stood up at home to speak her mind. She said girls should have the same rights as boys - to go to school; to learn whatever they need to know to become who and what they want to be; to make their own decisions and to be left alone to guide their own destinies.  So last year, when she was 15 years old, the AfPak-equvalent of Ted Nugent & George Zimmerman shot her in the head because her ideas threatened their sense of 9th-century entitlement.

Yesterday, on her 16th birthday - which made it a classic go-blow-yourself gesture - Ms Yousafzai stood up at the UN and said in a clear strong voice (tho' not in these specific words), "Fuck you, Ted Nugent."

And fuck all ya'll if you think you have enough guns and ammo to silence everybody who wishes to speak openly about aspiring to make the world just a bit less hostile to people who only want to live their lives as they choose.  (And isn't that what the Nugents are always pretending to be saying anyway?)

Better men and bigger assholes than puny dicks like Nugent & Zimmerman have been trying to conquer the world for a coupla thousand centuries.  And guess what - the world remains undefeated.  Wanna know why?  Cuz good ideas are bulletproof, ya fuckin' doofus.

Our Esteemed Press

This made it onto the air at KTVU in Oakland:

According to PR Spokeswoman, Lotta Suxon-Swallows, KTVU's General Manager Edgar (Curly) Hawgpekker was unavailable for comment, but she did say a statement would be posted to their website by the company's legal advisors, Dumas & McPhail.

Would it come as a surprise for anybody to learn KTVU is the local affiliate for DumFux News?  Yeah - I didn't think it would.

big hat tip = Balloon Juice

Potentially Great News

We won't have Ol' Vaginal Bob to kick around anymore.

From The Richmonder blog via Democratic Underground:

Multiple sources in Richmond's legal community have confirmed to me that the investigation of Star Scientific by state and federal prosecutors turned up what they feel is sufficient evidence to charge Virginia's Republican Governor Bob McDonnell and his wife Maureen with one or more felonies and in consequence, McDonnell is attempting to negotiate his resignation in exchange for no prosecution of Virginia's first couple.

There seems to be a pretty good chance for this thing to splash a fair bit of sludge on Kenny The Kooch as well.

One other thing that remains is to see if Eric Cantor has been taking any steps to insulate himself from the fallout.  Prob'ly a pretty good bet that has/is, so I called Cantor's DC office for a statement, and the guy who answered the phone told me he wasn't "at liberty to talk about it", and that also he wasn't allowed to tell me when or if there would be any statement coming from Mr Cantor.

He did tell me I could check here: http://majorityleader.gov/Newsroom/

I'll keep checking and get back to ya'll if I learn anything.

Today's Pix

With a special edition of The Parade Of Stoopid:

Thank you.  We take you now to our regularly scheduled pix:

Today's Outrage

In case it escaped your notice, The Feds posted a SURPLUS of $113 Billion this past April, and another one ($116 Billion) for June this year.

Makes me wonder about some things: first is why the GOP wasn't jumping up and down taking credit because of their steely-eyed courage for having stomped the fuck outa poor people and unemployed workers.  Second, if we have a surplus, isn't time to cut Mitt Romney's taxes?

But then this:

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Oh - now I get it.  They'll get around to it - they're just not done yet.

BTW - did you catch the part about Repubs voting in favor of the spending of tax dollars that directly benefits themselves?  Poor kids have to skip even more meals now so Michele Bachmann can collect a few thousand greenbacks for not planting any Jesus Weed again this year.

So what is it the 'conservatives' are so fond of grousing about?  Something to do with "undeserving people who will vote themselves a share of other people's money"?  Isn't that it?

Bend over and grease up, America.

Today's Quote

The Amazing Mr Madison:

The original compact is the one implied or presumed, but nowhere reduced to writing, by which a people agree to form one society. The next is a compact, here for the first time reduced to writing, by which the people in their social state agree to a Govt. over them. These two compacts may be considered as blended in the Constitution of the U. S., which recognises a union or society of States, and makes it the basis of the Govt. formed by the parties to it. It is the nature & essence of a compact that it is equally obligatory on the parties to it, and of course that no one of them can be liberated therefrom without the consent of the others, or such a violation or abuse of it by the others, as will amount to a dissolution of the compact.
-- James Madison to Nicholas Trist, February 15, 1830.

hat tip = Charlie Pierce

Whenever I hear "conservatives" bitching about Da Gumbint; or how we should be able to just blow it all up; or how they intend to ignore the parts of the law they find inconvenient; or that their sense of entitlement means they get to do whatever they want while everybody else has to accommodate their childish self-indulgence; whenever I hear that kinda shit, I can only assume they have no real understanding of what it means to make a commitment, and then to live up to it.

No soul and no honor.

USA! USA! USA!

We're #28 - FUCK YEAH - wait, what?

It's almost like there's somebody actively working against doing anything that might help make this whole mess better.

Sweet screamin' Jesus, I'm getting more than a little tired of this shit.

JAMA came out with a study of 34 "rich countries", and the US is ranked 28th in Health Outcomes.

Overall, population health in the United States has improved from 1990 to 2010. Life expectancy at birth and HALE have increased and all-cause death rates at all ages have decreased. Although life span has increased, rates of age-specific YLDs have remained stable, and morbidity and chronic disability now account for nearly half of the health burden in the United States. However, improvements in population health in the United States have not kept pace with advances in population health in other wealthy nations. Regular assessments of the local burden of disease and matching information on health expenditures for the same disease and injury categories could allow for a more direct assessment of how changes in health spending have affected or, indeed, not affected changes in the burden of disease and may provide insights into where the US health care system could most effectively invest its resources to obtain maximum benefits for the nation’s population health. In many cases, the best investments for improving population health would likely be public health programs and multisectoral action to address risks such as physical inactivity, diet, ambient particulate pollution, and alcohol and tobacco consumption.

For all you clear-eyed, pragmatic, bidness-savvy 'conservatives' out there, here's the deal:  Healthy people cost less than sick ones, and Prevention is way more cost-effective than Remedy. 

If you're the soul-dead corporate clods who care for nothing but the Quarterly Numbers that you seem to be, then you have to recognize that a healthy labor pool is more valuable to you than an unhealthy labor pool.  

Of course, since you guys are so highly attuned to the concept of Other People's Money, you can get around the inconvenience of operating within any kind of ethical boundaries  by adopting the Wal-Mart strategy, and simply dump all your healthcare costs onto the taxpayer, but hey - that's Wal-Mart; those guys are absolute masters of The Big Bamboozle.

C'mon - look:

• We have a healthcare system that's Crazy Stupid Expensive which doesn't produce particularly healthy people
• Unhealthy workers are more costly than healthy workers
• Shifting the cost from one payer to another makes the system more complex and that complexity helps drive up the actual cost 

So here's what I really don't understand: Why are so many of you 'conservatives' so dead set against making changes to a system that is so obviously less efficient and more costly than it needs to be?

Imelda May

Just in case you need something to get ya jumpin' this mornin' - this oughta do it.

I Gotcher Well Regulated Militia Right Here

From Centre Daily Times, via Charlie Pierce:

A 45-year-old man shot himself in the hand Tuesday afternoon in the parking lot outside Wal-Mart on North Atherton Street in what police are calling an accident.

Patton Township police are not identifying the man but said he had a valid firearm carry permit.

The man had the gun in a holster and was hurrying across the parking lot to avoid holding up traffic. The firearm fell out of the holster and fell to the ground as the man was crossing the lot.

Police said he went to pick the gun up, but while shifting the bags in his hands, the firearm went off. The man was shot in the hand, and the bullet then continued into the pavement.

The man was taken to Mount Nittany Medical Center for treatment. The parking lot was briefly closed while police investigated.

Ok, so we can't get background checks, and we can't get registration and we can't get any kind of ban on any kind of weapon that isn't fully automatic or that shoots exploding ammo.

But please - can't we at least put something in place that kinda sorta makes it a tiny bit harder for a booger-eatin' moron like this guy to carry a concealed handgun?

Creeping Paganism - Cont'd

As a kind of postscript:

In my haste to slag Liz Trotta's performance on Puppet Show Central, I forgot to mention this other stuff.

First, she mentioned "creeping paganism" as if Wicca or whatever is the only possible alternative to her religious belief.  If I don't worship her god in the same way she worships her god, then I'm obviously on my knees praying to Stink Weed or some fuckin' thing.  Jeesus, these people.

Second, Trotta and most of the other Goddies are always trying to convince me they know best when it comes to my 'salvation' - a conclusion that has no merit, because their premise - that I am somehow 'fallen' - is false.

I am not fallen - you just made that shit up.

But here's the thing:  The purveyors of this theocratic junk are always on about how their mumbo jumbo is the true mumbo jumbo because they've studied their mumbo jumbo and they know everything there is to know about mumbo jumbo.

Bunkum, says I.

You can't know that your mumbo jumbo is the best mumbo jumbo until or unless you know every bit as much about all the other mumbo jumbo as you claim to know about your own mumbo jumbo.

C'mon - do ya really think the Zalmoxians weren't just as fervent about their made-up shit 1500 years ago?

In the end, because we know Religion has evolved over a coupla hundred thousand years, all we're talking about here is a kind of Brand Loyalty.  Let it go.

Storm's A-Brewin'

And it's about to start rainin' estrogen all up in here.  We can hope so anyway.

Sarah Slamen tried to make her voice heard in her home state - in front of a group of her employees - and was forcibly removed from the hearing room when the Committee Chair decided she just couldn't stand any more of Ms Slamen's disrespectful remarks Sarah was revealing the truth about the Texas Legislature.



hat tip = Addicting Info

Creeping Paganism

DumFux News is still the best place on the planet to get a big juicy bite of unintended hilarity (as scary as it often seems):



Ever wonder if Liz Trotta is any fun at all?  How can one person be such an enormous reservoir of sour-puss-itude?  Her ass is so tight, I'll bet she squeaks when she walks.

I do however, dearly love the way 'conservatives' keep trying to make this particular magic trick work.

Ol' Pinch-Face here tries to peddle the notion that her religiosity is superior to anybody else's; and that the law should conform to that religiosity; and that since there are politicians (Catholics even!) who aren't doing exactly what Ms Trotta says her faith requires all of us sinners to do, then Da Gubmint is persecuting poor old Liz by trampling on her 1st amendment rights.

Let's all try to remember that if the 1st amendment requires my government to stay out of your church, then it also has to require your church to stay the fuck out of my government.

The KrugMan Speaks

...and I have to disagree - kinda.

Dr K, if you please:

Even the notion that the GOP might need to accommodate itself a bit to an increasingly nonwhite nation has been fading fast; the big thing now is that the trouble in 2012 was missing white voters, and that the GOP just needs to redouble its efforts to identify itself as the party of white people.

But if there really is a missing-white-voter issue — and I’d like to see some more analysis by serious political scientists before I completely buy in — what will it take to bring these people back out to play? Sean Trende, who has been making the missing-whites case, describes the missing as “downscale, rural, Northern whites”. What can the GOP offer them?

Actually, it's not that I disagree with Dr K's assertions per se; it's just that I think what he's talking about is not the GOP's political strategy at all.  Re-kindling and then appealing to the backlash concerning 'white guilt' or whatever - that's the "strategy" for their dog-whistle propaganda Presentation; the rhetoric; the dog-n-pony show.  Their Strategy is to knock down the number of brown people/young people/old people who're likely to go out and vote against them.

Presentation puts lipstick on the pig, making it less repellent to the voters.

Policy, if well-disguised, is "accepted" by way of electoral success.

Both Presentation and Policy are tools in service of The Strategy...

...and if The Strategy works, The Goals almost take care of themselves.

And so (I think) they're feeling they really don't have to adjust their approach to anything.

They can do exactly what Limbaugh says they should do: "staying true to conservative principles" and "not caving in on special rights for LGBT" and "not knuckling under to union thugs" etc.  (Remember, the only thing worse than being wrong is admitting you were wrong)  Anyway, the SCOTUS decision on VRA plowed the road and Voter Disenfranchisement is speeding along nicely in about half-a-dozen states where they can make enough of a difference to practically guarantee their guys win next time out.

BTW - Krugman's right - the GOP's policies are a total clusterfuck - it's just that I feel the need to nit-pick on some important differences between Presentation, Policy, and Political Strategy (and The Goals of that Strategy).

Now - can anybody guess what those goals might be?  Anybody?

Fouling The Nest - Followup

Some reading for ya today - to go with your assignment to search out and watch Gasland & Gasland2.

Bloomburg via Seattle Times:

Riding shotgun in a Toyota 4Runner rigged with a carbon-fiber pipe and a spectrometer, Duke University researcher Rob Jackson trolled through Washington, D.C., searching for evidence that natural gas is not quite the climate champion President Obama claimed last month.

He was replicating a study he did in Boston, measuring leaks from creaky natural-gas pipes. In addition to being a possible safety risk, methane, the key component of natural gas, is 25 times as potent a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide. And leaks may undercut much of the climate benefits of gas.
“First and foremost this is a greenhouse-gas question,” Jackson said as he drove near the Capitol. “What we are trying to find out is how big a problem this is for cities.”

Obama's cheerleading notwithstanding, the plan seems to be to go forward with Shale Gas, but to look for the drawbacks and (I'm really just kinda hoping here) to push for a real conversion to renewables as we go.

I don't like the way this feels, tho'.  It looks a lot like we're gettin' suckered again, cuz let's see if we can guess what we're up against.

Here's a piece from MasterResource - "a free market energy blog":

Last month, the EPA released its latest Greenhouse Gas Inventory, in which the agency significantly lowered its estimate of the amount of methane emissions from natural gas systems. But even with those dramatic revisions, EPA still has a long way to go to get this right.

So the struggle continues.  Government remains largely captive to Big Bidness, and we get only the slant that the PR Slicksters pressure the feds to give us.

Fouling The Nest

I saw Gasland II on HBO last night and our situation seems not to be any more hopeful than it was when the first installment came out 2 years ago.

One of the really great parts for me was the bit about the mayor of Dish TX.  The guy was deeply involved in the selling (as in selling out) of an entire town in Texas.  They changed the name of the town to Dish in exchange for 10 years of "free" TV service from Dish Network.  Pretty much the classic public/private dick move - altho' a bit more benign than some.  So this mayor was a solid Republican; a guy who was always on about deregulation and getting government out of the way of businesses doing business etc.  But along comes fracking, with all the huge problems with water and air quality - and suddenly this guy's a registered Independent having to sell his house at a bargain basement price and move his family somewhere else because of the risks to their health.

And btw - there's really no such thing as "somewhere else" now.  There are no more Green Spots.  You can't just pack your shit and find some fresh joint.  And y'know what? If you've fucked up the place you're living now, what makes you think you'd be welcome in some place that's less fucked up than the one you just left?  Through your own actions (or by your own inaction), you helped fuck it up - so you get to stay and help un-fuck it up.

Here's a taste from Gasland (the first one):

God Love The Onion

BOSTON—Warning that he was a dark and vengeful God, New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick reportedly pulled aside Tim Tebow at the team’s facilities Thursday and informed the backup quarterback that he was his only Lord and savior now. “This is your church now, and you shall worship me,” said Belichick, who sources confirmed clutched Tebow’s throat and slammed the former Heisman Trophy winner against a concrete wall. “If you want to see a wrathful God, then question me on playing time. I will crush you into dust. And if I ever see you on your knees, you better be praying to me or you will be destroyed by my blistering fury.” At press time, Tebow told reporters that he was renouncing Jesus Christ.

The Onion

Connections

I think this guy is trying hard to get "conservatives" to look at things from a perspective other than from inside their own bowels; using his take on John Mellencamp's music to illustrate their basic inability to hear what "the American people" are really trying to tell them.

David Masciotra at The American Conservative:

One of the problems of movement conservatism is a resistance to—and often flat out rejection of—complexity. Too much of the American right is dominated by a mentality that views its country with childlike simplicity and awe. Any invocation of American iconography must be worshipful, and for those who combine Christianity with nationalism to create a civil religion, any sign of the cross must be celebratory of everything American.

Not that I have a lot of confidence in anybody's ability to get these meatheads either into line or out of the party, but I can tip my hat to a guy who's making some effort to move people away from the adolescent insistence that all we need is a little common sense and that every problem (and therefore, every solution) can be reduced to simple 10-word phrases that fit neatly onto bumper stickers; or that can be perfectly reflected in a 3-minute pop tune.

Today's Eternal Sadness

via Addicting Info:

Sgt. Lance McLean of the Hood County Sheriff’s Office has succumbed to his injuries and been pronounced dead after being shot in the head by a gun dealing, child molesting, tactical gear-wearing, heavily modified assault rifle-wielding man after responding to a seemingly ordinary disturbance call.
After injuring two officers, the suspect drove away in a white van, and was eventually killed near the Cranbury City Hall after wounding another police officer in a gun battle.

Police have learned that the gunman, Ricky McCommas, was an avid gun enthusiast who sold guns from inside of his home. After obtaining a search warrant, authorities seized more than two dozen guns and about 20 cases of ammunition, along with a computer and other evidence.

Adding insult to injury, court records have revealed that McCommas had recently been charged with sexual assault of a child in July 2012, after being accused of raping his wife’s niece behind a grocery store. Gun in hand, he had traveled to the location of the victim in order to convince her to drop the charges, leading to the original 911 disturbance call.

And the tyranny of large numbers:

The truth is, there is no good reason why America should continue to allow these dangerous kinds of assault weapons to be owned by millions upon millions of citizens. Yes, the large majority of gun owners are very responsible, but what about that miniscule portion that is unhinged and unfit to own such dangerous weapons? With millions of gun owners, there are bound to the tens of thousands of “bad apples” that have no business being near nor selling any of these military grade weapons.

Holy Crap

I had no idea this thing still existed.

On "Age of the Earth":

See also Counterexamples to an Old Earth.

The Age of the Earth has been a matter of interest to humans for millennia. The subject is still debated today, particularly between young-Earth scientists, who believe that the Earth is only approximately 6,000-10,000 (8 × 103 ± 25%) years old, and most scientific organisations who believe that Earth is approximately 4.54 billion years (4.54 × 109 ± 1%).[1][1] The scientific evidence points to a young age of the earth and the universe, and the biblical creation organization Creation Ministries International published an article entitled 101 evidences for a young age of the earth and the universe, which further argues for the young age of the Earth.

Old Earth advocates rely on one flawed assumption to the exclusion of other evidence, similar to how an investigator may mistakenly rely on one eyewitness's opinion to the exclusion of all else. In fact, eyewitness testimony is proven to be less reliable to than other indicators, just as the assumption by Old Earth proponents that the rate of radioactive decay has always been constant is flawed. In fact, a large number of physical processes, such as neutron capture and fluctuations in solar radiation, can affect the rate of radioactive decay of elements in the Earth's crust and render radioactive dating measurements unreliable with errors up to 5%, depending upon the specific methods used.[2] Even so, such an error will not cause a calculation of the age of the Earth based on radiometric dating to be off by up to five orders of magnitude.

A test to quantify openmindedness:

1. Do you resist admitting the possibility that a conservative approach to education is far more effective for students than a liberal one?
2. If it were proven to your satisfaction that some idea you've been using to bolster a political argument was false, would you keep using that idea in your argument?
3. Do you resist admitting that something you accepted for over a decade is, in fact, completely false?
4. Do you resist the possibility that Hollywood values result in significant harm for those who believe in them, and to innocent bystanders?
5. Do you think it is impossible that increased gun ownership reduces the rate of crime?
6. When President Ronald Reagan told Mr. Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall, would you have thought that it was politically impossible for the Berlin Wall to be torn down?
7. Did you think, or still think, that the Strategic Defense Initiative ("Star Wars") is impossible?
8. Do you think that it is impossible that the Shroud of Turin is authentic?
9. Do you think that there must be a purely material-based explanation (such as magnetism) for remarkable homing and migration behavior of birds and butterflies?
10. Do you think that it is impossible for the speed of light in the Earth's atmosphere to have been measurably different in the past?
11. Do you think that it is impossible to measure openmindedness?
12. Do you think that evolution[2] must have occurred?
13. Do you think that is impossible for the power of 2 in Newtonian gravity, whereby the gravitational force is proportional to 1/r2, to be more precise with an exponent that is slightly different from 2, such as a gravitational force proportional to 1/r2.00000001?
14. Do you resist admitting that some things taught to you in school are completely false, and even known to be false by some responsible for the material?
15. Do you deny that some widely required theories of science, such as the theory of evolution, may actually impede the progress of science?[3]
16. Do you deny that the imposition of socialism and same-sex marriage on a nation could harm its competitiveness at international events like the Olympics?
17. Do you refuse to consider the possibility that "experts" may not have all the answers, and that the best of the public may have valuable insights to which experts are blind?
18. Do you think that if you read parts of the Bible years ago as a child, you can claim to "have read the Bible" and that you have no reason to read it regularly now?
19. Do you believe that because the Earth's orbit and rotation are what they are now, they are guaranteed to remain stable for billions of years?
20. Do you refuse to consider the possibility that Hebrews might have been authored by Jesus?

The above questions can be asked, and one's closed-mindedness can be scored based on how often they answered "yes" above. Answering more than half as "yes" reflects acute closed-mindedness.

That's what passes for intellectual inquiry and insight from our friends way over there on the far end of the spectrum - except I get a bad feeling sometimes that maybe it's not considered all that far out.  When I talk to some people, they seem to accept this nonsense; or at least have it in their minds that this is nothing more than a difference of opinion.  And the main problem I have with that thinking is that an awful lot of  "conservatives" are not willing to leave it as a matter of differing opinions - they're actively seeking to turn this shit into law.  And the people who shrug and give me the standard "comme ci, comme ça" response are the ones doing nothing to counteract it.