Lesson Time

And this from Tim Wise via HuffPo:

You remember, forever and forever, that moment when you first discover the cruelties and injustices of the world, and having been ill-prepared for them, your heart breaks open.

I mean really discover them, and for yourself; not because someone else told you to see the elephant standing, gigantic and unrelenting in the middle of your room, but because yousaw him, and now you know he's there, and will never go away until you attack him, and with a vengeance.

Saturday night, and I am writing it down so that I will not forget -- because I already know she will not -- my oldest daughter, who attained the age of 12 only eleven days ago, became an American. Not in the legal sense. She was already that, born here, and -- as a white child in a nation set up for people just like her -- fully entitled to all the rights and privileges thereof, without much question or drama. But now she is American in the fullest and most horrible sense of that word, by which I mean she has been truly introduced to the workings of the system of which she is both a part, and, at the same time, merely an inheritor. A system that fails -- with a near-unanimity almost incomprehensible to behold -- to render justice to black peoples, the family of Trayvon Martin being only the latest battered by the machinations of American justice, but with all certainty not the last.

And so begins the task.  It's like we have to start all over - or at least we have to back up to about 1985 and go over the whole thing again.

What makes this really hard for me is the (by now) standard pop tune coming from "the right", which goes something like this:  "We have a black guy in the White House, and we have a black guy sittin' on SCOTUS, and a black guy as AG, and black folk all over the damn place - that has to mean that we really are in Post-Racial Happy-Time, which means I'm free to turn loose all this pent up bigotry that's been festering in my soul for 30 years while I pretended not to be the complete asshole I always knew it'd be OK to revert to being once we got past all this racism talk."

Fuck me now, Jesus.

One Last Thing

...on the George Zimmerman cluster fuck.

Zimmerman goes free, and the gun he used to kill Trayvon Martin will be delivered back to him; and his Concealed Carry permit will be reinstated as well.

Nobody knows yet, of course, what he plans on doing - this is America after all and if you can't figure out how to cash in on the notoriety you've gained from murdering a teenager then you're the worst kinda loser - but one thing's for sure: Zimmerman will definitely be packin' his gat because now he has good reason to fear for his safety because of all the haters out there.

The guy with the best justification for his paranoia is the one with the guilty conscience.

Here's hopin' Karma's a real thing.

Civil War II

'Conservatives' are exceedingly fond of prattling about FREEDOM as if the word itself had some kind of magical power.

It's as if the Conservative Handbook has instructions that read: "Never mind the actual concept the word is supposed to represent - that shit's for the pansy-ass eggheads who spend way too much time thinking - just intone the word whenever you're in a debate that you know you're losing because you've brought nothing to the party but bumper stickers and t-shirts to rationalize putting your basest instincts into action.  Don't think, just act; and if anybody calls you on it, they're just a LibTard who's trying to take away your FREEDOM."

Here's a bit from a speech Mr Lincoln delivered in Baltimore almost 150 years ago.

"We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men's labor. Here are two, not only different, but incompatible things, called by the same name-liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different and incompatible names-liberty and tyranny.

"The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as a liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty, especially as the sheep was a black one. Plainly the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of the word liberty; and precisely the same difference prevails today among us human creatures, even in the North, and all professing to love liberty. Hence we behold the process by which thousands are daily passing from under the yoke of bondage, hailed by some as the advance of liberty, and bewailed by others as the destruction of all liberty. Recently, as it seems, the people of Maryland have been doing something to define liberty [abolishing slavery in the state]; and thanks to them that, in what they have done, the wolf's dictionary, has been repudiated."

giant hat tip = Blue Virginia

The KrugMan Speaks

Generally, I need people to play in their own yards, but if you have something worth saying you should say it.

To fully appreciate what just went down, listen to the rhetoric conservatives often use to justify eliminating safety-net programs. It goes something like this: “You’re personally free to help the poor. But the government has no right to take people’s money” — frequently, at this point, they add the words “at the point of a gun” — “and force them to give it to the poor.”

It is, however, apparently perfectly O.K. to take people’s money at the point of a gun and force them to give it to agribusinesses and the wealthy.

Now, some enemies of food stamps don’t quote libertarian philosophy; they quote the Bible instead. Representative Stephen Fincher of Tennessee, for example, cited the New Testament: “The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat.” Sure enough, it turns out that Mr. Fincher has personally received millions in farm subsidies.

 And if it's worth hearing then I'm listening.

Today's Pix

Zimmerman Walks - Reax

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?