Because They're Rubes

Via Wonkette, this piece in WaPo:

RICHMOND — If you’re a law-abiding gun owner, former Virginia attorney general Ken Cuccinelli II would like to be your lawyer — for less than $10 a month.

Cuccinelli and three partners have launched Virginia Self Defense Law, a firm focused on defending Second Amendment rights. With bargain-basement pricing and a cheeky slogan — “Defending those who defend themselves” — the venture seeks to tap into a feeling among some gun owners that the right to bear arms is under attack.

And here's the nail-on-the-head part:

...because I am not a fucking asshole who can’t feel like a big man unless he is waving a metal penis around. But that is not the point! The point is, how is Cuccinelli convincing the rubes to give him money before they’ve even done their crimes? Easy. They’re rubes, like I just said.

An Observation

Guys like Bloody Bill Kristol and Leo Strauss and practically any other NeoCon Proto-Fascist pus pocket you care to name - these guys are always pushing for doing things "the old-fashioned way", which for my purposes here is all about "society manufacturing good citizens".  Which is exactly the way it's been done for 400 centuries in every other place in the world, under every system of government ever; which is exactly the opposite of how we're supposed to be doing it here in the USofA.

American Exceptionalism is what happens when citizens make for a better society (which in turn makes for better government) - not the other way around.

If we remember only that one thing; if we can keep that one precept in mind whenever we listen to the politicians and the pundits and the Press Poodles and the Think-Tankers and whoever else believes he's entitled to a few minutes in the spotlight (usually because his daddy owns the theater) - maybe we get outa this mess in one piece.

Now, if I can just figure out how all o' dat doesn't mean I'm in line with the TeaBaggers on this one fine point, I'll feel a lot better about it.

It's Just Too Simple

Finding shit out and then telling people about it?  Can't possibly work, but fut the wuck, maybe we could try it for a while.

From truthout, by Wm Rivers Pitt - just a taste of a buncha good stuff.

I believe the minimum wage should be somewhere between $15 and $20 an hour, and that all the so-called business “leaders” crowing against any raise to that wage are self-destructive idiots. Commerce needs funds in the hands of consumers to survive and thrive and consumers today are barely handling rent. Put more money in the worker’s pocket and he will spend some of it at your store, because he can. The minimum wage has been stagnant for 30 years, and is due for a right and proper boost. If people don’t have money, your store won’t sell any goods. Get out of your own way and pay your people, so they can have money to spend on what you’re selling. This strikes me as simple arithmetic.

--and--

I believe the 50 percent of eligible American voters who can’t be bothered to turn out one Tuesday every two years should be ashamed of themselves, because this is a good country, but if that goodness doesn’t show up at the polls, we wind up in this ditch with a bunch of self-satisfied non-voters complaining about the mess we’re in. Decisions are made by those who show up, and lately, the small minority of hateful nutbags showing up become a large majority because they’re the only ones pulling the lever.

hat tip = Democratic Underground

Today's Corporate Monster

...eating companies and shitting people.



Do the petition thing at FreePress.net

...and then Call your Congress Critter

Yo - Gun Freaks

A Quick Analogy

My god-given right to swing my fist ends where your jaw begins.

In light of recent arguments - aka stupid little tempests in stoopider little teapots fomented by the stoopidest little god-bothering bigots ever - I'm talking about "issues" that shouldn't even enjoy the briefest consideration here in what the grownups like to call the 21st fucking century - here's the thing (via Rude Pundit):

...the moment your worship of whatever invisible sky wizard you choose infringes on his right to exist without the rules of your sky wizard imposed on him is the moment that your religious liberty becomes his oppression.

Today's American Taliban

The large steaming piles of douche-canoe buggery that fall out of this guy's Whopper slot in such rapid succession are a pure wonderment to behold.




The kids at South Park had a few ideas about Mr Donohue

hat tip = Blue Virginia

Today's Quote

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” --Upton Sinclair

That popped up in a piece at Bill Moyers, by Mike Lofgren:

Yes, there is another government concealed behind the one that is visible at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue, a hybrid entity of public and private institutions ruling the country according to consistent patterns in season and out, connected to, but only intermittently controlled by, the visible state whose leaders we choose. My analysis of this phenomenon is not an exposé of a secret, conspiratorial cabal; the state within a state is hiding mostly in plain sight, and its operators mainly act in the light of day. Nor can this other government be accurately termed an “establishment.” All complex societies have an establishment, a social network committed to its own enrichment and perpetuation. In terms of its scope, financial resources and sheer global reach, the American hybrid state, the Deep State, is in a class by itself. That said, it is neither omniscient nor invincible. The institution is not so much sinister (although it has highly sinister aspects) as it is relentlessly well entrenched. Far from being invincible, its failures, such as those in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, are routine enough that it is only the Deep State’s protectiveness towards its higher-ranking personnel that allows them to escape the consequences of their frequent ineptitude. [2]

Sorry about dropping that one on you for the weekend, but you know - somebody's gotta look at this shit and it can't just be me and coupla other dweebs who never get anything else done.

Then there's this tasty little morsel:  The number of terrorist organizations we're fighting is a secret.  We also don't get to know who they are, and we don't get to know where they are - but the kicker?  We certainly do get to know that we get to pay for it, but we don't get to know how much it's costing.  Is that the perfect gig or what?

We are so fucked.

Watch this:

Design

This is far more than simple mental masturbation.

Expenditures devoted to "science for the sake of science" - or to just making shit that's interesting and kinda cool - is almost never wasted.

You have to put it out there, and then wait for the engineers to find a workable and/or useful application.

In the meantime, there's real value in the wonderment of it all.

Wait - What?

If this guy's sign truly reflects his circumstance, shouldn't this be a much bigger story?

Real World Pulchritude

Yeah, OK - it's a little lame in that "holy-fuck-man-why-do-white-people-gotta-try-this-shit" kinda way, but there's a fair-sized chunk o' truth here that needs to get out.



hat tip = HuffPo

And So It Begins(?)

The night of the long knives.

Mondo Cané.

Helter Skelter.

Maybe the revolution will be televised after all.

A crime of passion - one that defies the poor ability of your humble correspondent to describe it - was committed against the defenseless and unsuspecting rich white people living in the wealthiest neighborhood in all of USAmerica Inc.

Residents of Atherton CA discovered several defilements of their preciously private property - spray-painted with the obviously ominous phrase, "Fuck the 1%".

The vandalism took place between 6 and 9:30 p.m., along several blocks of Greenoaks Drive and the 100 blocks of Hawthorne, Rosewood and Heather drives, Wade said.

Not so funnily, there was also one reported instance of "Kill People" on the fence in front of one house.  Not cool, guys.  I don't care how fun it is for you to imagine giving a buncha tight-assed over-privileged dipwads nightmares about The Manson Family, it's not right to threaten anybody like that.

He said police have sought private security camera footage from residents, but so far have come up empty. Some residents don't have surveillance cameras and others didn't have them focused on the areas where vandals struck or didn't have them turned on, Wade said.

It is fun tho' - a whole lotta fun - thinking about all the prospecting calls the good folk in Atherton are about to get from the noble entrepreneurs in the Home Security bidness.  Like orcas on a baby whale.

But anyway-

Without leads or suspects, Atherton Town Manager George Rodericks cautioned against jumping to conclusions.

"We don't know if it was an organized group or a couple of teenagers," he said.

So, Where You At?

A month ago, Sean Hannity said he'd be moving out of New York as soon as he could manage it.

Here's Stewart's take on it back then.

So I'm just wondering: a rich guy like Hannity can make a move at pretty much the drop of a hat.  So where is he now?  Did he leave?  Or is this another solid example of bullshit outrage that pops up with annoying regularity?  Alec Baldwin said he'd move to France or whatever if Shrub got reelected.  Limbaugh said he'd move to Costa Rica if Obama got reelected.

At what point do we stop purposely crankin' it up to 11 every time some jagoff politician says something silly or nasty or straight up stoopid?  Y'know, if you can just kinda keep your cool, you're more likely to find a decent solution for the problem and/or resolution of the point of contention.  And yet we keep crankin' it up.  It almost seems like it could maybe perhaps be deliberate.

So I'm also wondering: who might benefit from keeping us so riled up that we spend all our time and effort beatin' on each other, instead of working together to figure out what to do about whatever problem some Congress Critter / Press Poodle / Bidness Crook tells us to be pissed off about.

Here's what I learned from a mentor fairly early in my working life:
I don't care if you guys go for long walks in the moonlight holding hands, and I don't care if you plan to murder each other after lunch; but as long as you're cashing the fuckin' paychecks, I expect you to work the fuckin' problem.

Logical Fallacy #3 - Appeal To Emotion

Appeal to emotion (or argumentum ad passiones) is a logical fallacy which uses the manipulation of the recipient's emotions, rather than valid logic, to win an argument. The appeal to emotion fallacy uses emotions as the basis of an argument's position without factual evidence that logically supports the major ideas endorsed by the elicitor of the argument. Also, this kind of thinking may be evident in one who lets emotions and/or other subjective considerations influence one's reasoning process. This kind of appeal to emotion is a type of red herring and encompasses several logical fallacies, including:

Appeal to consequences

Appeal to fear

Appeal to flattery

Appeal to pity

Appeal to ridicule

Appeal to spite

Wishful thinking

Here's A Thought

Nobody likes Foreign Aid, and nobody much likes Uganda's prez, and practically nobody's at all in favor of spending tax dollars to help fuck people over (well - not out in the open anyway).

So let's take the $485 Million we'd normally wrap neatly and ship to Museveni's bankers in Switzerland; and instead, divvy it up and give $150 to every public school teacher here at home.  Can we try that just this one time?

Git 'Em, Jon

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Back Pedal

Let the pearl clutching begin!

(hat tip = Facebook buddy KH)

He started way before 1996, but Roger Ailes has been working really hard towards this day for a very long time; his efforts thru DumFux news have been instrumental in the Rise of the Ruling Rubes.

And those Nutty Old Lefties have been trying to warn us about it forever.  So yeah - The Left is right about how The Right is wrong.

What's happening in Arizona and on K Street (and Uganda, btw), is exactly what happens when you unleash the Monsters of the Id* - ie: when you tell the rubes it's OK to be an ignorant superstitious mob, try not to be surprised when the rubes turn out to be an ignorant superstitious mob.

(*watch Forbidden Planet sometime)

Nailin' It

The Rude Pundit is aptly named.  This is not the guy who gets invited to the garden party, but he is definitely the guy needed there frequently and regularly.

Here's his entire post re: "the Jindal thing":

2/25/2014
Bobby Jindal: The Motherfucker at Work:
How many times have you hosted a party and invited everyone in the office to be fair and one of them ends up fucking your mother? You're all having a good time - the snacks you made are a big hit, the music mix is getting everyone dancing, the secretaries and the execs are getting along - when you turn the corner and there, bent over a table, is your mother, just being fucked, in your own house, by that guy you knew was a motherfucker. You're got no one to blame but yourself. The Rude Pundit's been over this many times, but it always bears saying: If someone is a motherfucker, he will fuck a mother, every time. It is what motherfuckers do. Otherwise, why bother calling them "motherfuckers"?

So it was that yesterday the President of the United States hosted a nice brunch at the State Dining Room of the White House for a gathering of the nation's governors, both Democrats and Republicans. The Vice President was there, too. It was, to borrow a phrase, a big fucking deal, as these things tend to be. President Barack Obama spoke of how much he admires and wants to work with the governors. Congress may be filled with assholes, but, the President said, "I am absolutely convinced that the time is right to partner with the states and governors all across the country on these agendas, because I know that you guys are doing some terrific work in your own states." 

Oh, sure, sure, Obama acknowledged reality: "We won’t agree on every single issue every single time." However, the hand of friendship was extended: "I guarantee you that we will work as hard as we can to make sure that you succeed -- because when you succeed, the people in your states succeed and America succeeds, and that’s our goal." Simple, committing to something, however vague, open-minded - what else would you want? And then they met privately with Obama.

After the meeting, some of the governors went before the gathered press on the lawn of the White House to talk about how awesome bipartisanship is, how Congress sucks monkey balls, and how they all are concerned about military cuts because military bases are gold mines (note: They didn't say that part but, you know, c'mon). And then Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, likely loser in the 2016 presidential race, walked up to the mike and decided, quite vividly, "Fuck this shit. I got some primaries to win."

So, being a motherfucker, Jindal brought a mother out and proceeded to fuck the shit out of her. He attacked his brunch host by saying that Obama was "“waving the white flag of surrender" on the economy and that "The Obama economy is now the minimum wage economy." Then he turned that mother over to fuck her some more. The solution to the economic problems of the United States are found in oil, bitches, like approval of the Keystone XL pipeline: "There’s no reason it’s taken five years of study and they still haven’t reached what at this point is an inescapable conclusion...There’s no good reason other than political ideology to turn down the pipeline." And shale, man. Don't forget about frackin' shale. Said Jindal, his Adam's apple undulating like it was an alien trying to escape, "One of things the administration can do to get out of the way...[is] not only to continue to allow the fracking revolution, the shale revolution taking place across this country, they can accelerate it."

And since no one can be a proper motherfucker without saying something about stopping Obamacare, Jindal took that position, too: "Since they’ve shown the willingness to delay some of the mandates, why not just delay the entire program, delay all the mandates, including the individual mandate?"

Jindal was essentially reciting what he had written in the National Review (motto: "Vigorously raping Buckley's corpse on a daily basis"), a great and mighty editorial about how to cure what ails the U.S. of A. It pretty much boils down to "Fuck up the environment some more" and "Give education money to churches and private companies through school vouchers." Jindal also attacks the IRS, unions, and Obamacare. If he had somehow been able to make Benghazi into an economic issue, he'd've had idiot Bingo. 

Time and time again, whenever President Obama attempts to show that he is above partisan politics, he forgets that he is trying to tell motherfuckers to stop fucking mothers. It's never gonna happen.

And btw - does Piyush Jindal have some kind of Little-Man Complex now?  Is he still trying to make up for that awful SOTU response?  I realize that if you wanna get the free ticket to the GOP Primary Fair you have to shit in Obama's pocket and wipe your ass with his tie whenever you get the chance, but there seems to be something else working on Jindal too.

New Gun Facts

Add this one to the heap of real things that won't make any difference to the rubes:

A study in the Annals Of Internal Medicine examining gun violence worldwide proved that women in the United States are disproportionately likely to be victims of gun violence when compared to women in other developed countries:

As reported by The Atlantic “Women in the United States account for 84 percent of all female firearm victims in the developed world, even though they make up only a third of the developed world’s female population. And within American borders, women die at higher rates from suicide, homicide, and accidental firearm deaths in states where guns are more widely available This is true even after controlling for factors such as urbanization, alcohol use, education, poverty, and divorce rates.”

Another study published in the American Journal of Public Health showed that not only are women more likely to be the victims of gun violence, but this violence is more likely to be perpetrated in the home by a male domestic partner than by a stranger:

“More than twice as many women are killed with a gun used by their husbands or intimate acquaintances than are murdered by strangers using guns, knives, or any other means.” 

Today's Pix