Logical Fallacy Recap

I've posted one of these per week (more or less) for about 6 months.  Here's the whole banana:

Today's Pix

Today's Groaner

Let me say, I just want ya'll to know that I've started and then deleted this post at least 7 or 8 times, and that I'm sorry.  I feel bad for doing this, but I have to go thru with it now because I need you to help ease the crushing burden of shame that I feel for dumping this on you.

As you may know, Mahatma Gandhi walked barefoot most of the time, which made for some pretty impressively tough soles on his feet.  Also, he ate very little, which caused him to be rather frail, and because of his inadequate diet, he suffered from bad breath.
This means that he was - a super calloused fragile mystic vexed by halitosis.

Again - I am deeply and most sincerely sorry.  I am a bad bad man.

Labor Day

Enjoying that extra day off?  Be sure to thank some of the people DumFux News keeps trying to convince you are to blame for all your problems.

Think Progress:

1. Unions Gave Us The Weekend: Even the ultra-conservative Mises Institute notes that the relatively labor-free 1870, the average workweek for most Americans was 61 hours — almost double what most Americans work now. Yet in the late nineteenth century and the twentieth century, labor unions engaged in massive strikes in order to demand shorter workweeks so that Americans could be home with their loved ones instead of constantly toiling for their employers with no leisure time. By 1937, these labor actions created enough political momentum to pass the Fair Labor Standards Act, which helped create a federal framework for a shorter workweek that included room for leisure time.

2. Unions Gave Us Fair Wages And Relative Income Equality: As ThinkProgress reported earlier in the week, the relative decline of unions over the past 35 years has mirrored a decline in the middle class’s share of national income. It is also true that at the time when most Americans belonged to a union — a period of time between the 1940′s and 1950′s — income inequality in the U.S. was at its lowest point in the history of the country.

3. Unions Helped End Child Labor: “Union organizing and child labor reform were often intertwined” in U.S. history, with organization’s like the “National Consumers’ League” and the National Child Labor Committee” working together in the early 20th century to ban child labor. The very first American Federation of Labor (AFL) national convention passed “a resolution calling on states to ban children under 14 from all gainful employment” in 1881, and soon after states across the country adopted similar recommendations, leading up to the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act which regulated child labor on the federal level for the first time.

4. Unions Won Widespread Employer-Based Health Coverage:“The rise of unions in the 1930′s and 1940′s led to the first great expansion of health care” for all Americans, as labor unions banded workers together to negotiate for health coverage plans from employers. In 1942, “the US set up a National War Labor Board. It had the power to set a cap on all wage increases. But it let employers circumvent the cap by offering “fringe benefits” – notably, health insurance.” By 1950, “half of all companies with fewer than 250 workers and two-thirds of all companies with more than 250 workers offered health insurance of one kind or another.”

5. Unions Spearheaded The Fight For The Family And Medical Leave Act: Labor unions like the AFL-CIO federation led the fight for this 1993 law, which “requires state agencies and private employers with more than 50 employees to provide up to 12 weeks of job-protected unpaid leave annually for workers to care for a newborn, newly adopted child, seriously ill family member or for the worker’s own illness.”

Somebody's Gotta Do It

It's gotta be a joyless and thoroughly mind-numbing task trying to keep tabs on the wingnuts.

May I at least say thanks to Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs for his tireless endeavors to make sure we know what a total waste of protoplasm this Jim Hoft guy really is.

Jim Hoft, Dumbest Man on the Internet, Also Most Hypocritical

Say “cheese”

 Charles Johnson

Wingnuts13 hours, 54 minutes ago • Views: 5,677

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Remember when Jim Hoft, fabled Dumbest Man on the Internet, freaked out about a photograph of President Obama taking a “selfie” at Nelson Mandela’s memorial event, labeling Obama the “Narcissist-in-Chief?” And remember how this Obama-bashing meme instantly spread throughout the right wing blogs and made it all the way to Fox News?

AFP Photographer “Sad” to Make Obama Look Bad in “Selfie” Shot at Mandela Funeral | the Gateway Pundit

Well, first of all, this was not a “funeral;” it was a memorial service that included lots of performers and tributes from dignitaries. And it was not a solemn event in a church; it was more like a party, a joyous celebration of Mandela’s life. And for that matter, Jim Hoft was incredibly vicious and mean-spirited toward Nelson Mandela when he died, posting several rants like this one and this one.

But the point of this post: today the DMOTI tweeted this, demonstrating once again that boorish self-absorbed right wing hypocrisy for which he’s infamous — a lovely selfie that he took with a friend at a real funeral, in a church, wearing a polo shirt and a big un-self-conscious grin.

Say “cheese,” Jim.

(I’m posting a screenshot linked to his tweet instead of embedding it, because Hoft has a long-standing habit of trying to delete stuff like this when it gets noticed.)

(h/t: @lawhawk.)

Today's Pix

But How Do We Tell?

Good guys with guns stopping bag guys with guns.  That's what we're supposed to believe when it comes to the Guns-Fer-All approach that ammosexuals are always trying to put over on us.

Maybe not so much - from an AP wire story via TPM:

A Border Patrol agent pursuing a group of immigrants in a wooded area near the Texas-Mexico border on Friday fired several shots at an armed man who later identified himself as a militia member.

--and--

An unknown number of militia members have come to the Texas border following a surge in illegal immigration this summer.

But Lucio said, "We really don't need the militia here." He recognized they have the right to carry weapons, but noted that with the Border Patrol, Texas Department of Public Safety and local law enforcement, there are enough agencies working to secure the border. Gov. Rick Perry also called as many as 1,000 National Guard members to the border.

--and--

"It just creates a problem from my point of view, because we don't know who they are," Lucio said.

"When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns" is actually what we need to be "shooting" for, genius.  Cuz guess what - if the outlaws are the only ones with the guns, you'll be a lot easier to spot.

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.