Sep 25, 2014
Narrowly Averted Eternal Sadness
hat tip = Addicting Info
Stopped for a seatbelt violation, the driver makes the near-fatal mistake of trying to cooperate and comply with the cop's instructions. Of course, that near-fatal mistake followed the obvious mistake of having dark brown skin in South Carolina, and then the guy just makes it worse by raising his hands trying to demonstrate he was actually not a threat to the officer - all of which taken together tends to cause a lot of stress in the minds of some people (maybe like this cop) - people who've been over-trained to expect trouble, to the point where their brains will manufacture a threat even tho' all their sensory input indicates otherwise. The cop did in fact shoot that guy at least once AFTER he put his hands up.
More simply - if we teach people to expect trouble, let's try not to be surprised when they find it even where it doesn't exist.
In this case, at least the Cop Shop Mgmt made the right calls in firing that officer, charging him with "Assault and Battery of a High and Aggravated Nature", with bail set at $75K. But I do wonder how they plan to address a pretty obvious failure when it comes to training their officers, and in their reckless inability to identify and neutralize potential fuck-ups like this guy.
And BTW - with so many of these incidents coming to light, at what point do we stop considering these guys "Rogue Cops" and start to understand there's a big fucking problem here? What dots can we connect between cops shooting unarmed citizens, and the proliferation of guns, and the headlong slide into authoritarian governance, and the trend toward militarized policing, and the post-trauma emotional time bombs ticking away in the brains of way too many veterans (many of whom are now cops), and and and?
We need to get this thing unfucked in a big fuckin' hurry.
(As of 10:24am EDT, I'm waiting to hear from Lt Kelly Hughes at SC State Patrol as to how long Groubert had been a trooper and whether he's a US Military Veteran)
Stopped for a seatbelt violation, the driver makes the near-fatal mistake of trying to cooperate and comply with the cop's instructions. Of course, that near-fatal mistake followed the obvious mistake of having dark brown skin in South Carolina, and then the guy just makes it worse by raising his hands trying to demonstrate he was actually not a threat to the officer - all of which taken together tends to cause a lot of stress in the minds of some people (maybe like this cop) - people who've been over-trained to expect trouble, to the point where their brains will manufacture a threat even tho' all their sensory input indicates otherwise. The cop did in fact shoot that guy at least once AFTER he put his hands up.
More simply - if we teach people to expect trouble, let's try not to be surprised when they find it even where it doesn't exist.
In this case, at least the Cop Shop Mgmt made the right calls in firing that officer, charging him with "Assault and Battery of a High and Aggravated Nature", with bail set at $75K. But I do wonder how they plan to address a pretty obvious failure when it comes to training their officers, and in their reckless inability to identify and neutralize potential fuck-ups like this guy.
And BTW - with so many of these incidents coming to light, at what point do we stop considering these guys "Rogue Cops" and start to understand there's a big fucking problem here? What dots can we connect between cops shooting unarmed citizens, and the proliferation of guns, and the headlong slide into authoritarian governance, and the trend toward militarized policing, and the post-trauma emotional time bombs ticking away in the brains of way too many veterans (many of whom are now cops), and and and?
We need to get this thing unfucked in a big fuckin' hurry.
(As of 10:24am EDT, I'm waiting to hear from Lt Kelly Hughes at SC State Patrol as to how long Groubert had been a trooper and whether he's a US Military Veteran)
Sep 24, 2014
Charlie Gets It
(My own 2¢: remember when Bond villains were the only guys who had private armies?)
Ripped entirely from Charlie Pierce:
Ripped entirely from Charlie Pierce:
BILL O'REILLY IS NOT A MILITARY -- OR ANY OTHER KIND OF -- GENIUS
By on September 23, 2014
On the September 22 edition of his show, [Fox News' Bill O'Reilly] claimed that the only credible plan to defeat the Islamic State had to include a mercenary force of 25,000 "English-speaking" fighters that would be recruited and trained by the United States. O'Reilly explained that his mercenary army would be comprised of "elite fighters who would be well-paid, well-trained to defeat terrorists all over the world." O'Reilly also detailed how the mercenary force would be trained, recruited, and funded.
As the "war" on terror has ground on, I have been waiting for years for a nuttier concept than Saddam's balsa-wood escadrille. Hold all calls. We have a winner, as O'Reilly's guest from the forgotten land of Knowing What The Fk You're Talking About pointed out to him.
"Well, Bill, I understand your frustration. I really do. But this is a terrible idea, a terrible idea not just as a practical matter but a moral matter. It's a morally corrosive idea to try to outsource our national security. This is something Americans are going to have to deal for themselves. We're not going to solve this problem by creating an army of Marvel Avengers or the Guardians of the Galaxy...There's nothing theoretical about it. It's the worst of both worlds. You're asking these forces to operate as though they're U.S. military forces and you're treating them as though they're mercenaries merely because you don't want to have to use American military forces. And I think that that undermines the whole notion of our own security. "
I would laugh even harder at this whole thing had not former Blackwater barbarian Erik Prince oozed up again earlier this week to pitch something of the same notion, albeit with an adorable nostalgic flavor to his proposal.
"It's a shame the [Obama] administration crushed my old business, because as a private organization, we could've solved the boots-on-the-ground issue, we could have had contracts from people that want to go there as contractors; you don't have the argument of U.S. active duty going back in there," Prince said in an on-stage discussion featuring retired four-star Gen. James Conway. "[They could have] gone in there and done it, and be done, and not have a long, protracted political mess that I predict will ensue."
Because, if there's one thing that Blackwater knew how to do, it knew how to go in there and do the job, without leaving a long, protracted political mess behind.
We are in the hands of the madmen now.
One From Way Back
A little perspective from Michael Moore in The Guardian, 2002:
I have never been attacked by a black person, never been evicted by a black person, never had my security deposit ripped off by a black landlord, never had a black landlord, never had a meeting at a Hollywood studio with a black executive in charge, never had a black person deny my child the college of her choice, never been puked on by a black teenager at a Mötley Crüe concert, never been pulled over by a black cop, never been sold a lemon by a black car salesman, never seen a black car salesman, never had a black person deny me a bank loan, and I've never heard a black person say, "We're going to eliminate 10,000 jobs here - have a nice day!"hat tip = Crooks and Liars
I don't think that I'm the only white guy who can make these claims. Every mean word, every cruel act, every bit of pain and suffering in my life has had a Caucasian face attached to it.
So, um, why is it exactly that I should be afraid of black people?
I look around at the world I live in - and, I hate to tell tales out of school, but it's not the African-Americans who have made this planet such a pitiful, scary place. Recently, a headline on the front of the Science section of the New York Times asked Who Built The H-Bomb? The article went on to discuss a dispute between the men who claim credit for making the first bomb. Frankly, I could have cared less - because I already know the only pertinent answer: "It was a white guy!" No black guy ever built or used a bomb designed to wipe out hordes of innocent people, whether in Oklahoma City, Columbine or Hiroshima.
Sep 23, 2014
Today's Dots
Here's another guy with a dash cam and a fair understanding of his rights under the US Constitution:
The problem here tho' is that the driver didn't demand Probable Cause. No matter what the cop says about roadblocks, the dragnet is extralegal. The cops have no authority to presume everybody's guilty (IMHO just so they can sift thru the population looking to collect a few bucks in fines because their budget's pretty tight again this year) None zero zip zilch nada.
The 2nd trooper yells about how driving's a privilege not a right, and that you're required to have your license and proof of insurance etc. But that's a dodge on his part. His in-your-face tactics are meant to intimidate in order to coerce your "voluntary" cooperation and deflect from the fact that his actions are outside the fucking lines. Anyway, the cops couldn't demonstrate why they suspected that particular driver of violating the law. Detention by law enforcement without probable cause is illegal.
OK, so how 'bout this one:
Somebody sees this guy walking down the street with his gun, and the cop shows up to "check him out". The rationale is that the cop just needs to make sure the gun's not stolen, but again, there's no reasonable expectation on the part of anybody that any laws have been broken. If Citizen Hung-Like-A-Hamster wants to press the issue, then he has no obligation to provide any information to the officer. He could've refused to allow the cop to record the serial number of his weapon, and he didn't have to give his name.
Connecting the dots - suddenly, we have the hippie-dippy ACLU groupies making common cause with the Ammosexuals and the Peter Pan Libertarians. Strange bedfellows indeed.
The problem here tho' is that the driver didn't demand Probable Cause. No matter what the cop says about roadblocks, the dragnet is extralegal. The cops have no authority to presume everybody's guilty (IMHO just so they can sift thru the population looking to collect a few bucks in fines because their budget's pretty tight again this year) None zero zip zilch nada.
The 2nd trooper yells about how driving's a privilege not a right, and that you're required to have your license and proof of insurance etc. But that's a dodge on his part. His in-your-face tactics are meant to intimidate in order to coerce your "voluntary" cooperation and deflect from the fact that his actions are outside the fucking lines. Anyway, the cops couldn't demonstrate why they suspected that particular driver of violating the law. Detention by law enforcement without probable cause is illegal.
OK, so how 'bout this one:
Somebody sees this guy walking down the street with his gun, and the cop shows up to "check him out". The rationale is that the cop just needs to make sure the gun's not stolen, but again, there's no reasonable expectation on the part of anybody that any laws have been broken. If Citizen Hung-Like-A-Hamster wants to press the issue, then he has no obligation to provide any information to the officer. He could've refused to allow the cop to record the serial number of his weapon, and he didn't have to give his name.
Connecting the dots - suddenly, we have the hippie-dippy ACLU groupies making common cause with the Ammosexuals and the Peter Pan Libertarians. Strange bedfellows indeed.
A Million Pounds Of Idiot
Dear "Conservatives",
Nobody's buying your shit anymore.
Also too - the Congress Critters in this video - the guys who're asking the dumbest of the dumb-fuck questions - they're your guys. Maybe you've finally started to come around a bit on the Climate Disruption thing, but these idiots are your idiots. Until you run these pricks outa your party, I can only conclude that they represent you, so they're giving voice to your views.
Here's the only question that matters now: Are you really that fuckin' stoopid?
Nobody's buying your shit anymore.
Also too - the Congress Critters in this video - the guys who're asking the dumbest of the dumb-fuck questions - they're your guys. Maybe you've finally started to come around a bit on the Climate Disruption thing, but these idiots are your idiots. Until you run these pricks outa your party, I can only conclude that they represent you, so they're giving voice to your views.
Here's the only question that matters now: Are you really that fuckin' stoopid?
Sep 22, 2014
Sep 21, 2014
Sep 20, 2014
A Sad Time For Me
I will absolutely admit that I'm a football guy. It's my game. It's been my game since about 3rd grade. Seems a little silly to me now, but it's easy to see how you can get hooked once you strap on the armor and everybody seems to be really excited to watch you go crashing into people.
"Football is not a contact sport - it's a collision sport. Dancing is a contact sport." (Vince Lombardi and/or Duffy Daugherty)
--and let's not forget--
"All real Americans love the sting of battle." (George Patton)
I was hooked. My game; my idea of fun. Of course, eventually it morphs into "My ball; my territory; my team against the world; I will destroy you in pursuit of my goals"; and above all else, "football teaches a young man important lessons he'll carry with him throughout his life blah blah blah". (accompaniment by a choir of angels optional on the last bit)
Gosh, it's almost as if it's perfect training for an authoritarian society being geared for industrialized perpetual warfare. Solely in defense of all things wholesomely traditional and homespun of course - while conveniently co-opted (deliberately or otherwise) to accommodate ambitions of global hegemony. "They" get us to do what "they" want us to do by convincing us we're actually doing something else. And even when we know that what we're doing isn't particularly a good thing, we can be taught to rationalize our way into believing we're doing it for "all the right reasons".
So anyway, these things have been flowing thru my brain channels for a while and I've been trying to resolve some of the resultant dissonance, and then along comes Jerry Sandusky and Jameis Winston and Ray Rice. And I have to wonder - just what the fuck is going on?Let's take a quick spin around the InterToobz.
Here's a piece in WSJ Market Watch:
And here's something pretty interesting from Deadspin:
Well now - that's better. Whew! Looked like trouble there for a minute. But hey, NFL'ers
are just a buncha regular guys who, as it turns out, are actually a better buncha guys than the rest of you losers.
Yeah, but no. Ya see, there's a fair bit of a huge fuckin' difference between any given NFL player and all the other adult Testicular-Americans.
The biggest factor "explaining" the difference in the crime rates is that high level footballers have high-powered organizations working really hard to make an awful lot of these pesky little legal problems magically disappear way before they have a chance to show up in the crime stats.
Every big school; every NFL franchise - they all have many many many millions of dollars that we pay them for shitty seats, flat beer and stale nachos at the local Taxpayer Subsidized Stadium, which doubles as a billion-dollar billboard for the local corporation that happens to own the most Coin-Operated Politicians in that particular media market. Anyway, they have this shitload of money they get to spend very freely to hire PR Fixers and Brand Polishers and .50-Caliber Lawyers who specialize in bleaching out the dirty laundry to make sure it's all neat and sparkly in time for the next kickoff. Add the efforts of the NCAA and the NFLPA, and it means they can count on a significant percentage of us to be totally dismissive of anything that "distracts" from our feeling entitled to ignore the wrong-doing of our all-universe god-annointed heroes in order to enjoy USAmerica Inc's game, even as the coverup of all that wrong-doing rots the whole institution from the inside out.
It all starts to look way too much like Bread and Circuses, and it has the stench of a very bad abscess.
"Football is not a contact sport - it's a collision sport. Dancing is a contact sport." (Vince Lombardi and/or Duffy Daugherty)
--and let's not forget--
"All real Americans love the sting of battle." (George Patton)
I was hooked. My game; my idea of fun. Of course, eventually it morphs into "My ball; my territory; my team against the world; I will destroy you in pursuit of my goals"; and above all else, "football teaches a young man important lessons he'll carry with him throughout his life blah blah blah". (accompaniment by a choir of angels optional on the last bit)
Gosh, it's almost as if it's perfect training for an authoritarian society being geared for industrialized perpetual warfare. Solely in defense of all things wholesomely traditional and homespun of course - while conveniently co-opted (deliberately or otherwise) to accommodate ambitions of global hegemony. "They" get us to do what "they" want us to do by convincing us we're actually doing something else. And even when we know that what we're doing isn't particularly a good thing, we can be taught to rationalize our way into believing we're doing it for "all the right reasons".
So anyway, these things have been flowing thru my brain channels for a while and I've been trying to resolve some of the resultant dissonance, and then along comes Jerry Sandusky and Jameis Winston and Ray Rice. And I have to wonder - just what the fuck is going on?Let's take a quick spin around the InterToobz.
Here's a piece in WSJ Market Watch:
Arizona Cardinals running back Jonathan Dwyer is facing aggravated assault charges in connection with alleged fights with his wife earlier this year. It’s the latest in a series of recent criminal cases involving NFL players.
Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson is facing child-abuse charges. Ray Rice was recently dropped by the Baltimore Ravens after video surfaced of him knocking out his then-fiance in an elevator last February. And Ray McDonald of the San Francisco 49ers was arrested on domestic-violence charges in connection with an incident involving his fiance, who is pregnant.
USA Today maintains a database of NFL player arrests dating back to the year 2000.
According to the data, some 732 NFL player arrests have been reported in the past 14 years. Of those, 88 were on domestic violence charges, including some players who were arrested more than once.(note on the WSJ piece: interesting how the bankers take notice of the problem once it begins to threaten their prospects for making money from other peoples efforts)
And here's something pretty interesting from Deadspin:
By my count, the three most common charges in the NFL database were DUI, assault/battery (including domestic violence), and drug possession, with 72 percent of all incidents including at least one of these charges. Below, we compare the NFL arrest rates for these offenses, plus weapons charges, to the arrest rates for the country as a whole in 2010.
At first glance, this looks not so great for the league. With 7.4 annual assault/battery/domestic charges per thousand players, the league saw 34 percent more arrests for these violent crimes than the general population; 8.3 annual DUI charges per thousand was 81 percent higher than the U.S. average; and 2.2 weapons charges per thousand was 324 percent (!) higher. NFL players faced only 4.2 drug charges per thousand, which was actually 20 percent lower than the U.S. as a whole.* (We can guess why: The NFL tests for recreational drugs during the season, so there's one good reason not to use them, and some drugs also make it awfully hard to compete at the highest athletic level.)
But comparing NFL players to the general population does us little good. NFL players are all adult men, and adult men are more likely to be arrested than the population at large. How do those numbers look?
are just a buncha regular guys who, as it turns out, are actually a better buncha guys than the rest of you losers.
Yeah, but no. Ya see, there's a fair bit of a huge fuckin' difference between any given NFL player and all the other adult Testicular-Americans.
The biggest factor "explaining" the difference in the crime rates is that high level footballers have high-powered organizations working really hard to make an awful lot of these pesky little legal problems magically disappear way before they have a chance to show up in the crime stats.
Every big school; every NFL franchise - they all have many many many millions of dollars that we pay them for shitty seats, flat beer and stale nachos at the local Taxpayer Subsidized Stadium, which doubles as a billion-dollar billboard for the local corporation that happens to own the most Coin-Operated Politicians in that particular media market. Anyway, they have this shitload of money they get to spend very freely to hire PR Fixers and Brand Polishers and .50-Caliber Lawyers who specialize in bleaching out the dirty laundry to make sure it's all neat and sparkly in time for the next kickoff. Add the efforts of the NCAA and the NFLPA, and it means they can count on a significant percentage of us to be totally dismissive of anything that "distracts" from our feeling entitled to ignore the wrong-doing of our all-universe god-annointed heroes in order to enjoy USAmerica Inc's game, even as the coverup of all that wrong-doing rots the whole institution from the inside out.
It all starts to look way too much like Bread and Circuses, and it has the stench of a very bad abscess.
Sep 17, 2014
Check Your Bias
...and always assume your assumptions carry a Freshness Date, which means they are mostly pure shit after a while.
If there's really a Liberal Bias in the news media; a bias that's anywhere near as prominent as "conservatives" are so desperate to make us believe, then it seems to me we'd be able to see it a lot better.
Here's the thing: It's not "Gay Rights", as if those rights exist outside the realm of everybody else's rights. It's not "Gay Rights" now any more than it was "Black Rights" back in the 50s and 60s.
In god's USAmerica Inc, we're supposed to be talking about everybody's rights being the same; everybody having the same right to be treated as equals before the law. Equal Rights.
So I go to the Google Machinery, and I type in something like "gay rights" and I get one number, and then I type in "equal rights", and I get another number.
(CAVEAT: I'm no scholar. I'm not schooled in statistics or sampling or much of anything else outside of what I can observe and figure out on my own)
gay marriage = 76,100 hits
same sex marriage = 44,600 hits
marriage equality = 10,400 hits
gay rights = 21,500 hits
equal rights = 6,240 hits
I went to some of the bigtime bastions of bias - NYTimes, LATimes, San Francisco Chronicle - and I picked a few articles at random, and I counted the number of times the phrase "gay marriage" appeared vs the number of times "marriage equality" appeared. Gay Marriage wins by margins as high as 10-to-1. As often as not, "marriage equality" never popped up at all.
Language matters. Words have meaning. When we say a certain thing in a certain way and over a certain period of time, it sticks.
So if "The Media" carries such a strong left-leaning bias, why is the use of "conservative phrasing" so dominant?
If there's really a Liberal Bias in the news media; a bias that's anywhere near as prominent as "conservatives" are so desperate to make us believe, then it seems to me we'd be able to see it a lot better.
Here's the thing: It's not "Gay Rights", as if those rights exist outside the realm of everybody else's rights. It's not "Gay Rights" now any more than it was "Black Rights" back in the 50s and 60s.
In god's USAmerica Inc, we're supposed to be talking about everybody's rights being the same; everybody having the same right to be treated as equals before the law. Equal Rights.
So I go to the Google Machinery, and I type in something like "gay rights" and I get one number, and then I type in "equal rights", and I get another number.
(CAVEAT: I'm no scholar. I'm not schooled in statistics or sampling or much of anything else outside of what I can observe and figure out on my own)
gay marriage = 76,100 hits
same sex marriage = 44,600 hits
marriage equality = 10,400 hits
gay rights = 21,500 hits
equal rights = 6,240 hits
I went to some of the bigtime bastions of bias - NYTimes, LATimes, San Francisco Chronicle - and I picked a few articles at random, and I counted the number of times the phrase "gay marriage" appeared vs the number of times "marriage equality" appeared. Gay Marriage wins by margins as high as 10-to-1. As often as not, "marriage equality" never popped up at all.
Language matters. Words have meaning. When we say a certain thing in a certain way and over a certain period of time, it sticks.
So if "The Media" carries such a strong left-leaning bias, why is the use of "conservative phrasing" so dominant?
Sep 16, 2014
Sep 15, 2014
Sep 14, 2014
Today's Toons
According to the way they taught it way back when I was trying to be in college, the proper order of things is: Work first, then Value, and then Capital.
We've been very busily rearranging the order to put Capital on top, while nobody making the decisions seems to care much about doing the actual work or about producing anything of real value outside of the superficial sparkle of "The Brand" or the Executive Committee's Stock Options. To my way of thinking, this is basically fucking with the very laws of nature - and eventually, Nature's gonna fuck you right back.
A coupla good thinkings as to current conditions here in USAmerica, Inc:
We've been very busily rearranging the order to put Capital on top, while nobody making the decisions seems to care much about doing the actual work or about producing anything of real value outside of the superficial sparkle of "The Brand" or the Executive Committee's Stock Options. To my way of thinking, this is basically fucking with the very laws of nature - and eventually, Nature's gonna fuck you right back.
A coupla good thinkings as to current conditions here in USAmerica, Inc:
Sep 13, 2014
Meet The New Boss
George The Shrub's Excellent Adventure hasn't had quite the results he told us we could count on.
So, meet the new Saddam, same as the old Saddam. Or maybe, meet the new Ayatollah, same as the old Ayatollah(?)
From The Week:
So, meet the new Saddam, same as the old Saddam. Or maybe, meet the new Ayatollah, same as the old Ayatollah(?)
From The Week:
Who is al-Baghdadi?
He's an Islamic scholar, poet, and Sunni extremist who is as much as an enigma to his followers as he is to his enemies. Born Awwad Ibrahim Ali al-Badri al-Samarrai in the central Iraqi city of Samarra, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, 43, is believed to have started his career as a preacher of Salafism, a hard-line form of Sunni Islam, and to have a degree in history and a doctorate in sharia law. After the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, he led a Sunni militant group that fought against American troops. Captured by U.S. forces in 2005, he was held for four years at Camp Bucca, a U.S. military prison. There, he met several al Qaeda commanders. In 2009, the U.S. turned al-Baghdadi over to Iraqi authorities as part of a Bush administration agreement with the Iraqis. Col. Ken King, who oversaw Camp Bucca, recalls al-Baghdadi taunting his American captors at the time, "I'll see you guys in New York." He was quickly released by the Iraqis and used his prison contacts to take over an al Qaeda–aligned militant group, the Islamic State of Iraq. Shortly after, he began an offensive to seize territory.
Sep 12, 2014
Olbermann
Just in case you've grown unfamiliar with such things because of our long national drought - what Keith just did there - that's a little thing us oldsters used call Journalism.
Linda Cohn (also at ESPN) has been guilty of unapologetically committing Acts of Reportage as well. I just can't find any good clips of her work on the Ray Rice thing right now.
Today In Connecting Dots
From The Boston Globe, via Charlie Pierce:
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — A Utah elementary school teacher who was carrying a concealed firearm at school accidentally shot herself in the leg when the weapon discharged in a faculty bathroom shortly before classes started Thursday morning, officials said.And now the dots part (well, kinda anyway) from Army Times:
The teacher at Westbrook Elementary School, in the Salt Lake City suburb of Taylorsville, was severely injured when the bullet entered and exited her leg, and she was rushed to a hospital, Granite School District spokesman Ben Horsley said. She was in good condition and alert at the hospital by midmorning, Horsley said.
Outside of the war zone, active-duty troops are dying by firearms at a rate 62 percent higher than a decade ago and are injured by firearms at three times the rate they were in 2002, according to a Defense Department report.So lemme see if I've got this straight. The Army - the people who are really well-trained and who actually know what the fuck they're doing when it comes to weapons - the US-fucking-Army is struggling with the problem of injury and death because of firearms, and somehow, we're absolutely sure that putting guns in our schools is the best way to keep everybody SAFE!?!
In a trend that defies the armed services' focus on weapon and range safety, as well as suicide prevention, 4,657 service members were injured by firearms outside of combat from 2002 to 2011, more than one-third, or 1,623, fatally.
In the previous decade, by comparison, the military had 446 deaths from gunshot wounds not related to combat and 1,919 injuries requiring hospitalization, according to a September report from the Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center.
What else has to happen? And at what point in some hoped-for future does our societal psyche stop and say, "What the fuck were we thinking?"
Standards
Allowing somebody else to impose any kind of arbitrary "standards of beauty" on us is at least a little iffy. Buying into the manipulative bullshit of advertising and manufactured opinion, and then remaining apathetic about it is dangerous for a society and too often deadly for individuals.
Just the way you are, ladies. Honest.
Just the way you are, ladies. Honest.
Sep 11, 2014
Today's Toon
You can't kill your way out of your problems. If that was possible, we wouldn't still be arguing over the death penalty; there would be no dissent in places like Iran; and people would be naming their babies after assholes like Hitler and Stalin and Pol Pot. Half a generation from now, what's the likelihood of a Muslim kid growing up in Iraq or Yemen or Afghanistan with the name Barack? I'm not making Obama equivalent to those legendarily monumental piles of bug shit. I wouldn't need to do that even if that was my intent because we should all know by now that those kids are going to get plenty of help to do exactly that.
Never worked before for anybody else - not gonna work now for us.
But hey - let's just pretend this is what American Exceptionalism is all about - we do everything better.
Just remember this one thing: People have been out to conquer the world for the better part of a thousand centuries, but somehow, the world remains undefeated.
Today's Today
Nobody gets over something like 9-11, but we all have to figure out how to get past it.
Sep 10, 2014
Sep 9, 2014
Where's The Line?
Finally - somebody gets it enough to say it. There's a line; and the conversation we have to start insisting on having is all about trying to figure out where the line should be drawn.
There are some things that fit well into a Binary Decision Matrix. For some things, it really is a question of Either/Or. Nobody has to convince anybody these things are all bad and should be absolutely and forever illegal - things like Rape, Murder, Reality TV shows. You know what I'm talkin' about.
But for most of the big ones - Guns, Abortion, Taxation, etc etc etc - the ones that generate all the heat and practically no light, there's lotsa room between one extreme and the other; the place where that horrible-est of all horrible-ness; the thing called COMPROMISE hasta happen.
C'mon, guys. We need to stop feeding the Trolls of the Manufactured Controversy Industry and figure some of this shit out.
There are some things that fit well into a Binary Decision Matrix. For some things, it really is a question of Either/Or. Nobody has to convince anybody these things are all bad and should be absolutely and forever illegal - things like Rape, Murder, Reality TV shows. You know what I'm talkin' about.
But for most of the big ones - Guns, Abortion, Taxation, etc etc etc - the ones that generate all the heat and practically no light, there's lotsa room between one extreme and the other; the place where that horrible-est of all horrible-ness; the thing called COMPROMISE hasta happen.
C'mon, guys. We need to stop feeding the Trolls of the Manufactured Controversy Industry and figure some of this shit out.
Sep 8, 2014
Mr Oliver, If You Please
"For-Profit Education" is easily the best way for anybody totally devoid of honor to funnel public dollars into private coffers.
Wanna know what kills Capitalism? Capitalists who are unworthy of the name, masquerading as honest entrepreneurs; demonstrating by their example that it's all but impossible to think anybody could earn a living doing anything but stealing.
Here's the letter Oliver mentions:
To Whom It May Concern:
I am [NAME HERE], a human being with [DESCRIBE AT LEAST SOME LEVEL OF SENSE] who is sick of your [SYNONYM FOR BULLSHIT]
Whatever the benefits of for-profit-schools, your trade group is protecting some of the worst actors, and [ADDITIONAL INSULTS]. [IDEAS FOR PLACES TO CRAM THIS LETTER ONCE ROLLED UP]. [PROPOSALS FOR HUMAN WASTE PRODUCTS TO BE EATEN].
Thank you for your time,
[NAME HERE AGAIN]
Send it to: APSCU@apscu.org
Wanna know what kills Capitalism? Capitalists who are unworthy of the name, masquerading as honest entrepreneurs; demonstrating by their example that it's all but impossible to think anybody could earn a living doing anything but stealing.
Here's the letter Oliver mentions:
To Whom It May Concern:
I am [NAME HERE], a human being with [DESCRIBE AT LEAST SOME LEVEL OF SENSE] who is sick of your [SYNONYM FOR BULLSHIT]
Whatever the benefits of for-profit-schools, your trade group is protecting some of the worst actors, and [ADDITIONAL INSULTS]. [IDEAS FOR PLACES TO CRAM THIS LETTER ONCE ROLLED UP]. [PROPOSALS FOR HUMAN WASTE PRODUCTS TO BE EATEN].
Thank you for your time,
[NAME HERE AGAIN]
Send it to: APSCU@apscu.org
Sep 7, 2014
Welcome To The Jungle
They've always said that if we de-regulate, we'll get more competition and better pricing because of that competition. It should seem pretty obvious by now that it's complete bullshit.
How long do we need to be bent over and fucked with our pants on before we get up on our hind legs and demand to be treated better?
hat tip = FB friend VWE
Sep 6, 2014
Sep 5, 2014
One "Simple" Step
The New York Daily News has announced that it won't use the word "Redskins" anymore in its coverage of the NFL's Washington franchise.
Good on 'em. And just in case you need some convincing, let's run this test: You and I will take a little trip to some tribe-owned resort and/or casino and/or anywhere else that might have Native American clients or employees - maybe we could drop in on a cop shop or a sheriff's department in northwestern New Mexico or southern Montana. Anyway, once we're inside, you go ahead and find some folks with dark hair and darkish skin and "that Indian look"; you stand face to face and you address them thusly: " Hey, Redskin - how ya doin'?" --or-- "Yo, Redskin, can we get a coupla beers over here?" --or-- "Wow, I didn't know so many Redskins were working for the police department."
You look 'em square in the eye and you say it loud and with all your usual bullshit I'm-no-racist conviction. You try that a good half dozen times with half a dozen people, and if nobody either verbally slaps you down or literally kicks you in the nuts, then I'm with you and I'll fight your fight against your Political Correctness Phantom Demons.
But if it turns out otherwise (and if we manage to survive the encounters), then you get to drag your dumbfuck attitudes a little closer to this end of last century and stop using that stoopid shitty word.
The Daily News publishes its annual, best-in-the-city National Football League preview on Thursday with one deliberate omission — the Washington franchise appears without the name Redskins.
Similarly, its logo depicting a feathered Native American has been replaced with an image that uses the team’s burgundy and gold colors to key readers to stories, columns and statistics relating to Washington.
Henceforth, in The News’ sports coverage, the team that has been known as the Redskins since 1933 will simply be called Washington.
Enormously popular and deeply ingrained in sporting culture, the Redskins name is a throwback to a vanished era of perniciously casual racial attitudes. No new franchise would consider adopting a name based on pigmentation — Whiteskins, Blackskins, Yellowskins or Redskins — today. The time has come to leave the word behind.
Good on 'em. And just in case you need some convincing, let's run this test: You and I will take a little trip to some tribe-owned resort and/or casino and/or anywhere else that might have Native American clients or employees - maybe we could drop in on a cop shop or a sheriff's department in northwestern New Mexico or southern Montana. Anyway, once we're inside, you go ahead and find some folks with dark hair and darkish skin and "that Indian look"; you stand face to face and you address them thusly: " Hey, Redskin - how ya doin'?" --or-- "Yo, Redskin, can we get a coupla beers over here?" --or-- "Wow, I didn't know so many Redskins were working for the police department."
You look 'em square in the eye and you say it loud and with all your usual bullshit I'm-no-racist conviction. You try that a good half dozen times with half a dozen people, and if nobody either verbally slaps you down or literally kicks you in the nuts, then I'm with you and I'll fight your fight against your Political Correctness Phantom Demons.
But if it turns out otherwise (and if we manage to survive the encounters), then you get to drag your dumbfuck attitudes a little closer to this end of last century and stop using that stoopid shitty word.
A 2-Fer Update
I'm just kinda still following the Ferguson thing, so I'm really glad somebody's keeping an eye on the shit-flingers.
First, this is NOT a picture of Darren Wilson:
It's a picture of a moto-x-er named Jim McNeil who crashed his bike in 2006:
OK - 2nd, again via Little Green Footballs:
First, this is NOT a picture of Darren Wilson:
It's a picture of a moto-x-er named Jim McNeil who crashed his bike in 2006:
OK - 2nd, again via Little Green Footballs:
CLAYTON • As a child, Michael Brown was never found delinquent of the juvenile equivalents of Missouri’s most serious felony charges and was not facing any at the time he died, a court official said Wednesday.Mike Brown is dead for some pretty fucked up reasons. And now we know we can't just comfortably rationalize it away by swallowing the bullshit smear that he was a thug so he prob'ly had it comin' sooner or later anyway, and then pretending we're not racist assholes for thinking that way.
The Post-Dispatch filed a petition Aug. 22 asking a judge in the St. Louis County Family Court to open any juvenile records on Brown, the unarmed 18-year-old shot to death last month by a Ferguson police officer. A conservative blogger from California had separately requested the records be opened.
Police had said earlier that Brown had no adult criminal record.
The petitions went to a hearing Tuesday with St. Louis County Family Court Judge Ellen Levy Siwak, who took the case under advisement.
But disclosures during and after the hearing on Tuesday put to rest claims by blogger Charles C. Johnson and others that Brown was facing a murder charge at the time he was shot to death.
Cynthia Harcourt, a lawyer for St. Louis County Juvenile Officer Kip Seely, noted that some juvenile records and proceedings are open to the public: those that concern crimes that would be Class A or B felonies if a juvenile had been charged as an adult. But there were none for Brown.
Sep 4, 2014
Piling On
The all new Meet The Press - the "news" show formerly known as Dancin' Dave Takes It Hard And Deep From Both Ends Sides - is kinda set to debut pretty soon, and they're announcing the additions of Luke (you-knew-my-dad-so-you-owe-me-something) Russert and Scabrous Joe (The Schmo From That Morning Show) to a production that prob'ly won't be called "UpChuck The Toadie Is Not Here To Tell You The Facts".
Meet The Press hasn't been a news show for quite a while - and that includes the Tim Russert era. To wit:
When your show's big advertisers are Boeing and General Dynamics and Raytheon; and your guest list is always dominated by "The Right", then you're not a news show - you're a soft porn infomercial pimping for an oligarchy. And your little puppet parade has nothing to do with your responsibilities as The 4th Estate in maintaining a healthy democracy.
It's shameful. We deserve better.
hat tip = Crooks and Liars
Meet The Press hasn't been a news show for quite a while - and that includes the Tim Russert era. To wit:
When your show's big advertisers are Boeing and General Dynamics and Raytheon; and your guest list is always dominated by "The Right", then you're not a news show - you're a soft porn infomercial pimping for an oligarchy. And your little puppet parade has nothing to do with your responsibilities as The 4th Estate in maintaining a healthy democracy.
It's shameful. We deserve better.
hat tip = Crooks and Liars
Today's Marketing Genius
From the 70s - of course. Look for them wherever fine novelties and Pet Rocks are sold.
hat tip = Mock Paper Scissors
hat tip = Mock Paper Scissors
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