What They Don't Tell Ya

"They" want us to believe (need us to believe, actually) that this:

...was an integral part of this:

 ...and this:

But it wasn't.

It was staged.  Hard for me to imagine anything sadder...

...except for how the "conservatives" are busy slagging Obama for not going there himself, and/or for not sending some high-profile representative, but c'mon, guys - if he was there, you'd be slagging him for doing another phony photo-op.  Get some new material - you're making this too easy.

hat tip = Little Green Footballs

Trying

Trying not to laugh while trying not to cry while trying not to puke, while trying to figure out how to make sense of these 1st World Problems of Privilege.

Ohio State wins the big game (beat the snot outa the Ducks), and it came as no surprise to anyone when the Traditional Celebratory Riot soon followed.


And so also too, I just can't resist:  When will the moderates of White Middle Class America step up and not only take full responsibility for the actions of their people - but take it upon themselves to eradicate the violent behavior of the Young-Adult-ish Extremists among them?

Today's Irony

NYPD Edition:

What's Next

A gazillion people turned out in Paris for a rally to show support for Charlie Hebdo, and now the magazine is set to pop their latest edition with this cover art:

Way to go, guys.

From The Guardian:

Zineb El Rhazoui, a surviving columnist at Charlie Hebdo magazine who worked on the new issue, said the cover was a call to forgive the terrorists who murdered her colleagues last week, saying she did not feel hate towards Chérif and Saïd Kouachi despite their deadly attack on the magazine, and urged Muslims to accept humour.

“We don’t feel any hate to them. We know that the struggle is not with them as people, but the struggle is with an ideology,” she told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

The two gunmen who launched the attack on the magazine’s offices last Wednesday killed five of France’s top cartoonists, saying that they wanted to avenge the prophet for Charlie Hebdo’s satire of him.

The grieving journalists who survived the murderous assault promised it would be business as usual at the weekly publication.

--and-- 

Asked to explain the magazine’s front cover, which features a cartoon of a crying Muhammad wearing a “Je suis Charlie” badge under the heading “All is forgiven”, Rhazoui said: “We feel that we have to forgive what happened. I think those who have been killed, if they would have been able to have a coffee today with the terrorists and just talk to ask them why have they done this … We feel at the Charlie Hebdo team that we need to forgive.”

So the exercise for a while will be to find as many Radical Islamist websites as possible (harder than I tho't), and post one of Charlie Hebdo's cartoons in the comments section.  

(Is it weird that Googling "islamist assholes" only gets a list of blogs here in the US where all they ever do is hate on Muslims?  Yeah, OK - I don't think it's weird either.  Just checking.)

Which BTW should remind us that this is about pushing back against a shitty ideology, and not about fucking up the everyday people who get bamboozled (or bullied) into going along with a shitty ideology.

Today's Molly

"There is no inverse relationship between freedom and security. Less of one does not lead to more of the other. People with no rights are not safe from terrorist attack.” --Molly Ivins

Quotes from Ms Ivins are almost invariably borderline spectacular - I may have to make this a regular feature.

Hands To Yourself, Rev

This one's been making the rounds lately.



I think maybe we start with whether or not the tough-guy routine is nothing more than standard macho fantasy bullshit.  Probably it is, but in light of recent events, maybe we shouldn't be making that assumption.  

But anyway, if we take it at face value, we need to be asking why your all-powerful god needs you to go around beatin' up on smart-ass teenagers.  That's number one, but second: has the statute of limitations run out on this obvious perpetration of Assault and Battery?  And couldn't we get after this asshole for the commission of a hate crime?

Thirdly - how come these knuckleheads don't realize they're demonstrating to most of us that they're no different from radical religionists all over the world (and all throughout history) who're more than a little willing to attack and to brutalize and to murder anybody daring to mock certain fairy tales?

hat tip = Raw Story

The Greatest Lessons

...are the ones you don't remember learning.



hat tip = Addicting Info

Crumb

Is It God?

No.  But when something like this pops up, it's easier to understand how some of us insist on thinking that way.

I guess I just don't see how stopping at god is somehow more wondrous than our ability to push a little bit past that point to where we can actually figure out how such an amazing thing can happen.

Like the man said - we are stardust.  We are made of the same stuff everything else in the universe is made of.  We are the cosmos trying to know itself.

More info at UPI.

Zimmerman III

...or IV, or whatever we're up to now.  It's hard to keep track.  I guess I'm wondering when they'll finally get tired of fucking around with this guy and just Cop-Murder him, and I'm not advocating for the cops to punch this asshole's ticket BTW, but isn't that kinda what we do now?  We have a Criminal Justice System that doesn't work for shit, and an awful lot of our cops have come out of a military where the basic policy is Kill Your Way To A Peaceful Resolution - what're we waiting for?

Or maybe he's still alive because he's not anonymous enough to be disposed of discreetly.  Celebrity has its privileges here in USAmerica Inc.

CNN:

George Zimmerman -- the man acquitted by a Florida jury over the death of Trayvon Martin -- was arrested Friday in Florida on suspicion of domestic violence with a weapon, local authorities said.

Zimmerman, 31, was arrested by police in Lake Mary around 10 p.m. and booked into the John E. Polk Correctional Facility, according to that facility's website.

In addition to domestic violence, Zimmerman faces a charge of aggravated assault, reports the Seminole County Sheriff's Office, which operates the Polk Correctional Facility.

And one more little thing - battalions of Daddy State Chicken Chokers spent buttloads of time and energy defending George Zimmerman and slagging Trayvon Martin; when might we expect them to step up and tell us they got that one wrong?

The Real Contagion

From Brother Charles at Esquire:

There is a very sad story in Cleveland concerning what happens when the TV lights dim, and when one 24-hour news-cycle crisis abates and another one erupts somewhere else.

You may recall that, back when Ebola was going to kill us all in our beds because President Barack Nkrumah-Kenyatta wanted all of western civilization to start spitting up its own entrails, a 29-year-old nurse named Amber Vinson contracted the disease and, before she was aware of that fact, flew to Cleveland, and then drove to Akron, for a wedding. She shopped for a dress at a place in Akron called Coming Attractions. Then, after the wedding, she flew back to Dallas, where she became symptomatic both of Ebola infection and of cable-news hysteria. The sad punchline is that, because of the publicity around Vinson's visit, and the subsequent mindless terror, Coming Attractions announced it was going out of business.

People stopped patronizing a store where their favorite Nightmare Du Jour went shopping - because they were afraid of getting the dread disease - never stopping to think that maybe they weren't in any real danger since the owners/employees of the store - the people who were there all day every day - weren't fucking sick.

But hey - we live in a time when it's important to be oblivious to having been issued your opinions by Corporate News, and that those opinions must never be examined in the light of actual evidence.

And so, unfortunately, once again, the clear-eyed pragmatic capitalist rubes fail to reach the obvious conclusion that being stoopid is bad for business.

Too Close For Comfort

Makes me wonder if "witnesses" and the sketch artist are just having us on a bit, or if we've arrived at the point where the Radical Assholes are feeling so immune to the law that they can do anything they want, knowing they can hide behind a veil of notoriety - claiming Political Witch Hunt if anybody decides to go after 'em.

(tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors is a fucking genius)

Today's Quote

"If your concerns about violence are limited to property damage and looting, and you have never shed two tears for the history of institutional violence, murder, colonialism, segregation, lynching, genocide and police brutality against peoples of color, your words mean nothing; they mean less than nothing. Your outrage, in such a case is grotesque, an inversion of morality so putrescent as to call into question your capacity for real feeling at all. So long as violence from below is condemned while violence from above is ignored, you can bet that the former will continue–and however unfortunate that may be, it is surely predictable. If you’d like the former to cease, put an end to the latter, and then I promise you, it will."  --Tim Wise

DoJ Stats from 2010:

Federal Grand Jury Presentations = 162,000

Federal Grand Jury Indictments = 161,989

(that's better'n 99%)

Cases of cops shooting people presented to a grand jury = 81

Number of cops indicted by a grand jury = 1

(that's a shade over 1%)

Somethin' ain't jake here.

(hat tip = Democratic Underground)

Today's Pix

Love The Cops

..or they'll go all PMS on yer ass.

A Short Video

Let The OCD Wash Over Me

I Am Charlie

Today's Religious Fanatics

Y'know, when I look at Islam in terms of maturity, I think it's more or less fair to say they're at about the same stage of development now as the Christianists were at in about the 14th century.  So really, it just happens to be the Islamists' turn to be kinda nutty right now.  I'm sure we'll be getting back to raping 10-year-old alter boys, and dropping bombs on imprisoned civilians, and shooting certain OB/GYNs in no time at all - be patient.

And I realize I'm doing this in a cheap and superficial way, but then again, I'm not the one flying airplanes into buildings and running around in some desert shithole playing Ali Baba and the 40 Fuck Wads, and then pretending I'm doing it all because I'm so deeply devoted to showing god's love for his children.

So I just wanna say first that I stand with anybody willing to go out on a limb to point out how monumentally stoopid all this religious crap is.

And second: 

Fuck you guys.  Come and get me.  Assholes.

It Just Gets Weirderer

...and weirderer and weirderer.



I gotta wonder why the producers at DumFux News decided to put Duke on their air when it seems like they just wanted O'Reilly to pimp the usual False Equivalence crapola.  It did in fact come up, but it was kinda lost in the the clutter of Duke's flailing rants about Jewish Media and Jewish Bankers and Wars for Israel etc.  And pimping his book? WTF was that about?

Also too, I'm thinking O'Reilly wanted to have Duke on to show everybody what they ought not to be doing and/or saying, in order to re-assert the GOP Establishment thing(?), but that doesn't make a lot of sense either because Duke ends up saying very much the same thing DumFux News has been saying, and as convinced as I am about how The Rubes will swallow anything Rupert feeds 'em, it's still gotta be possible to push their credulity a little too far - doesn't it(?)

Anyway, that bit was as close to being a complete disaster as you can get, and it reaffirms for me what driftglass has been saying for a good long time, which is that the GOP is getting  what the GOP has been wishing for.

I guess I'm thinking somebody's trying to figure out the next few moves as The Southern Strategy continues to evolve.  Repubs have to come up with ways to go on rousing the rabble without scaring too many more "regular folk".  It's almost like they're finally realizing their message has actually morphed into something like, "Yeah, the GOP really is being run by a buncha racist assholes, but when ya stop to think about it, you're a racist asshole too because you've agreed with enough of what we've been saying all along to keep voting for us - so fuck it - let's just admit we're all racist assholes and we can all be racist assholes together."

One last thing - Duke has "threatened" to make public his "associations" with other prominent Politicos if they don't lay off his buddy Scalise.  Now, if it's a bad thing to reveal those associations, doesn't that mean David Duke is a bad guy? And doesn't that also mean David Duke is admitting he's a bad guy?  Or is David Duke suddenly the good guy because he's threatening to reveal the true ugliness of it all?

All these little flips and turns make my head hurt.

Today's Toon

Today's Handy Tip

On how to be a good Librul:

1) Believe as many true things as possible.

2) Don't believe as many false things as possible.

3) Learn how to tell the fucking difference.

Management thanks you - please go back to what you were doing.

Glancing Back

Like I said - good to step off the trolley once in a while to check on what's gone before.

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,The Daily Show on Facebook,Daily Show Video Archive

hat tip = Mock Paper Scissors

I wonder if some folks who always say they vote Repub because they trust the GOP intend to re-evaluate their choices and make different decisions next time.

Yeah, I know - prob'ly not.

Shut up.

Thinking randomly:

Sometimes I wonder if it's really just a matter of conditioning - like I'm expecting somebody who grew up a Mets fan to make a sudden switch to the Yankees.

Brand Loyalty is a real thing and it can be pretty fierce.

The reversal of political poles does happen, but it takes a ridiculously long time.  Strom Thurmond split from the Dems in 1948, but he didn't flip completely and become a Republican until 1964.

The knowledge of actual historical fact does not play a big role in "conservative" politics these days.

Saturday Night Tunage

Unchain My Heart --Joe Cocker





Knock On Wood (cover) --Eric Clapton





Blues As Blues Can Get --Delbert McClinton





Feelin' Alright (cover) --Joe Cocker





Beautifully Broken --Government Mule





Minute By Minute --Doobie Brothers





Meet Me Where They Play The Blues (cover) --Mary Caughlan

My Song

Back when he was still doin' some pretty good work - before the suits got hold of him.

The Pilgrim, Chapter 33 --Kris Kristofferson

Another'n

Pittsburgh's police chief McLay is catching some heat for this:

Coupla things:

First, are "conservatives" pissed off because they think they own the cops' political affiliations?  Are cops always and only supposed to be lined up perfectly with the Proto-Fascist wingnuts in the GOP?  And if that's the case, then doesn't that put up a perfect reflection of the Political Correctness that "conservatives" are always bitchin' about?

Second, this guy is - in absolutely no way at all - making any kind of blanket statement to say all cops in Pittsburgh are racists.  Sweeping generalizations are very much the hallmark of The Right; not so much for anybody anywhere else on the political spectrum.

So - really - if you're totally convinced this guy is calling you a racist asshole when he is so obviously not calling you a racist asshole, then you just might be on the verge of recognizing yourself as a racist asshole.