If It's Friday

...this must be The Professional Left.

d r i f t g l a s s

Blue Gal

Donate the cost of one lousy latté

Today's Unsociable Media

So I had a brief encounter with a coupla Facebook friends today.

It starts out OK - the guy posting it was trying (I tho't) to call attention to the fact that here in USAmerica Inc, the government (meaning us) shouldn't be trying to dictate what a woman has to wear in order to be in line with some bullshit arbitrary standard according to some bullshit arbitrary theocrat's taste or style sensibilities, or whatever it is he deems appropriate as far as them gals bein' seen in public.

But then it degenerates into this shitty little Mean-Girls-High-School-Fuck-Around-Festival-Of-Shaming, followed closely by a doubling down of rationalizations that seem to indicate an almost total lack of self-awareness (maybe even deliberately so), and I'm left to cogitate over how easy it is to get carried along with doing exactly the opposite of what it seems you were trying to do in the first place(?)

It is a wonderment - even tho' I've been guilty of riding that donkey too.  But y'know what?  Fuck that.  You're supposed to have learned a few things by the time you hit - oh, I dunno - sixty-fucking-years-old!

Here's the thing, kids:  Shaming somebody for anything having to do with their condition as a human being is not OK.  Do you really hold yourself in such high regard? Or is it that your own self-worth is so lousy you have to go out of your way to shit on somebody else to make yourself feel - what - funny, clever, hip, or just better somehow?  Any way you cut it, Skeezix, those are your problems - and while I'm happy to do what I can to help you deal with 'em, don't expect me to carry 'em around for you, while you look for a convenient victim to stomp on.

In the end - you pull that shit - you're just a fuckin' bully.

Well said, Girl In Yoga Pants.  Well said indeed.

Today's Artsy Thingie

Al Farrow

Sculptor Al Farrow has had numerous solo exhibitions since 1970, and is currently represented by Catharine Clark Gallery in San Francisco. His work has been in group shows at the Oakland Art Gallery, the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, Falkirk Cultural Center in Marin, the San Francisco Art Institute, and the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, among many others. He has over 20 years of bronze casting experience. His work is in many important public and private collections around the world, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the di Rosa Preserve in Napa, and other collections in New York, Germany, Italy, and Hong Kong.

Thursday Tunes

Shine --Donavon Frankenreiter

One / Let It Be (cover mash up) --Boyce Avenue

Let's Stay Together (cover) --Obadiah Parker

12:34 --Calum Graham & Don Ross

Seen It All Before --Amos Lee

Two Coins --Dispatch

Diamonds On The Inside --Ben Harper

Happy Birthday, Charles

 

The Other Awards Season

It's time once again to begin the celebration of all that isn't DumFux News.

Columbia University's DuPont Awards featured PBS and WGBH-Boston and The Seattle Times and several other joints where they look for stuff that matters and try to tell us what's going on.  Pretty much what you'd expect, because in spite of people like me who sit here and bitch about Press Poodles most of the day, it appears there may still be some journalisming going on up in here.

Conspicuous among the winners is Netflix - they put out a feature length documentary about Virunga National Park in Congo and the fight to protect a World Heritage Site from the various assholes who want nothing but power and money.

And of course, conspicuously absent (again) is DumFux News - for the 19th year in a row - which means their record remains unblemished at Oh-fer-19.  Zero. Zip. Zilch.  Nuthin'.  For their entire existence, starting in 1996, they just haven't been able to get over the hump on that whole journalism thing at all.

Things could change of course.  The year is young and filled with possiblities.  But really - what're the odds?

And it's not like there aren't opportunities.

James Beard Foundation (the writer, not the chef)
Anthony Shadid
Polk
Peabody
IWMF (fat chance, Roger)
SPJ
Gannett Foundation
Pulitzer
Pulliam
ASME
Hearst Foundation
(seems like that one oughta be right up Fox's alley seeing as how they share such a rich and proud tradition of war pimping - but anyhoo)

It's a much longer list than that.  I only put up the ones I've heard anything about. And when you add in all the regional outfits - eg: Ancil Payne, Keystone Press; plus all the niche subject stuff like Science and Economics and Foreign Policy, etc - it ain't long before you get a list of awards that makes it seem like the pizza party at the end of your kid's 3rd grade soccer season when everybody gets a trophy no matter what.  

But there's DumFux News - No trophy.  No Certificate of Participation.  No Honorable Mention.  Just some cardboard franchise pizza that's high on calories and low on actual food.  Seems fitting somehow.

I get the feeling they're not really trying.

Some Tuneroonies

World Of Wonders --Bruce Cockburn

Hills Of Morning --Bruce Cockburn

No Short Cuts --Heather Maloney

Oh Hope My Tired Friend --Heather Maloney

eTown Channel on YouTube

eTown Radio on the web

AudioTree on YouTube

AudiotreeTV on the web

hat tip = Little Green Footballs

Today's Cultural Critique

Jim Jefferies talking guns:

hat tip = Crooks & Liars

Today In Stoopid

Let's take a quick look at one of the Libertarians' favorite phony notions:  "Spontaneous Order".

Here's John Stossel conducting a small group fap with Tucker Carlson (via David Edwards at Raw Story):

Fox Business host John Stossel on Sunday asserted that most government was unnecessary because companies like Walmart would spontaneously provide assistance to disaster victims “in many more ways” than the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) could.

“Ever feel like government makes too many plans that come to naught?” Fox News host Tucker Carlson told Stossel during a segment on Fox & Friends. “It’s kind of a bold idea. You’re saying that not every human activity needs to be planned from above. Some things spontaneously work themselves out pretty well.”

According to Stossel, Americans would be better off with less government and more “spontaneous order,” a term coined by economist Friedrich Hayek which states that order will naturally emerge from chaos.

Edwards goes on to point out that "Spontaneous Order" didn't work out so well in Iraq and Libya (and I'll add Afghanistan and Syria and Crimea and Chile and Argentina and Somalia and Chechnya and and and).

Anyway, it'd be nice if the Dumbass Dems could kinda latch onto some of the old GOP-style rhetoric and just once in a while flip the script by refering to things like Spontaneous Order or Supply Side as "the failed policies of a bygone era..."

And also too - can anybody come up with a better example of the Epitome of Central Planning than God's Will?  How 'bout "The 4-Year Revenue Plan of [insert name of mega-corp here]"?

And also too too - just in case ya missed it, Stossel and Carlson are preaching more of the bullshit Gospel of Privatization.

Today's Quote

"What stuns me the most about contemporary politics is not even that the system has been so badly corrupted by money.  It is that so few people get the connection between their lives and what the Bozos do in Washington and our state capitols...Politics is not a picture on the wall or a television sitcom that you can decide you don't much care for." --Molly Ivins

Today's Pix

What She Said

Actually, what she didn't say.  

The Rev. Lindsay Hardin Freeman began scouring the Bible three years ago to do something that apparently had never been done: the cataloging of every word uttered by every woman in the more than 2,000-year-old holy book.

Meeting in a church library, Freeman and an unlikely research team systematically pored over every Bible chapter, documenting the words on spreadsheets and inserting context and highlights. Week after week. Month after month. Year after year.

The results give surprise insights into the lives of women ranging from Abigail to Zipporah. Eve, for example, may be the Bible’s most well-known woman, but she utters only 74 words. Yet an unnamed “Shulamite woman” in the Song of Solomon holds forth with 1,425.

Here's a brief recap of the scorecard for ya:

Fewer than 100 woman say anything at all in the bible.  We get to know the names of fewer than 50 of those women.  And while there're about one-million-one-hundred-thousand words total in the bible, those very few women speak fewer than fourteen-thousand of those 1.1 million words.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but how is it that roughly 50% of the human beings on the planet account for less than 1.3% of the words in the "most important book in the entire history of the fucking world"?

Please explain to me how the bible isn't mostly horseshit.

hat tip = HuffPo

Today's Toon

A rather simple and elegant lesson about the Law of Unintended Consequences:

Following Up

So I went to Mark Warner's website and left a message about how I needed to see him blah blah - going along with my idea to give him an excuse to duck out on Netanyahu next month (see my post from earlier today), and this is what I got back from a guy who made his fortune in the "Communications Technology" bidness:

We are so very fucked.

Lend 'Em A Hand

From National Journal:

There will be no "boycott" of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's speech before Congress next month, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said Thursday.

But while she downplayed reports of an organized protest, she suggested some lawmakers might just be too busy to attend. And at least two Democrats have already decided they won't be on hand.

"I don't think anybody should use the word 'boycott,'" Pelosi said in her weekly press conference. "When these heads of state come, people are here doing their work, they're trying to pass legislation, they're meeting with their constituents and the rest. It's not a high-priority item for them."

Pelosi's pretty cagey.  This is a wink-wink-nudge-nudge-say-no-more proposition, and here's what I think we can do to help out:

Call all three of your Congress Critters and insist that you have an urgent matter requiring their attention; that you don't feel comfortable discussing it with a staffer; and that you can only make time for a visit on the exact date and at the exact time of Netan-fuckin'-yahu's address to the joint session.

Most of them will blow you off - Repubs especially have shown a particular affinity for turning their backs on us if there's a good grandstanding opportunity at hand - but we'll be giving the others some cover if they decide to stay away (ie: constituent service is still supposedly a thing).

And here's the plum - by calling the Repubs and giving them a chance to rebuff your requests, you have some nice advertising fodder for the 2016 election cycle.  

Kinda like this: 
"I called [insert Congress Critter's name here] regarding [insert urgent thingie here], but I guess hearing Uncle Bibi's sales pitch about sending more American kids to get all fucked up in some desert shithole was more important to him."

You're welcome.  Limber up, be creative and let the shit fly.

"One" More Time

I can almost say that some of this Anti-Vax bullshit is getting to be kinda fun.

As it turns out, in a "free society", we've made it pretty hard to mandate certain health-related issues.  There're loopholes in some of the laws (I know - surprising, ain't it?) and creative ways of using other laws that make it all but impossible to enforce any kind of Anti-Dumb-Fuck Policy like "get your stoopid ass vaccinated because I don't need a smug and disease-carrying-fart-smellin'-over-confident-and-under-thinkin' twat waffle like you fuckin' up my little part of the world".

So, anyway - we have to go on trying to talk sense to these jag-offs, but we should also take a shot at moving them by way of social pressure.  Simply put, we take some of the bullying tactics that so many overprivileged yahoos get away with, and turn it around on them.

hat tip = Democratic Underground

Un-Vaccinated = Unclean

Keep your uwashed filth away from my kids

You see yourself as a Libertarian Hero -

the rest of us see you as that Pigpen kid in the Charlie Brown cartoons.

Your right to refuse vaccination gives me the right to chain you down in the basement, feed you chicken scraps, and throw shit at your head for fun.

New Mr Deity

Be sure to stick around for the "ad" at the end.

And check out the full set of Mr Deity videos at mrdeity.com

Friday Tunage

Inner City Blues --Marvin Gaye

On The Border --Eagles

Come Together (studio) --Beatles

The End Is Not In Sight --Amazing Rhythm Aces

Send Me Dead Flowers --Rolling Stones

Darker Side --Johnny Lang

You're Only Lonely (cover) --JD Souther

Today's Playing For Change

Bob Marley's Get Up Stand

See more on YouTube

Other People's Immunity

...sounds a lot like 'other people's money', don't it?

As long as I can count on all those rubes to follow along blindly and get their shots like the sheeple they are, then I can skip it and still be cool because I'm special and I don't have to do what you say because you're not the boss of me.

The whole point is to grab all the benefits for myself (in this case Herd Immunity), and get everybody else to take the "risks" (which are ridiculously tiny, but pumped up by useful idiots in order to distract the rubes from the fact that I'm fuckin' 'em with their pants on in a thousand other ways that have not-one-fucking-thing to do with vaccinations).

That's how we do it here in USAmerica Inc.

I'm hard-pressed to come up with anything that could be a better example of Over-Privileged Ass-Hatted Self-Serving Fuckery.


yeah, yeah, I said I wanted to stop with the Anti-Vax thing.  But sometimes I think of something I shoulda thunk up before and I have to circle back.  Besides - this shit's free, remember?

Dearest Anti-Vaxxers 3

I'm hoping this is my last go-round on the Anti-Vax thing, but I had to put this one up because there're points here that just sound really solid to me.

From The Skeptical OB (Dr Amy Tuteur):

We told them that it was only a matter of time before a childhood disease that had nearly been eliminated from the US would come roaring back if they failed to vaccinate their children. And that’s precisely what has happened. Measles has come roaring back, but not simply because a child incubating measles visited Disneyland.

Twenty years ago, if the same child had visited Disneyland, the measles would have stopped with him or her. Everyone else was protected — not because everyone was vaccinated — but because of herd immunity. When a high enough proportion of the population is vaccinated, the disease simply can’t spread because the odds of one unvaccinated person coming in contact with another are very low.

Of course, we told them that. We patiently explained herd immunity, debunked claims of an association between vaccines and autism, demolished accusations of “toxins” in vaccines, but they didn’t listen. Why? Because we thought the problem was that anti-vax parents didn’t understand science. That’s undoubtedly true, but the anti-vax movement is NOT about science and never was.

 Her contention is that these are the driving factors:

1. Privilege
2. Unreflective Defiance of Authority
3. The Need to Feel Empowered

Always looking for connections, I can take this:

First, it explains why efforts to educate anti-vax parents about the science of immunology has been such a spectacular failure. It is not, and has never been, about the science.

Put it together with this: 

We need to highlight the fact that unreflective defiance is just the flip side of unreflective acceptance. There’s nothing praiseworthy about it. Only teenagers think that refusing to do what authority figures recommend marks them as independent. Adults know that doing the exact opposite of what authority figures recommend is a sign of immaturity, not deliberation, and certainly not education.

And suddenly, a lot of the problems with certain parts of our body politic get a little easier to understand.  On just about any topic - Climate Change, ObamaCare, Public Schools, Poverty, Crime, Drugs - it's not about the facts; it's about how some people insist on believing they know as much about it as the people who actually know something about it, simply because they feel entitled to believe they know.

People are not just choosing to be ignorant; they're choosing to be mis-informed.  

They're making conscious decisions to be wrong.

We are so fucked.

(hat tip = FB friend VWE)

Today's Podcast

From Sam Harris - on "a culture of psychotic and psychopathic children" (he's referring to Islam as Ideology)

Dearest Anti-Vaxxers 2

Another little love note to our great good friends.

(click on the pic to embiggen)

Today's John Oliver

Keynote: Preventing Cable Company Fuckery

And it worked - kinda:

This Thursday, FCC Chair Tom Wheeler will announce that under Title II, broadband companies will be regulated as utilities. Real progress, and we should be grateful to Wheeler and President Obama for listening to the public as we made our wishes known.

It's not the same as putting rules in place that make it illegal to create tiered pricing structures, but at least it gives average jokers like me and you a way to verbally assault the Suits and the Nickle Humpers as they proceed to ease their bullshit ownership paradigm into place.

Stay after 'em.

hat tip = Crooks & Liars

The Prophet Charlie Pierce

I posted something a while back that said I wanted to hear more from Jim Webb.  I haven't completely changed my mind on that one, but I'll say straight out this ain't what nobody needs to hear nobody say no how.  

"I think they could do better with white, working people and I think this last election showed that," Webb said, referencing the 2014 midterms where Republicans took control of the Senate and added more power in the House. "The Democratic Party could do very well to return to its Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Andrew Jackson roots where the focus of the party was making sure that all people who lack a voice in the corridors of power could have one through the elected represented...You are not going to have a situation again where you have 96% of the African American vote turning out for one presidential candidate. ... We need to get back to the principles of the Democratic Party that we are going to give everyone who needs access to the corridors of power that access regardless of any of your antecedents. I think that is a fair concept." --Jim Webb

Take it, Charles:

There is no question that the Democratic party has done a god-awful job of explaining to white working people who's screwing them and why. Most of the people who have tried that have found themselves marginalized, and not always by Republicans, either. Senator Professor Warren is one of the few of them who has managed to explain these matters in such a way that they are both easily understood, and in such a way that she doesn't sound like she's talking down to anyone. And she still has a long push up a dirt road before she moves the political dialogue to the point where white working class voters actually act on what she's saying to them. Sooner or later, it's up to the voters to decide to stop being stupid about their own self-interest, and to stop falling for scams about how the Poors and Browns are the ones stealing all their money.

It's hard to say some of the things Webb is trying to say, and to make it all understandable in a way that prevents about half of the audience from immediately putting buckets on their heads and running around crashing into walls and shit.  

We gotta find candidates who don't just have the guts to say the things that are hard to say; but candidates we can count on to figure out how to say those things in ways that let us understand the core truth while not making us feel threatened or guilty or lied to; and who aren't just pandering to one group or another, trying to manipulate the crowds, etc etc etc.

One of the first things Webb's team has to figure out is that no matter what he says, he's speaking from a position deep inside the Dominant and Over-Privileged power structure.  

So say what you're saying, Mr Webb, but I gotta call that shit strike one - you're not going anywhere if you don't say it way better'n that.

Darwin Implied

I'm not the only one who was left wondering if the the Xtianist Radicals would get their dander up over the Carnival ad yesterday, but Ken Ham's the only one I've heard anybody even refer to.  So OK - maybe we just have to wait a while longer for the obligatory outrage to build(?)  

Addicting Info beat me to the blog.



The problem is that JFK got the facts wrong when he tried to make the biology connection between humans and the sea, so of course that makes the whole Darwin thing just some atheist bullshit.

Addicting Info posted this as a follow up:

Today's SNL

American "culture" is a curious thing - all 'round.

The Amazing Randi

James Randi announced his retirement:

At 86 years of age, I feel that it’s now well time to officially retire, so I’m stepping down from my position with the JREF – the James Randi Educational Foundation.

This doesn’t mean that I’m retiring from my battle against the so-­called psychics, faith healers, paranormalists, and the assorted frauds I’ve encountered in my worldwide wanderings. I’ll in no way relax the critical attention I’ve given to them over the last busy 73 years, I promise you. I’ll still lecture and write, here and abroad – but now on my own time – not on the exhausting schedule that I’ve had these past few years.

Here are some resources to help you create your very own Junior Bunkum Buster Kit:

What's The Harm?

Quack Watch

Pusware QuackCasts

The most important tool in your kit (imo) is the Randi Challenge:

The James Randi Educational Foundation will pay US$1,000,000 (One Million US Dollars) ("The Prize") to any person who demonstrates any psychic, supernatural, or paranormal ability under satisfactory observation. Such demonstration must take place under the rules and limitations described in this document. An applicant can be from or in any part of the world. Gender, race, and educational background are not factors for acceptance. Applicants must be at least 18 years of age and legally able to enter into binding agreements.

Have fun - and let's be skeptical out there.

hat tip = Wonkette

Whoa, Dude

I hope I'm not the only one who thinks it's a tiny bit over the top (or weird, or even creepy) that companies are running TV Ad Trailers - teasers for the ads they plan on running during the Super Bowl.

Youngsterism

Californina is making an effort to raise the age at which it's legal for people to buy tobacco products from 18 to 21.

I remember, way way back in the day, when we were all blabbing about "how it ain't right for  kids to get drafted at 18 and have absolutely no say in electing the slaggards who're sending them off to die in some place they can't even pronounce...".

We got Amendment #26 outa that one.

So let's consider for a minute that raising both the drinking age and the smoking age to 21 is a really good idea.  People's brains aren't terribly well developed until they hit their mid-20s, which is why we should be moving some of those BFD Life Decisions a little further towards that maturity threshold.  (If you can get your kids not to take up cigarettes (eg) before they turn 21 or 22, the chances that they'll stay non-smokers for life go up something like 300 Jillion percent.)

Now, since we're making these changes in order to protect our kids from the evils of nicotine and liquor, how about we take one more step and move the Age of Enlistment up there too.  You're not gonna convince me that joining the US military is somehow safer for the average 18-year-old than just about anything else thay might try - especially since the first 6 months in the military is the period when a ridiculous buttload of kids get introduced to, and then hooked on, all manner of unhealthy habits.  Yes, this happens in college, and yes, it happens to plenty of kids who go to work right out of high school, but the numbers are  higher for those in the military.

Which lands us smack in the middle of the intersection of Obvious and Wise-The-Fuck-Up: not many college freshman and shoe clerks are getting shipped back into Iraq, or off to Afghanistan or whatever Shit-hole-istan is next on our list, so let's acknowledge the fact that just being in uniform is inherently more dangerous than not being in uniform.  And guess what - it's not just more dangerous for the kids; it's more dangerous for everybody to have kids in uniform wandering around with automatic weapons and hand grenades (fucking duh, muthuhfuckuhs).

Or maybe we could just try to be a little more consistent with some of this shit for a change.

Sunday Tunes

Let There Be Love (cover) Laura Fygi

Night Train --Rickie Lee Jones

North Dakota --Lyle Lovett w/Rickie Lee Jones

Early Mornin' Rain (cover) --Eva Cassidy

I Gave My Love A Candle --Bonnine Raitt

Someone To Watch Over Me (cover) --Amy Winehouse

At Last (cover) --Beyonce

Precious --Annie Lenox

I Only Wanna Be With You (cover) --Shelby Lynne

My Opening Farewell (cover) --Alison Krauss