(I was desperately hoping this was some kind of April Fools gag - but alas, Beshear put his name to this crap and sent it to SCOTUS ... and so the search for intelligent life among Republicans continues)
Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear's administration is arguing the state's ban on same-sex marriage isn't discriminatory because it applies to straight people, too.
"Kentucky’s marriage laws treat homosexuals and heterosexuals the same and are facially neutral. Men and women, whether heterosexual or homosexual, are free to marry persons of the opposite sex under Kentucky law, and men and women, whether heterosexual or homosexual, cannot marry persons of the same sex under Kentucky law," the Democratic governor said in a brief filed with the Supreme Court on March 27.
That's what passes for "logical thinking" in the GOP now. So the argument in favor of (eg) the anti-miscegenation laws in the Jim Crow era would be: "the laws against Inter-Racial Marriage are not at all discriminatory because they make it illegal for both whites and blacks to marry outside their race". It seems so easy to identify this Beshear guy as just another dipwad politico pandering to a slice of the voter demographic. My standard complaint is that he needs the rubes to send him their butter-n-egg money on a regular basis, and he needs to count on 'em showing up on election day, so he needs to rile 'em up with some bullshit issue-du-jour that keeps them feeling justified in thinking they have somebody they can spit on (which keeps them too busy to notice what Beshear's bosses are doing to them and everybody else); and that what he can't afford to let happen is for any one slice of the voter demographic to make common cause with certain other slices of the voter demographic, because if we ever really get hip to these divide-and-conquer strategies, these guys are toast. But my main problem now is that it seems like Beshear (eg) isn't simply making cynical calculations on how to stay in power. It's possible he's just not good at the Rhetorical Spin Game, but I'm thinking some of these guys actually believe the shit they say. How does Beshear try to make that point if he's not a true believer? Seriously - we gotta stop electing these assholes. We have to show up and vote every time we get the chance.
Keith makes a great point by stitching the actions of "sports figures" to the politics of their contemporary circumstance. He says you don't get to separate sports-world events from the political environment in which those sports-world events occur.
Here's my fer-instance: If racial segregation wasn't political; if figuring out ways to force the realization of the need for change wasn't political, then how is it that Bear Bryant waited for exactly the right time to invite USC and Sam Cunningham to come to Tuscaloosa and kick Bama's all-white SEC ass on national TV?
Ya gotta be a little careful about drawing parallels between (eg) racism and LGBT discrimination, but when we're talking about equal rights, we're supposed to be talking about everybody being afforded the same rights as everybody else.
If I had any real money - and if there was still something a lot less rare than a Community Orchestra to give it to - I'd give a lot of dough to get something like this going. Teenage Dirtbag (cover) --The Ukulele Orchestra Of Great Britain
No matter what the source, there's just nothing like good tunes played by good players.
Apparently, Mike Pence has been quite surprised and even a little shocked that the reaction to his little Fuck-Them-Uppity-Queers-Anyway law has caused such a stir. I'd really like to see the law as just another political calculation to appease the Right Radicals who got out the vote and put his ass in the governor's chair etc etc etc, but I think he's being fairly genuine here - I think he was actually convinced that what he did was gonna be OK with everybody. And I think he believed it because he's so totally insulated from everything that might in any way run contrary to his preconceptions. Nobody ever says 'no' to this guy, and that's the way he wants it. Pence is like your knuckleheaded brother-in-law or Uncle DumFux who never seeks out any information that might require him to modify his positions, or to rethink any of his opinions on policy. Call it Government By Confirmation Bias, or whatever, but here's the thing, Mikey: when you've got your head up your ass, even if you open your eyes, all you're gonna see is your own shit. hat tip = phantom power at Democratic Underground And I'm still wondering (as well as still waiting for a Press Poodle to step up and ask) - precisely what "religious freedom" has been lost that makes government intervention necessary to restore it?
Guys like Mike Pence just always seem not to understand that laws regarding anybody's rights have to ensure everybody's rights - and it doesn't matter that you didn't think of all the extreme shittiness that follows the logical progression of the effects of the law - you don't get to elevate the rights of your favorite group over the rights of any other group based solely on who they are, Mr Pence. And the fact that you were completely in the dark about that shittiness shows how insular and beholden and captive you are to a radical cadre of Theo-Fascists.
And we're off to the races now.
I hereby do establish my religion - the Church of Our Lady of None Of Your Fuckin' Business, and I do further establish and ordain myself Lord High Inquisitor and Defender Of The Fairytale. I will therefore go forth to impose upon the great unwashed the Holy Admonition according to The Gospel of The Coital Conifer Flower, for it is truly the foundation of faith for all who are stoopid enough to believe as I do - and judging by the current crop of idiot rubes who're more than willing to subscribe to just about any nonsense anybody can imagine as long as it allows them to feel special by slagging people they need to believe are worthy of being beaten down, my coffers will be filled beyond the dreams of Croesus in no time at all.
So here's the thing - my religion requires me to tell Gov Pence to go fuck himself with a pinecone, so the laws against public verbal assault and threatening behavior towards public officials mean nothing. As of this summer, Indiana law requires the cops and the prosecutors to leave me alone and let me scream my silly little profanities at the governor every time I'm in earshot of him, or any of his staffers, or any of the suckers who think this stoopid law was a good idea.
But also, I wanna say it loud and clear to every eligible voter who stayed home on election day; everybody who was eager to sit on their asses while somebody else was out there doing the work of self-government. Ya'll sat there and let this happen, so you can all go fuck yourselves with a pinecone too.
Elizabeth Warren continues to be a great example of what political courage looks like; and what happens when somebody who knows a little something about leadership in a representative democracy stands up and speaks the kind of truth that makes oligarchs very uncomfortable.
(Reuters) - Big Wall Street banks are so upset with U.S. Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren's call for them to be broken up that some have discussed withholding campaign donations to Senate Democrats in symbolic protest, sources familiar with the discussions said.
Representatives from Citigroup, JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America, have met to discuss ways to urge Democrats, including Warren and Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, to soften their party's tone toward Wall Street, sources familiar with the discussions said this week.
Bank officials said the idea of withholding donations was not discussed at a meeting of the four banks in Washington but it has been raised in one-on-one conversations between representatives of some of them. However, there was no agreement on coordinating any action, and each bank is making its own decision, they said.
The amount of money at stake, a maximum of $15,000 per bank, means the gesture is symbolic rather than material.
Moreover, banks' hostility toward Warren, who is not a presidential candidate, will not have a direct impact on the presumed Democratic front runner in the White House race, Hillary Clinton. That's because their fund-raising groups focus on congressional races rather than the presidential election
Still, political strategists say Clinton could struggle to raise money among Wall Street financiers who worry that Democrats are becoming less business friendly.
The bit that I hi-lited in yellow wins this week's Corporate Bullshitter award. A "cap" of $15,000 is window dressing. It's "symbolic rather than material"? Well dip me in shit and call me lonesome - whooda thunk it? When you threaten to take that away from a candidate, it's a signal - it means you'll (prob'ly) be spending hundreds of times that amount on attack ads and mailings and blowjobs for the pimps at AEI so they'll pop up on DumFux News & Meet The Press Poodles to spout warnings about all the horribleness that's just gotta happen if Bad Ol' Perfesser Egghead won't let the Giant Vampire Squid continue sucking the life out of everything we thought we were all supposed to be working for. But the red part's the real kicker. More and more, it's not about who lives in the White House. It's about who owns the US Senate and the Governors' mansions, and the state legislatures and on down the line. So we're busy arguing over the Federal-level shit - where we get to have a president and a coupla dozen high-profile Senators and Representatives in order to maintain the illusion of "self-government" (and that's not bound to last much past the next few cycles if things don't change in a big fuckin' hurry) - while the American Aristocracy is even busier puppeteering the rubes into slashing and burning at the state- local- and municipal levels. And one last item: I know it sounds like I'm railing against all the doom-and-gloom coming from "the right" by railing about doom-and-gloom from what you might see as "the left". If that's how you hear it, then you've internalized all the Middle-Ground bullshit we hear every day from practically every media outlet everywhere, and you must get the fuck over it. The difference is that I'm arguing in favor of the firewalls that have to be in place as a way of preventing the toxic and corrosive effects of having too much power concentrated in too few hands, while the other side is pimping the wholesome goodness of outright authoritarian rule. Get up on your hind legs and make some noise.
Why do we need "outsiders" to make us see these things?
And just how fucked up is the "American Press" when they miss this to the point of it being totally unknown to practically everybody?
How have we managed to forget that allowing government to operate in secret is always the best way to encourage Official Skullduggery? Weren't we supposed to be the exception to all that?
“Republicans approve of the American farmer, but they are willing to
help him go broke. They stand four-square for the American home – but not for
housing. They are strong for labor – but they are stronger for restricting
labor’s rights. They favor minimum wage – the smaller the minimum wage the
better. They endorse educational opportunity for all – but they won’t spend money
for teachers or for schools. They think modern medical care and hospitals are
fine – for people who can afford them. They consider electrical power a great
blessing – but only when the private power companies get their rake-off. They
think the American standard of living is a fine thing – so long as it doesn’t
spread to all the people. And they admire the Government of the United States
so much that they would like to buy it.” --Harry S Truman
I posted this one a while back - and I think I may have tagged it with something like: Gee, the more things change, the more they (the Grifters-On-Parade) stay the same. If I didn't, I should've.
Morality is a rational thing that grows from an understanding of what it takes to live in a world with other people who have exactly the same rights and responsibilities that you have.
Those ISIS fuck wads have a god-given morality. Jim Jones had a god-given morality. David Koresh had a god-given morality. Jephthah had a god-given morality that led him to burn his daughter alive as a way of sucking up to that god.
I don't have a nice easy 10-word bumper sticker solution for the problems of ethics and morality, and it should be pretty obvious by now that we're not getting anywhere just listening to the voices in our heads and consulting with imaginary friends that turn out to be nuthin' but brainwave activity in our right temporal lobes.
So let's start fresh with something like this:
It takes a buncha work and a lotta thought, but ya gotta figure out how to live your life without needing your mommy or a cop or Jesus looking over your shoulder all the fucking time.
I'm not a big Diane Feinstein fan, but when she earns cookies, I gotta give her cookies.
The meek-n-mild Appeal To Emotion by begging to be allowed to win just one after losing so many for so long ain't gonna cut much, but even tho' it's not a great argument, she kinda makes it stick by stealing the "deeply-held principle" angle. Not a bad turnaround.
So OK - but here's what I'd really love to see (shit, I'd be glued to C-SPAN all day if I tho't this'd pop up once in a while):
CORNYN: Why shouldn't the law take exception to paying for abortions with tax dollars?
FEINSTEIN: This isn't about your objections to using tax dollars in a way you find inappropriate - that's just a quickie handjob for a buncha rubes who think your "opposition to abortion" is actually a solid campaign promise instead of the Contribution Gravy Train we've all been riding for as long as anybody can even remember. Look, I know you're not such a bad guy, but on this one thing, within this narrow focus, here it is: Fuck you - keep your fairy-tale religions out of this government, and keep your government out of my granddaughter's uterus. Now, how 'bout we stop fuckin' around like this and let's get somethin' done for a fuckin' change?
I'll be emailing this post to my congress critters. Feel free to do the same.
MSNBC host, and “lucky idiot” by his own admission, Blake Zeff gave the ending rant on today’s “the Cycle” show, and he used the occasion to whine that it wasn’t fair for him and his wife to have to pay back the $170,000 in student loan debt they racked up.
So the bank is just supposed to forget that they made the decision to spend money on an education that wouldn’t pay for itself? Or perhaps he wants the American taxpayer to foot the bill. Does anyone actually think banks will continue to loan out money for student loans if they can never get it paid back?
If we want to have a serious discussion on student loans, that’s great! Sen. Marco Rubio has some ideas, including making sure students have an idea how much the can expect to make before they take out a loan. Though if we wanted a serious discussion, we wouldn’t be watching MSNBC.
Here're the highlites of just how magnificent I am (on annoyingly rare occasions):
And then - crickets.
--snip - onto a slightly different thread. What's interesting to me here is that they kinda start to engage, but it's like they suddenly realize I'm "the enemy", and they run away.
I'll try to post updates as (if) some of these folks come back at me. It's weird tho'. I ask questions and I try not to be too bellicose (yeah, yeah I know - but sometimes it's just not possible to let the shit slide), but I seem to be goin' nowhere in a big fucking hurry.
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Too much cookin' for me right now. I gotta walk away for a while and try to decompress; get some shit done for myself and - uhm - whatever it is I think I'm trying to do in general. Sorry. I'll try to do some pix and some music once in a while, but really, I just gotta get outa here.
Here's a bit from Scabrous Joe and Mika The Attack Bunny - along with other MSNBC Meat Puppets - saying how can we expect these fine innocent teenagers not to behave like racist assholes when it's so obvious that all those rotten hip-hopsters are putting out all those horrible rap songs that use the n-word and kill this muthuhfuckuh and bang that bitch and blah blah blah.
Aside from the standard bullshit trying to make this all about Respectability Politics (tell it, Brother Jay - from way back when)...
...and aside from more of the standard bullshit trying to make some stoopid point about 'reverse racism', maybe we could look at why all the white folk gettin' all bent outa shape. I think I hear something along the lines of "well, if black people can call each other nigger, then why can't we call 'em niggers?" That's a question that comes from way down deep in the bottomless well of White Privilege. Look, guys - I'm not likely to be brutalized and/or murdered by the cops just because I was driving at night in a nice neighborhood. I'm not gonna get Red-Lined by the mortgage companies; I'm not gonna be the suspect in a string of crimes because my facial features and my skin tone fit some artificial profile manufactured by a "justice system" that's become cynical and corrupt. And there's a shitload more examples of built-in prejudice once you start thinking about it. Secondly, the use of any of the words available to us has to be subject to scrutiny from a standpoint of what relationship we have with the people we're trying to communicate with. If you sidle up beside your wife, and you give her a little squeeze on the buns and a peck on the cheek, and you say, "Hey babe - wanna get laid tonite?", you're just trying to be playful or romantic or provocative or whatever. If you do that with somebody's teenaged daughter, you don't get to be all huffy and indignant when they take exception to it and start pounding you down into a greasy spot with a piano leg. So after all that; knowing what Privilege allows for The Privileged, and what it does not allow for those Un-Privileged, can't we let up on the idiot notion of being so fucking privileged that we insist on "What's mine is mine and what's yours is mine too"? Can't we give black folk one lousy word that they get to own and the rest of us just get to stay the fuck away from it?
“There are very few companies in America, whether they’re public or private, in which if you sic 40 FBI agents on the company and review every email and every document and every communication between employees, you won’t find any racist emails."
So practically every company in America 1) employs a buncha racist assholes, and 2) has no particular policy against sending racist asshole emails &/or chooses to do nothing about the racist assholes who work for them. And that proves the cops and the courts in Ferguson MO can't possibly be racist? Can you say "Tu Quoque"? How 'bout "Bandwagon"? One other little thingie, Ms Kelly - the DoJ report did not "completely clear Darren Willson". The conclusion was that they didn't find enough to go after a Federal Indictment against him. There's quite a difference there - and you know it.
Americans are a woefully ignorant people. A third of us can't name even one of three branches of the U.S. government. Two-fifths don't even know which party controls the House or Senate. Millions even think that after the Supreme Court rules on a case, it's sent to Congress for lawmakers' consideration. And so it goes.
If we don't even know these very basics, just imagine how confusing King v. Burwell — a legal challenge to the Affordable Care Act (aka ObamaCare) — must be. But why let ignorance get in the way of opinion? Supporters and haters of the law simply see it — as they do just about everything — through their prisms of pre-conceived beliefs. This has led to misunderstandings and myths about what the case is all about and ObamaCare in general.
Obamacare doesn't fix a lot of what's wrong about Healthcare in USAmerica Inc. What it does fix (partly) is the accessibility problem. At least now, we all have a shot at getting covered by an insurance plan that we can actually afford, which was kinda the whole fucking point of The Affordable Care Act.
Claim: 8.2 million Americans can’t find full-time work partly due to Obamacare.
FactCheck.org says: False.
Claim: The law is a job-killer. FactCheck.org says: Overblown.
Claim: Premiums are going up because of the law. Premiums are going down because of the law. FactCheck.org says: It depends.
Claim: All of the uninsured will pay less on the exchanges than they could now on the individual market, even without federal subsidies. FactCheck.org says: False.
Claim: 8.5 million Americans will receive rebates this year averaging about $100 each because of the health care law. FactCheck.org says: Misleading.
Claim: You won’t be able to choose your own doctor. Claim: The government will be between you and your doctor. FactCheck.org says: False.
Claim: If you like your plan, you can keep your plan. If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. FactCheck.org: Misleading.
Claim: Those applying for federal subsidies can lie about their income without facing verification. FactCheck.org says: False.
Claim: Congress is exempt from the law. FactCheck.org says: False.
And we don't really need to talk about Death Panels do we?
I think ya gotta be careful with the whole 2-Minute Daily Hate thing, but there's something pretty satisfying about it once in a while. Especially when you can point it in the right direction.
Just in case anybody was wondering what it takes to make a buncha theocratic Iranian shit-sniffers look like the 'good guys' - ladies & germs, I give you a buncha theocratic American shit-sniffers 47 Republican Senators who're working really hard to raise the level of partisan fuck-uppery to new heights.
How is it that Iran's Foreign Minister knows more about how the US Gov't is supposed to work than the propeller-heads we hired to run the US Senate?
"The authors may not fully understand that in international law, governments represent the entirety of their respective states, are responsible for the conduct of foreign affairs, are required to fulfil the obligations they undertake with other states and may not invoke their internal law as justification for failure to perform their international obligations."
And what're they supposed to do with all that silly rhetoric about Obama being a secret Muslim and all the Libtards loving all things Islam? They can't let all that go to waste, so it naturally fits for them to say they're just being tough on Iran - cuz "Obama can't be", or whatever - in order to keep the bad ol' Mullahs from getting the bomb; with the main point being they can't let anything Obama tries to do go unchallenged.
That's what all this Party Purity crapola is really good for BTW. No matter how stoopid your idea is on its own merits, anything you wanna do is OK as long as it hurts Obama and/or makes the Libruls mad.
But guess what, kids - Iran is going to get the bomb no matter what anybody says or does. It's gonna happen sooner or later. So why do you send a threatening letter to Mr Fariz? Maybe it's because you wanna speed things along a little. Maybe you want Iran to get the bomb ASAP so you have justification for war - which you can blame on Obama's "policy of appeasement"(?), and get back to the good old days of Us vs Them; of enemies within and enemies without.
History doesn't actually repeat itself, but it sure as fuck rhymes.
