Today's Pix

Paris

Friday The 13th can't get much worse than the shit that went down in Paris two days ago.

Except that, of course it can get worse - a lot worse - if the Right Radicals are allowed to hold sway.  (Remember that Marine Le Pen and her merry band of Franco-Nasties gained a lot after the Charlie Hebdo thing)

I posted this on my Facebook wall, saying I tho't the French people were pushing back in a good way, and that I hoped they'd keep their shit together.

And wouldn't you know it - as they try to rally and stay together and not let the forces of darkness overtake them, along come the French equivalent of The Trumpkins ...

The banner says something like "Expel The Islamists", but the ralliers chant "fascists go home", and instead of starting any shit (with the help of the cops), they stay together and apply steady pressure until the Brown Shirts back off and quit the scene. 

And it's striking that at the end, we see the "anti-islamists" just kinda dissolving into the crowd - some of them almost acting like they never really had anything to do with anything, and that maybe this whole thing never even happened.  

Run and hide, assholes.

Today's Metaphorical Thingie

And here's a list of schools under federal investigation for mis-handling rape allegations:

• Allegheny College
• American University
• Amherst College
• Arizona State University
• Barnard College
• Berklee College of Music
• Bethany College
• Boston University
• Brown University
• Butte-Glenn Community College District
• California Institute of the Arts
• Canisius College
• Carnegie Mellon University
• Catholic University of America
• Cisco Junior College
• College of William and Mary
• Colorado State University
• Columbia University
• Cornell University
• CUNY Hunter College
• Dartmouth College
• Davis and Elkins College
• Denison University
• Drake University
• Elizabethtown College
• Elmira College
• Emerson College
• Emory University
• Florida State University
• Franklin and Marshall College
• Frostburg State University
• Full Sail University
• Grand Valley State University
• Guilford College
• Hamilton College
• Hampshire College
• Harvard College
• Hobart and William Smith Colleges
• Idaho State University
• Indiana University-Bloomington
• Iowa State University
• James Madison University
• Johns Hopkins University
• Kansas State University
• Knox College
• Langston University
• Marion Military Institute
• Marlboro College
• Michigan State University
• Minot State University
• Missouri University of Science and Technology
• Morgan State University
• New York University School of Medicine
• Northeastern University
• Occidental College
• Oglethorpe University
• Oklahoma State University
• Pace University-New York
• Pennsylvania State University
• Pointe Park University
• Polytechnic Institute of New York University
• Regis University
• Saint John's University
• Saint Mary's College of Maryland
• Saint Thomas Aquinas College
• San Francisco State University
• San Jose-Evergreen Community College District
• Sarah Lawrence College
• Stanford University
• SUNY Buffalo State College
• SUNY College at Brockport
• SUNY Purchase College
• SUNY Stony Brook University
• SUNY University at Albany
• Swarthmore College
• Temple University
• Texas A&M University
• University of Akron
• University of Alaska System of Higher Education
• University of California-Berkeley
• University of California-Davis
• University of California-Los Angeles
• University of California-San Francisco
• University of California-Santa Cruz
• University of Chicago
• University of Colorado-Boulder
• University of Colorado-Denver
• University of Connecticut
• University of Delaware
• University of Denver
• University of Hawaii-Manoa
• University of Idaho
• University of Iowa
• University of Kansas
• University of Kentucky
• University of Massachusetts-Amherst
• University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth
• University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
• University of Nebraska-Lincoln
• University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
• University of Richmond
• University of Rochester
• University of South Florida
• University of Southern California
• University of Texas-Pan American
• University of Tennessee
• University of Tennessee-Chattanooga
• University of Virginia
• University of Washington-Seattle
• University of Wisconsin-Madison
• University of Wisconsin-Whitewater
• Valley Forge Military College
• Valparaiso University
• Vanderbilt University
• Vincennes University
• Virginia Commonwealth University
• Washburn University
• Washington and Lee University
• Washington State University
• West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine
• Western Washington University
• Westminster College
• Whitman College
• Wittenberg University

So yeah - it's a problem.

Nothing Fails Like Prayer

From Charlie Hebdo cartoonist Joann Sfar. pic.twitter.com/UDXkSBUjR5

— Seth MacFarlane (@SethMacFarlane) November 14, 2015

A Podcast

Wanna glimpse of what a CEO Presidency would look like?  Cast your eyeballs on Gov Rauner in Illinois. (at about the 36:00 mark)

Go Baphamet

The Christianistas continue to trip over their own dicks.  They seem to have become completely isolated inside their little bubble.  They've sold themselves on the rhetorical non-sense of "America is a Christian nation and the federal government was founded on Judeo-Christian values etc etc etc".  They believe it, and they're convinced everybody else believes it too, and so they're just charging ahead (like Greaves says) without stopping to think that the all-important First Amendment thing that gives them the right to preach their version of "the truth" cuts the same for everybody else too.

From Raw Story:

This week, the state of Missouri’s draconian 72-hour waiting period for an abortion was in the spotlight again when a conservative state legislator made it clear he would try and stop a graduate student from studying the wait period’s impact on women.

But conservative Christians who have been pushing these ideologically-driven policies may have created their own demise without realizing it. The Satanic Temple sprung up to challenge the attempts to turn the United States into a Christian theocracy. And as the constitutional activists point out, they fight theocracy using the same laws and legal arguments pushed by conservative Christians.

“We’re fighting an enemy now that hasn’t had to think things through, and that’s what gives us such an advantage,” said Temple co-founder Lucien Greaves in an interview with The Raw Story. “They’re used to being the only beneficiaries of the privileges that they have fought for, and that kind of monopoly has made them complacent, stupid and weak, and it’s just made it that much easier for us to come in and assert ourselves the way we have.”

As for me, on the whole Abortion Issue, I think I know maybe 4 things:

1. A caterpillar is not a butterfly.
2. A tadpole is not a frog.
3. A fertilized chicken egg is not a chicken.
4. Nothing that's going on in my daughter's uterus is any of your god-dammed business, so fuck the fuck off, motherfucker.

New Music

Madisen Ward and (his mom) The Mama Bear

Silent Movies
Sorrows and Woes
Daisy Jane

Dead Daffodils

Skeleton Crew (full album)

Today's Toons

Thanks For Clearing That Up

Month 11, Day 11, Hour 11

Pix N Toons

By Way Of The KrugMan

Gotta love it when the facts are so obviously stacked against the Right Radicals.  Of course, this will only mean that the Librul Press is lying again in order to make their Dear Leader look good etc etc etc.

Fun to imagine it'll make some small difference tho.

From WaPo via Paul Krugman:

Between the January he took office and the January he left it, private sector employment declined by 463,000 and government employment increased by 1.7 million.

President Obama, by contrast, has seen a net change in private sector jobs of 9.3 million, as of the new jobs report out on Friday morning -- and that's even after the dip due to the recession. Government jobs, meanwhile, are down 591,000. 

Only In Politics

...and only in USAmerica Inc.

We decided that all anybody needs in order to do anything well is a little common sense.  

So now we have people with no education or experience in Education who're making decisions on what should go on in our schools.

We have people with no education or experience in Law or Law Enforcement or Corrections who're making decisions on what should go on in our "Justice" System.

And and and.

Why does anybody have to wonder why we get some of the candidates we're getting from a certain end of the political spectrum?

And so - 

I'll stick with my assertion that we're looking at a high probable for Jeb/Kasich 2016.

Florida and Ohio.  Not sure it's enough for them this time, but that's gotta be on lotsa minds in what's left of the GOP's Executive Suite right now; along with trying to figure out how to blow off Trump and Carson without losing the fervor of their voters. 

Unfortunately, the problem of disappointed primary voters failing to show up for the general election may be less of a problem now that it seems Gerrymandering and Voter Suppression, and maybe some straight-up illegal schemes for manipulating the results are starting to show signs of success.

eg: It bodes well for the GOP to get a 9-point landslide win in Kentucky for a Repub Governor candidate who was polling 3-5 points down almost literally hours before the polls opened, combined with the fact that lots of Dems on the down-ballot got elected.  

BTW, we prob'ly won't actually do anything about that because that would require us to make a fucking decision and stand up for something, which is scary and it might cost us half of our Facebook friends and so we won't be doing any of that.

Anyway, just to complete the circuit - always mindful that Right Radicals play the long game because politically nefarious things need to progress slowly so as not to cause needless alarm - let's remember that it's likely that Jeb's guys fucked with things in Florida in 2000 to put W in office, and I can't dismiss the thought of some kinda double-digit plausibility that it was Kasich's guys who fucked with things in Ohio* in 2004 to keep W in office.  I'm sure they both feel they've been waiting rather patiently for the big payoff, and now's the time to step up to the window and collect their winnings.

I guess we'll see what we'll see when we see it.

*update: Ohio passed a thingie aimed at "fixing" the Gerrymandering problem, so that's gotta be seen as good news, assuming something gets done before Nov 2016 - uuhmm yeah, prob'ly not.  But hey, we can hope.

Redefining

Here's a weird little blast from the past - and there's a bit in here that's been eatin' at me for a while.

First - at about 6:00, when Huck makes the claims about how he wants his faith to be questioned?  That sounds a whole lot like good old Sales Training shit - I think he 'welcomes the feedback' so he can be looking for ways to anticipate the objections and get a few plausible-sounding bromides handy for rebuttal.

But that ain't the big one - here's the big one - starting around the 8-minute mark:
Guys like Huckabee are always slicing it nice and thin when it comes to the question of an all-loving god, especially when you try to make the point about sin and evil and why are there so many shitty people doing so many shitty things?  If god is god, then why do we have to fix all this shit?  The apologists always flop straight over into the Free Will of the Godly Volunteer thing - god loves us so he set it up so we can choose our fate by choosing to love god back or to reject god's love - and after all, if he forces his love on us, then he'd be raping us blah blah blah.  

Wait just one fuckin' minute, bub.

Problem - rape isn't only a situation where the rapist physically assaults the victim.  There's that little thing called coercion too.  And that becomes a huge problem if you then ask, "Isn't god really trying to force himself on us by threatening to send us to hell for an eternity of suffering if we spurn his advances?"

Set aside for a minute the bullshit deflection that "we decide to send ourselves to hell if we decide not to love god", and let's concentrate on the real point.  The real point here is that now we've got a Beyond-Even-Bill-Cosby level problem with a Rapist God - and btw, if Mary really didn't have much choice about whether or not she'd go along with the idea of getting knocked up by a coercive god, then doesn't that make Jesus the product of rape?  And then, all of a sudden, we've got the Son Of God born of sin - and holy fuck, man - this is  some kinda big fuckin' trouble right here.

Enter the TheoCons.  How many Repubs have found themselves in hot water because some dumbass thing or another fell outa their tater traps when they were trying to make a point about rape?

They needed to save Jesus so they needed a new definition for rape, and they decided to hide these cynical maneuverings and manipulations by fucking with the rights of women to make their own decisions for themselves(?)  

And they've been pullin' this kinda shit on our time, on our dime.

Seriously, guys - what the fucking fuck? 

Today's Facebook Looney

Whenever this crap shows up, I always try to post a comment that includes the question - what do you intend to do about the kids of the people you catch in your little dragnet? 

I have yet to hear from any of them.

But here's a message (to the pinch-faced prigs who think drug-testing is anything more than a way to make somebody's well-connected brother-in-law rich), from the guys who thought the 4th amendment to the US Constitution was of some importance to a free society: 

Go fuck yourselves.

Update BTW - how come we never hear from the Ammosexuals on this one? Something like - "I'm gonna avail myself of my 2nd amendment rights in order to secure my 4th amendment rights."

Can you say "Cherry-Picking"? I knew you could.

Who Are Those Guys?

Bratislav Zivkovic - leader of a Serbian militia, fighting in support of Russian troops as they fuck up Ukraine:

This guy is Fazal Hayat (aka: Fazlullah) - born in Pakistan, doing what he can to help the Taliban in Afghanistan:

Meet Thomas Lubanga Dyilo. Thomas enjoys jungle camping and the company of young boys in camo fatigues:

And bachelor #4 is lovable lug Stewart Rhodes - the founder of Oath Keepers right here at home in USAmerica Inc:

Wanna know the difference between these jagoffs?

Branding.

The Elders Will Decide

538.com:

There are plenty of reasons to be cautious of national polls that show Trump and Carson leading. They may fail to screen out casual voters, for instance, and leaders at this point in past years have eventually tanked. But perhaps the biggest reason to ditch stock in these polls is that they’re simulating a national vote that will never take place.

In reality, the GOP nominating contest will be decided by an intricate, state-by-state slog for the 2,472 delegates at stake between February and June. And thanks to the Republican National Committee’s allocation rules, the votes of “Blue Zone” Republicans — the more moderate GOP primary voters who live in Democratic-leaning states and congressional districts — could weigh more than those of more conservative voters who live in deeply red zones. Put another way: The Republican voters who will have little to no sway in the general election could have some of the most sway in the primary.

As The New York Times’ Nate Cohn astutely observed in January, Republicans in blue states hold surprising power in the GOP presidential primary process even though they are “all but extinct in Washington, since their candidates lose general elections to Democrats.” This explains why Republicans have selected relatively moderate presidential nominees while the party’s members in Congress have continued to veer right.

So, it sounds like: "Go ahead and have your little fling with Donald and Ben or whoever (it's not like we've been trying to discourage you from sowing a few wild oats), but in the end, Mommie and Daddy will call you in for supper and you'll sit politely at our table and you'll eat whatever the fuck we put in front of you."

So maybe, the reports of the GOP's demise may have been exaggerated(?) - I include myself in those doing that reporting btw.

But if that's how it plays out, how pissed are those rubes likely to be then?  Yikes.

That Might Leave A Mark

Carson will eventually fade, because his followers and devotees will magically discover they've suddenly forgotten everything they previously thought about him, and if the Press Poodles ever get around to asking, we'll hear most of them say they never even knew he was in the race at all and what was his name again...? 

There's also a small matter of his lying about applying to and then being accepted at West Point.

Ben Carson’s campaign on Friday admitted, in a response to an inquiry from POLITICO, that a central point in his inspirational personal story was fabricated: his application and acceptance into the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

The academy has occupied a central place in Carson’s tale for years. According to a story told in Carson’s book, “Gifted Hands,” the then-17 year old was introduced in 1969 to Gen. William Westmoreland, who had just ended his command of U.S. forces in Vietnam, and the two dined together. That meeting, according to Carson’s telling, was followed by a “full scholarship” to the military academy.

--and--

Carson would have needed to seek admission in order to receive an offer of free education from West Point. Also, according to West Point, there is no such thing as a “full scholarship” to the military academy, as Carson represented in his book.

An application to West Point begins with a nomination by a member of Congress or another prominent government or military official. After that, a rigorous vetting process begins. If offered admission, all costs are covered for all students; indeed there are no “full scholarships,” per se.

The statement from Carson’s campaign manager on Friday went on to say: “There are ‘Service Connected’ nominations for stellar High School ROTC appointments. Again he was the top ROTC student in Detroit. I would argue strongly that an Appointment is indeed an amazing full scholarship. Having ran several Congressional Offices I am very familiar with the Nomination process.

“Again though his Senior Commander was in touch with West Point and told Dr. Carson he could get in, Dr. Carson did not seek admission.”

The concession from Carson’s campaign comes as serious questions about other points of fact in Carson’s personal narrative are questioned, including the seminal episode in which he claimed to have attempted to stab a close friend. Similarly, details have emerged that cast doubt on the nature of Carson’s encounter with one of the most prominent military men of that era.

Etch-A-Sketch me, bro. 

GIF Talent

@mtaibbi pic.twitter.com/fSezcNwSiX

— Fernando Garcia (@Senor_Fern) November 6, 2015

Today's Twittering Thingie

Gotta love the reply - "if you take this free lunch, it'll double your fundraising for the quarter".

Stopped by the Sub Station in SC. This sign must be for the dems. I know there's no such thing as a free lunch! pic.twitter.com/mhlAmYTVmH

— Dr. Rand Paul (@RandPaul) November 6, 2015

Ali Speaks

Ali was a hero for me.  It was difficult for me to hear him say these things because people around me were complaining about his politics, and I remember kinda going along with the thinking that he should just stick to boxing.  But there was (obviously) something else at work, and just as with Bill Russel and Jim Brown and Abdul-Jabbar, what I eventually came to realize was that these guys were even more amazing than I had tho't.  Because - how much greater could they have been if not for having to carry all that extra baggage?

http://deehenn.tumblr.com/post/128928717105/when-they-say-not-all-white-people

And btw, for anybody looking to turn this around and say it's a good example of "black racism" and "reverse discrimination" and "the same goes for a white guy having to face ten thousand black rattlesnakes" - that just boils down to Standard-Issue White Guilt Projection; you're voicing the fear that if you let up on him at all, the black guy would treat you just as shitty as you've been treating him, which means you're pretty much admitting to being the  bigot you're so afraid you're being accused of being. 

So try this instead - try to imagine what great things you could accomplish if you weren't having to carry all your extra baggage.  

Relaxed And Groovy

From Tiny Desk Concerts at NPR

hat tip = Little Green Footballs

Today's Gubmint Stoopid

From AP via TPM:

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) — Alabama's reigning Teacher of the Year says she has resigned after state officials told her she's unqualified to teach in her fifth-grade classroom because of certification issues.

Veteran teacher Ann Marie Corgill said Alabama Department of Education officials recently informed her that she was not qualified despite her well-documented accomplishments. She said she grew tired of trying to prove herself, prompting her to submit a letter of resignation, dated Tuesday and obtained by Al.com. In the letter, Corgill cites her confusion.

"After 21 years of teaching in grades 1-6, I have no answers as to why this is a problem now, so instead of paying more fees, taking more tests and proving once again that I am qualified to teach, I am resigning," Corgill wrote.

Corgill has Class A and B certifications to teach primary school through third grade, according to certification records provided by The Alabama Department of Education. Corgill said she started this school year at Birmingham's Oliver Elementary School teaching second grade, but shortly after the semester began, she was moved to a fifth-grade classroom.

In a news release Thursday, the state Department of Education said it "did not determine Ms. Corgill was not qualified. However, when an inquiry was made, the department reported that her current teaching certificate covers primary grades through Grade 3. This does not carry with it a requirement for resignation."

But Corgill — a 2015 National Teacher of the Year finalist — holds National Board Certification to teach children ages 7 to 12, a group that would include most fifth-graders. That certification is valid until November 2020, according to the National Board Certification directory.

Birmingham City Schools spokeswoman Chandra Temple said Thursday that the district is working on the matter and had no further comment.

Somebody like Ms Corgill should be pulling down 6 figures, and she should be working at a school that looks like a 5-star resort.  

If we're gonna demand layers of certification and years of continuing education - pretty much the same as we demand of various other professionals - then we can sure as fuck pay them like we pay those other professionals.  Cuz, btw, where do we think all those big-deal professionals get their start?  Anybody believe they just pop up outa the ground?  No - they all started out in some version of an elementary school where a Ms Corgill takes a room filled with potential future cell block slugs and turns them into solid citizens who might give us a shot at making this joint a slightly better world to live in if we can just get our national head out of our national ass long enough to think in terms of investment instead of always falling for the bullshit of "Gubmint's too big and costs too much".

Do This Now

Right now, dammit.

And be sure to go thru their Amazon link when you start your Xmas shopping.

The Raven

Christopher Walken reading Poe's The Raven



hat tip = BlueGal

This Is How You Cop

The officer told the crowd of teenagers to disperse after breaking up a scuffle. They didn't do exactly what she told them to do, and somehow she resisted the seemingly universal urge to fuck 'em up.  Obviously, she can't be considered for any future management position.  It's just such a shame to see a young officer with high potential succumb to her feelings of humanity like that.

hat tip = FB buddy VWE

Visual Aids

Happy Halloween

Last minute costume ideas

Big Change Maybe

The faintest of wry smiles comes across my face when I find something that even barely hints at the prospect of the death of Commodification coming sooner than expected.

From a short bit at NASDAQ earlier this month:

The critical natural gas transit country, Ukraine, reached a supply agreement in the last week of September with the EU’s largest fuel supply partner: Russia.

One could argue that this agreement could actually have come too late. Natural gas supply to Europe heading into winter 2015 seems more secure than ever before, a sharp contrast to the icy winters of 2006 and 2009, in which Russia cut off natural gas supply to Eastern Europe over a conflict with the Ukraine. The following factors have turned the European natural gas market from a ‘’beggars can’t be choosers” into a true “buyers’ market’’.

And this from CNBC today:

Kilduff said gas was being hit by expectations a record amount of natural gas will soon be in storage. Weekly data show gas storage at 3.81 trillion cubic feet, and the record is 3.929 trillion cubic feet in November 2012.

The Energy Information Agency predicts a peak of 3.956 trillion this November, said Kilduff, who projects it to reach more than 4 trillion. He said the most recent weather report shows above-normal temperatures for the eastern region, a significant user of heating fuels

The oversupply is also causing problems. "The producing region is at a record storage level," said McGillian. He said if more gas is forced into the spot market, the price will drop even more.

But then again, I can't ignore that this is part of the little political game we love to play.  So instead of taking any real steps toward understanding that resources are limited and we have to figure out how to move ourselves past the self-destructive nonsense of Chop-It-Down-Burn-It-Up-Dig-It-Up-Burn-It-Down, here's what I think is most likely to happen.

Nothing.

Not much that's different anyway.  And prob'ly nothing but the usual and customary crap of tax-payers gettin' stuck with the check.  We more or less bank-rolled the drive for all this "energy" - sweetheart tax incentives and access to public land; roads and utilities; and sometimes direct subsidies; not to mention having the watchdogs conveniently look the other way while Halliburton (eg) gets to poison the living fuck outa everything.  Plus, we get to pay for some pretty high-priced consultants and PR pricks to make the products of USAmerica Inc more palatable to "foreign markets" etc etc etc.  And now that those markets are reacting to a supply glut (that we manufactured btw), guess what all those high-rollin' entrepreneurial self-made macho assholes are gonna do next.  I think we can pretty much count on 'em to go crying to "their" congress critters that the sugar bowl's empty now and they just can't possibly be expected to take it all on their-own-poor-selfless-selves to clean up the ginormous fucking mess they made while soaking the last dime's worth of life from one more patch of a dying planet.

We can bumper-sticker-ize it: Privatized profits and Socialized costs, but here's the kicker - since they did it on our dime (and because nobody's complaining about 2-dollar gas), they can make a lot of us believe they did it all because we asked them to do it.

And they can make it stick - shit, we'll pay 'em to do it.

And they can do it all over again next time.

No soul and no honor.