Today's Pix

Another One Bites The Dust

Gun Nuts are always like, "Well, c'mon man - people get killed with baseball bats and knives and frying pans - ya wanna ban all those things too, just cuz people kill people with odd weapons?"

In Texas today, some butthead went ballistic and started stabbing people with some kind of edged weapon.  As of about 8pm Tuesday, none of them is dead.

If he'd had a gun, everybody fucking knows the story would be a whole lot different.  So take that argument and stuff it right back in your ditty bag.

We gotta do something about the guns NOW.

Today's Number

30

Keeping "suspected terrorists" at Gitmo costs us 30 times what it would cost for us to put all of those guys in SuperMax in Florence Colorado.

Close that shit down now.

Today's Un-Event

Smart people talking about important stuff:

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Music

Slowhand

Fun With Sousaphones

It took us years to understand that the 'Band Geeks' were actually pretty amazing.

Today's Irony

I use the word 'Irony' because I'm feeling a little more charitable than usual towards some of my reality-challenged friends, so I'm not absolutely sure today's example rises to 'Hypocrisy'.

"Conservatives" complain a lot about the PC Culture of Self Esteem and how if you don't let kids suffer the humiliation of never getting picked for playground games, then they'll never learn something they're supposed to learn - some of which I don't disagree with BTW; but that ain't my point and I'll save that one for another rant on another day.

What triggered my wondering today is a short piece on AGW/Climate Change from Addicting Info:

...Conservative ideology has resulted in an inherent mistrust/dislike of science and the scientific community, leading conservative constituents honestly believing that the validity of a theory, whether scientific or otherwise (meaning both definitions of “theory”), depends on whether or not you believe it. That’s not just a conservative problem; we have this idea as Americans, perhaps as people, that we need to “respect” someone else’s opinion no matter what the facts say.

Sorry, but I don’t buy into that. Not everyone’s opinion carries the same value or weight.

That last bit is what hung me up in the context of "everybody gets to play".

If you're gonna bitch about every kid getting a fair shot in grade school, then don't turn around and start demanding that your (almost-completely-misinformed) opinion counts as much as anybody else's and so the facts mean nothing just because those facts indicate we should do something you think conflicts with your ideology - cuz hey, Freedom.

Paraphrasing:  The planet is round.  And in spite of your opinion to the contrary, the fact that the planet is round is not in dispute.

So don't bring your schoolyard shit to a national debate - you're embarrassing yourselves in public.

Today's Outlook - Bleak

This piece is a bit less hopeful than I usually like myself to jump into, but sometimes ya gotta say straight out that it looks pretty shitty from where you're standing. (UnrepentantLiberal at Democratic Underground):

They figured it out.

Who's gonna stop us? Most Americans don't read political websites and blogs. Their kids want milk, they buy milk at the supermarket. A two minute report on CNN is easily forgotten when the latest celebrity scandal breaks.

What are you gonna do if the politician we own puts this law in the books?  You ain't gonna do shit.

What are you gonna do if you're making less money now than you were 30 years ago?  You ain't gonna do shit.

What are you gonna do if we bust your union?  You ain't gonna do shit.

What are you gonna do if we close down the factory that provided your grand father, father and you a means to provide for your families?  You ain't gonna do shit.

What are you gonna do if we privatize your rotting town and part out what's left?  You ain't gonna do shit.

What are you gonna do if we cut off the social services you now need to survive?  You ain't gonna do shit.

What are you gonna do when we steal the Social Security account that you paid into for 50 years?  You ain't gonna do shit.

What are you gonna do if you protest and we beat you, arrest you on trumped-up charges and then have Erin Burnett make fun of you?  You ain't gonna shit.

And when it's all gone and we're living a life of luxury with the money we took from you?  Well, you know the drill.

Suckers.

Meanwhile, Back At DumFux News

Everybody's favorite opportunity to indulge in a little Arm-Chair Psycho-Junk-ology:



From Little Green Footballs:

This is just sad. Generations of anger passed on by abuse and beatings resulted in hateful demagogues like Sean Hannity and Michelle Malkin, who pass on the legacy of abuse to their own children and preach it to others on Fox News.

Ya gotta be careful about this, but sometimes it's just too plain to ignore.

Coupla things:
1) I have no idea if Malkin or Hannity were ever actually on any kind of team at any level other than PeeWees or whatever, but I'm thinking if they had been, then they'd know that a good coach never ever abuses his players.  And that a great coach can be stern and hard-ass and flinty and demanding and and and - but he makes sure his players know he likes (even loves) them and that he respects them; and that he'll teach 'em what they need to know so they can do what seems impossible while never simply commanding them to do something they're not capable of doing; or gets them hurt or makes them look or feel lousy in front of their peers.

2) DumFux News is not putting this up to complain about The Wimpy Libruls and how all this PC crap is making us weak - although that last bit - making us weak - is the key.  Remember, this shit doesn't happen by accident.  This is on Fox air for a reason, and at the risk of making too much of a leap, and drawing too obvious an analogy, here it comes.

The message is: Here at Fox, we know all you little people out there are suffering and taking a tremendous beating, but you need to suck it up, ya buncha cupcakes.  Look at Sean and Michelle.  They're in really peachy circumstances; they're wealthy and pretty and powerful; and they took the beatings.  Why should you be exempt?  You don't wanna be a moocher.  You don't wanna be unworthy of what you get.  You wouldn't want something for nothing, would you?  Of course not.  So if you deserved a better job (or a job at all) or some kind of security for your retirement, then you'd already have them because you would've earned them.  This is a meritocracy after all, and so you get what you deserve.  If you earn cookies then you get cookies.  If you earn shit then you get shit - and you can be grateful we care enough to show you the error of your ways.  We're just trying to get you to be better people (like us).

(In the end, it gets turned around to mean: if you're taking a beating, it's because you deserve that beating)

Hey - you voted for us - the beating is obviously what you wanted.

Can there be any question about why Republi-Cons and Theo-Cons go so well together?

Today's Quote

From Charlie Pierce in his post about what a dope Campbell Brown is.

...Wayne LaPierre is a blood-soaked sociopath who should be shunned by listeria and the mange.

Today's Wingnut - And The Long Game

Odds-On favorite for Creepy Cheeseball of the Year - Ken (Kenny The Kooch) Cuccinelli, Atty General for my very own (and otherwise pretty excellent) Commonwealth of Virginia.

The Kooch first caught our eye by running a campaign of intimidation against UVa and (former) resident Climatology wizard Michael Mann.  And make no mistake here - intimidation is exactly what that was all about.  Tax dollars were being spent on  research; the results of that research were not in keeping with the political views and goals of those in charge of spending those tax dollars; and so pressure is brought to bear on anyone not reaching the prescribed conclusions.

And then, just a coupla years after UVa Prez Terry Sullivan fought Kooch and eventually prevailed in court, it seemed so very coincidental that suddenly, the UVa Board of Visitors hatched a plot to get rid of Sullivan.  They said at the time that Sullivan had "failed to present a comprehensive plan for the future success of the flagship school blah blah blah", but most of us (me too) tho't at the time that it was about an attempt on the part of wealthy Alumni to capture the brand of Mr Jefferson's Academical Village and turn it into a typically hollowed-out profit center.  Aha!  Now I get it.  Sullivan had made Cuccinelli - and by proxy, Governor (Vaginal Bob) McDonnell - look bad, so she had to be punished.  It really was just the usual political retribution crap that these 3rd rate phonies think is how you're supposed to conduct the people's business.

I am so seriously sick of this shit.

Coupla stories worth scanning if you wanna tie this all together:
From The Guardian (tying Climate Gate to Sullivan Gate):

Sullivan is, no doubt, in the latter camp: a sociologist of labor, she co-wrote two books about middle-class debt with Harvard law professor, consumer advocate, and now Senator-elect Elizabeth Warren. Warren has been such a lightning rod for conservative ire in recent years that on 11 January 2010, when the BOV announced its unanimous selection of Sullivan as UVA's next president, I wondered whether the visitors' politics had shifted recently – or had they not done their homework?

Five days later, the state of Virginia inaugurated Governor Bob McDonnell and Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, both rightwing Republicans. In April 2010, Cuccinelli, seeking evidence for the alleged international scientific fraud known as "Climategate", demanded from UVA the records of former faculty member Michael Mann, co-author of the famous "hockey-stick graph" showing a historic rise in average temperatures. Shortly after Sullivan took office, a judge dismissed the demand, but Cuccinelli issued another. By the time of her ouster, Sullivan had spent nearly $600,000 in UVA funds to defend the university against litigation that many described as a politically-motivated witch-hunt and an attack on academic freedom.

But this one's the kicker - from MoJo - about Cuccinelli's bombast trying to defend his support of Virginia's (now unconstitutional) Anti-Sodomy Law:

The campaign of Virginia state attorney general Ken Cuccinelli won't say if he's committed any crimes against nature.

Cuccinelli, who is running to be Virginia's next governor, recently petitioned a federal court to reverse its ruling that the state's archaic "Crimes Against Nature" law is unconstitutional. That statute outlaws oral and anal sex between consenting adults—gay or straight, married or single—making such "carnal" acts a felony. The law is unconstitutional because of the Supreme Court's ruling in Lawrence v. Texas, which invalidated such "anti-sodomy laws" across the country.

One thing about all this Natural Law / Crimes Against Nature malarkey:  What are we a buncha fuckin' badgers?  We're animals alright - I'll give you that one, but we happen to have this little thing called consciousness - we're self-aware animals.  So we know things - like for instance, we know how to make decisions based on what we think might happen in the future;  we know how to think our own way thru to a conclusion about right-and-wrong; and lots of other stuff too.

We can make those calls because we're not a buncha fuckin' badgers.

And y'know what else?  In Nature, sometimes a mama spider will eat her babies because times are tough and hunting's been pretty lousy, and her instincts (not her intellect) drive her to stay alive for a little while longer, which may give her a shot at having another brood.  It's the nature of some things.  Can you think of one situation when we might think it's OK for a human mom to kill and butcher and serve up one of her kids for dinner?  And why not?  Because we're not a buncha fuckin' spiders either.

This Natural Law argument is at best specious, and at worst, it's just fuckin' stoopid.  So stop it already.

¢¢

My 2 cents (clever title, doncha think?):

Obama made the biggest, most horrifically horrible rhetorical error ever in the history of human language blah blah blah.

What he said (re California AG Kamala Harris):

"You have to be careful to, first of all, say she is brilliant and she is dedicated and she is tough, and she is exactly what you'd want in anybody who is administering the law, and making sure that everybody is getting a fair shake.

“She also happens to be by far the best-looking attorney general in the country -- Kamala Harris is here. (Applause.) It's true. Come on. (Laughter.)

And she is a great friend and has just been a great supporter for many, many years.”

No, he didn't make a huge error - OK he did kinda, but the fuck up wasn't about saying Harris is attractive.  The remark does give an UberFemme like Joan Walsh a chance to smack the Prez which of course makes her think she gains some credibility by being a scold, and lets her put down a marker as Not An Obama-bot (this is correlative to Hippie-Punching).  But Obama's mistake was that he publicly acknowledged that Politics is very much about Sales and Marketing.  While you need to be selling a product or a service or some kind of content, packaging counts.

There are exceptions of course, but you don't really get anywhere just on brains and talent and hard work.  Not when it comes to the Beauty Pageant that American politics has become in the age of Visual Media.

Moment Of Clarity

NSFW

Lee Camp tells it.

Today's Pix

Today's Gun Nut

This is just too sweet not to copy-n-paste the whole thing - from digby at Hullabaloo:

I'd think twice about taking an NRA course in gun safety ...
by digby

It just doesn't get any better than this:

NRA instructor Eugene Kenny would have joined his fellow gun-rights supporters at the state Capitol Wednesday—if he hadn’t accidentally shot himself in the foot.

He was there in spirit. And on the internet.

“I’ve been watching this like a hawk,” Kenny said about the debate in Hartford over what may be the toughest proposed state gun-control laws in the country, including expanded background checks on buyers as well as a ban on the sale of most assault weapons and all high-capacity magazines. (The legislation passed Wednesday evening; the governor was expected to sign it mid-day Thursday.) Kenny was rooting for the package of laws to fail; he said they would cut into gun-owners’ rights without protecting the public any more than current laws already do. “You can count on one hand the number of assaults with an automatic weapon” that take place in New Haven, he said. “When you have sick minds out there—it’ll be a bullet, a gun, a bomb—they’re going to do evil” no matter what laws are on the books.

Kenny, a 49-year-old licensed National Rifle Association instructor who leads training classes in pistol and rifle use, delivered his arguments in the front foyer of the two-family Edgewood Avenue house where he rents an upstairs apartment in the Edgewood neighborhood.

Wearing an NRA hooded sweatshirt, he had his left foot in a cast because he accidentally shot a bullet last week while cleaning his Glock handgun.

This is why I'm in favor of gun regulation: way too many of the people who own them are meatheads. It's just not safe for anyone when yahoos like this are waving around deadly weapons, especially in public. He's lucky he didn't kill someone --- or himself.

Keep in mind: this guy's an NRA instructor.

I usually always cock it back and it usually ejects a shell that’s in the chamber,” he recalled. “You pull the trigger to release the slide ... This time there was a cartridge in there. And BANG! Hit my ankle.”

A self-described “stickler about safety,” Kenny said he has never had a student injured over 10 years of leading firearms classes. He said he’ll draw two lessons for his students about this recent accident: How he did the wrong thing by not checking the chamber. And how he did the right thing—saving his life—by pointing the gun toward the ground, not at his head or chest, as he cleaned it.

Kenny went to the hospital for treatment. The police interviewed him there about the incident.

They’re still investigating the incident, according to Sgt. Al Vazquez, head of the major crimes unit. They have the Glock in custody as part of the investigation. The gun was legally registered.

Vazquez said his detectives are also still investigating the theft of a safe last November from Kenny’s apartment. It contained around 10 guns—mostly handguns, plus a Saiga 12 rifle. “I took a hit, $8,000 worth of firearms” in that theft, Kenny said.

Gosh, I wonder what the thieves did with them?