Jay Smooth Gets It

On the one hand, there's something I think is pretty important about the Charles Ramsey part of this story because it makes us challenge our own bias and see "the black dude" as a real person; and for some at least, we can generalize that perception, and remind ourselves that people are just people.

But then this:

And this:



And suddenly, lots and lots of us have the permission we need to return to a more comfortable mindset, and we're right back to: "Well, I never said there aren't any good black people...all I'm sayin' is they (insert stereotype here)".

Enter Jay Smooth to help nail it down for me, but in an even larger context.

We need to resist "this mad dash to make a meme-ified clown out of anyone who fits into the Wacky Black Guy box, or the Charmingly Uneducated Hick box..."

Eva Cassidy

Recorded at Blues Alley in Georgetown.  This was January '96, and she died a little over 10 months later.  Cancer is such a fucking thief.

Fugelsang

On the death of Irony:

The Cicadas Are Coming

I don't remember '96 being that bad.  Noisy as fuck, but not the kind of Swarm-aggedon everybody seems to be expecting this time around.



Of course, the All-American-Anything-Fer-A-Buck spirit is alive and well:



Seriously - I really don't care what you say - I ain't eatin' no bugs.  Not on purpose.

Where Do They Get This Shit?

Sometimes, coming up with political humor seems just plain stupid easy.  You just wait for certain politicians to do something and there ya go.

And sometimes, when you wonder where politicians get some of their really really dumbass ideas, you just hafta look at what the jokesters were up to a few years before.

Today's Pix

I Dance, Therefor I Am

...not bored on this fucking treadmill.

The Benghazi Stoopid - oops corrected

A Bit Of Encouragement

Tesla reports a profit for Q1 2013:

Despite a bit of bad press for its Model S and a less-than-ideal close to the 2012 financial year, things have been looking up for Tesla. Sales are on an upward climb, company CEO Elon Musk has sworn to deliver more superchargers, better service for customers and continues to tout his EV's high resale value. After promising in Q4 of 2012 that Tesla would turn a profit the next quarter, the EV manufacturer has done so -- generating $15 million in net income and $562 million in revenue in Q1 2013.

And following that "bit of bad press"?  Well...this, via Reuters:

Consumer Reports magazine awarded a near-perfect score to Tesla Motors Co's (TSLA.O) Model S, citing the electric car's power, "pinpoint" handling and quiet, well-crafted interior.

The score of 99 out of 100 puts the Model S far ahead of other electric and gas-powered rivals, including the Porsche Panamera sports car and the Fisker Karma plug-in hybrid.

"Slipping behind the wheel of the Tesla Model S is like crossing into a promising zero-emissions future," the highly influential magazine said in its review on Thursday. "It's what Marty McFly might have brought back in place of his DeLorean in 'Back to the Future'."

We endure the daily barrage from Negativistas who get paid pretty well to propagandize us into thinking we can't possibly do anything to make anything better for ourselves or each other, and so we just hafta sit quietly and take whatever shit they feel like feeding us today and tomorrow and for as long as we refuse to see through the smoke and the dust they're forever blowing in our faces.

No more - not today anyway.  And today's enough for now.

Maybe this Tesla bunch is just as full of shit as the rest of 'em, but maybe it's really just a matter of reaching a little farther and taking one more step and going a little longer.  I dunno - but here's hoping.

Kind Of A Good Thing

The Federal Deficit is coming down in an OK way.

I dunno if that's Damning By Faint Praise or Praising By Faint Damnation.  Feel free to flip a coin on that one, or just blow it all off and walk away.

Not all that long ago, Repubs were wailing about Trillion-Dollar Deficits and how horrible everything was about to get, etc.  New CBO numbers are out now, and the deficit continues to shrink.

From CBO's website:

The federal government ran a budget deficit of $489 billion in the first seven months of fiscal year 2013 (that is, from October 2012 through April 2013), according to CBO’s estimates. That amount is $231 billion less than the shortfall recorded during the same period last year, primarily because revenue collections have been much greater than they were at this point in 2012. In contrast, federal spending so far this year has been slightly lower than what it was last year at this time.

The deficit still annualizes to around $600-800 Billion for the year, but down is down, and that's mostly good.  I say 'mostly' because The KrugMan reminds us that while the Revenue Side is looking better, we still have a problem with the Spending Side because we're actually not spending near enough - which of course, is exactly the opposite of what the Repubs want us to believe.

We're still stuck in this weird Deleveraging Loop - demand is low because people aren't making/borrowing the money they need to buy a lot of stuff, which means the producers aren't making a lot of stuff; which means they don't need to hire a lot of workers; which means people have less to spend on stuff etc.  And as Governments at state & local levels are hemmed in by Balanced Budget requirements (mostly driven by 'conservative' politicians) and in some cases burdened by enormous debt thanks to the sucker loans they got sold during the Bubble, they're cutting spending, which further reduces demand - and on and on and on it goes.

And so anyway, since the Repubs aren't giving up on the whole Austerity thing any time soon, and since Regular People continue trying to dump debt and nobody's really borrowing much at all, we're nowhere near outa the woods yet.

One interesting by-the-by: Simpson-Bowles warned us that we'd be in a full-blown fiscal crisis within two years if we didn't immediately adopt their plan, and - uhm, that was like 26 months ago.  OK OK; we're not exactly livin' the high life, but c'mon.

That damned Kenyan Commie Usurper keeps gettin' shit to work just to make us Repubs look bad - and you know that's all it is.  If he wasn't such a vile back-stabbin' socialist phony, this whole joint'd be in the shitter just like we said it would.  Fuckin' Obama.

The Plank In Your Eye

Fogelsang may be the best - which is why he may soon just disappear.

Forewarned

You're prob'ly gonna get this one on Facebook at some point:

So there ya go - you're welcome.

A Quick Look

I'd like to talk to you for a minute about that sign in your yard.

Let's pretend I'm a burglar.  And let's say I'm not stupid - after all, I'm reading that sign out front of your house, and I'm not in jail.

What might I be able to surmise from your very clever public pronouncements?

I think first (and in no particular order), maybe you don't really have guns, and you're just trying to sucker me into going next door.  So I'm inclined to pick our house.

Second - if you do have guns, and you post that information on a sign in your front yard, then I'm thinking you might have a pretty good collection of higher-quality firearms - maybe some rare or antique weapons to boot; and you being Mr Personal Responsibility and all, you'll have most of them conveniently stored in a central location in your house.  And since guns are really valuable and really easy to move on the black market (and very hard to trace, partly because you keep voting against anything that might make it easier for the cops to recover them for you), I'm inclined to pick your house - again - 2 for 2.  And try to remember that I have some time here - I'm not coming into your house for a gunfight - I'm gonna wait until you're out somewhere.

Third - those rotten "Librul" neighbors; the ones you seriously don't give a fuck about? The ones you want the crooks to rob - apparently so it'll teach 'em a good lesson or some such wingnut bullshit?  What exactly do you expect from them in return - when it's your place that just got trashed by the bad guys?  You get what you give, sunshine.

Last:  in my admittedly limited experience, the guy walkin' around goin', "Hey everybody - I've got a big dick" - that's usually a guy who actually has a big dick.  But the guy braggin' about his gun usually has some kinda trouble with his penis.  Just sayin'.

Today's Pix

(click on a pic to start, then → or ←)

Today's Eternal Sadness

From Tampa Bay Times:

TAMPA — A 3-year-old boy who found a gun in a backpack and shot himself died Tuesday night, authorities said, a local addition to this month's spate of child shootings nationwide.

The kid found the gun in a backpack - in his bedroom.  Would this be a different story if he'd not had access to the gun?  Would it be a story at all?

We have to start making that cognitive connection - having a gun around the house increases the likelihood of something really shitty happening just because you have a gun around the house.  And we have to make that connection beyond the obvious bit about "well, it's the uncle's fault" or "the parents shoulda taught their kid better".

Warning labels are required on 5-gallon buckets for fuck sake.  We can't figure out something to do about guns?

hat tip = Democratic Underground

Today's Vocab Word

(Courtesy Penn & Teller's Bullshit series)

Pareidolia (pron.: parr-i-doh-lee-ə) is a psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus (often an image or sound) being perceived as significant, a form of apophenia. Common examples include seeing images of animals or faces in clouds, the man in the moon or the Moon rabbit, and hearing hidden messages on records when played in reverse.

Learn something.

That Can't Be Good (updated)

I took a shower and just hung out on YouTube for a while, and this is what I got when I went back to FB.

What kinda high school fuck-around has Mr Zuckerberg been up to now?

Uh-oh, Andy.

(update)
OK, so maybe I wasn't being sufficiently paranoid.  Maybe I shoulda thunk they was spyin' on me fer the gubmint.  Sorry - I'll try to remember to freak out a little more next time.

Steely Dan Unearthed

A kind of paean to Owsley Stanley (aka Bear), without whom "the 60s" might never have happened - or at the very least, without whom "the 60s" may well have been very very different indeed.

Here's to those noble few Legacy Pukes who figure out how to turn normal.

Access Is An Important Thing

I'm always going on about infrastructure.  I'm a Keynesian after all, and I know the thing that gets us pulled out of the big dumper is when we spend a lot of money on some big fuckin' thing or another - dams or highways or parks or whatever.  Because we have to have access - to capital and to markets and to raw materials and all the stuff that makes it possible for the stuff we wanna sell to get to everybody else who's busy trying to sell stuff.

When I'm thinking about these things, it starts to make some sense to me that an inability to come to terms with our idolization of firearms means that Guns now comprise the basic infrastructure for Crime and War and Suicide and way too many other self-destructive behaviors.

At about the 3:40 mark, Hayes tells us about a guy who survived jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge, saying, "I still see my hands coming off the railing...I instantly realized that everything in my life that I thought was unfixable was totally fixable - except for having just jumped."

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We put up all kinds of nets and cables and plexiglass thingies on bridges and other Suicide Infrastructure trying to make it a little harder to gain access to the means of our self-ushered departure - why can't we figure out something to do about the guns that make for 20,000 Dead Americans every year?

Everything is totally fixable except for having just pulled that fucking trigger.

Today's Eternal Sadness

And I guess I'm wondering where the 2nd Amendment Meatsitcks are.  Why aren't they jumping up and down screaming about protecting that woman's rights?  If she can be charged with all that criminal stuff just because some stupid little kid was messin' where he didn't belong, then what hope do the rest of us have to protect ourselves from an intrusive gubmint?  What about the personal responsibility of that kid!?!

But wait - I almost forgot - the response is always tailored.  So this one will be spoken in soft reverential tones.  Something like, "That woman's a sinner and God has punished her for straying from the path of the righteous - but that precious little boy is another fallen hero; a martyr to the cause of Freedom, and we mustn't use this tragic and isolated incident for political purposes - we must keep silent during this time of prayer and reflection blah blah fucking maudlin blah."

hat tip = Addicting Info