Today's Pun

If Satan ever goes bald, there will will be Hell Toupee.

Hat tip = oldest boy, Nick

Yay, Exceedingly Rich People

I'm glad the new baby in the British royal family is alive and apparently doing just fine.

However, I'm having a pretty hard time understanding why we need to spend the better part of 3 days talking about it, devoting hours of air time and gallons of ink, and the large piles dollars it takes to put all those Press Poodles on the ground to gush about the astoundingly awesome and thoroughly amazing prospect of two normal people who fucked at least once, and then had a baby because of it.

Get over yourselves.

Away For A Bit

So I'm doing the vacation thing here in Colorful Colorado, and my iPad is not the most effective tool for posting stuff.  Please excuse my inability to dazzle you with my brilliantly insightful horse shit for  a while.

Another thing I've noticed is that editing an existing post on iPad can be very difficult because there seems to be something of a glitch in that I can't scroll down thru the post that I'm trying to fix.

If anybody else is having the same problem, please take a moment and advise.  Thanks.

See y'all later.

Today's Oxymoron

Political Reality.

Evolution.  Cigarettes.  Fracking.  Climate Change.  Vaccination.

The list goes on and keeps growing as we keep adding more "issues" that oughta be decided in the lab or in the field by people who're trained to figure out just how all this shit works.

BTW, I put quote marks around the word "issues" because the things on that list are not issues at all.  The things on that list are facts.  They're facts that can be - and have been - verified by the people who actually know what they're doing.

And the "fact" that you have an opinion to the contrary doesn't mean your opinion must be considered in any way equivalent to those facts.

But I digress - the point here is that I was recently hipped to an old Henrik Ibsen play from the 1880s that cuts so close to what's going on now that it made my ears feel hot and the hair on my back stand up.

Here's a little taste from a TV production done in the early 1960s:

(The town is on its way to becoming a big commercial success as a health spa, but a local doctor (Thomas) discovers the water is contaminated, but his brother Peter who is mayor and so a bidness player is hard to convince - and if you've been paying any attention to the redux of Newspeak and Coin-Operated Government and Know-Nothing Rubes and any number of "types" running rampantly abroad in this joint lately, you can guess what a big sloppy mess it turns into - including the old timey versions of Press Poodles and Bloggers)

Sub-par sound levels, but not so bad considering the times and the fact that they did it live in a TV studio.



The more things change...dontcha know.

hat tip = The Professional Left podcast

Here's the Librivox audiobook:

Today's Pix

Death Penalty

I have to admit I think there are people in the world we can do without - Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, Justin Bieber - you know, the worst of the worst.  So it's hard for me to say we should lose the death penalty altogether.

That said, we need to take a good hard look at what we're doing and where we stand relative to the rest of the "civilized" world.

State-Sponsored Barbarism isn't exactly what we want USAmerica to be known for is it?

And when we're the only "free" country that still kills its own citizens on a regular basis, it seems American Exceptionalism is completely ass-over-apricots.

Miles Davis

One of the weirdest cats in the business, and one of the great horn players ever.



Sorry - can't find a good link at Amazon.

Ella Sings Billie

The Marmalade

Lesson Time

And this from Tim Wise via HuffPo:

You remember, forever and forever, that moment when you first discover the cruelties and injustices of the world, and having been ill-prepared for them, your heart breaks open.

I mean really discover them, and for yourself; not because someone else told you to see the elephant standing, gigantic and unrelenting in the middle of your room, but because yousaw him, and now you know he's there, and will never go away until you attack him, and with a vengeance.

Saturday night, and I am writing it down so that I will not forget -- because I already know she will not -- my oldest daughter, who attained the age of 12 only eleven days ago, became an American. Not in the legal sense. She was already that, born here, and -- as a white child in a nation set up for people just like her -- fully entitled to all the rights and privileges thereof, without much question or drama. But now she is American in the fullest and most horrible sense of that word, by which I mean she has been truly introduced to the workings of the system of which she is both a part, and, at the same time, merely an inheritor. A system that fails -- with a near-unanimity almost incomprehensible to behold -- to render justice to black peoples, the family of Trayvon Martin being only the latest battered by the machinations of American justice, but with all certainty not the last.

And so begins the task.  It's like we have to start all over - or at least we have to back up to about 1985 and go over the whole thing again.

What makes this really hard for me is the (by now) standard pop tune coming from "the right", which goes something like this:  "We have a black guy in the White House, and we have a black guy sittin' on SCOTUS, and a black guy as AG, and black folk all over the damn place - that has to mean that we really are in Post-Racial Happy-Time, which means I'm free to turn loose all this pent up bigotry that's been festering in my soul for 30 years while I pretended not to be the complete asshole I always knew it'd be OK to revert to being once we got past all this racism talk."

Fuck me now, Jesus.

One Last Thing

...on the George Zimmerman cluster fuck.

Zimmerman goes free, and the gun he used to kill Trayvon Martin will be delivered back to him; and his Concealed Carry permit will be reinstated as well.

Nobody knows yet, of course, what he plans on doing - this is America after all and if you can't figure out how to cash in on the notoriety you've gained from murdering a teenager then you're the worst kinda loser - but one thing's for sure: Zimmerman will definitely be packin' his gat because now he has good reason to fear for his safety because of all the haters out there.

The guy with the best justification for his paranoia is the one with the guilty conscience.

Here's hopin' Karma's a real thing.

Civil War II

'Conservatives' are exceedingly fond of prattling about FREEDOM as if the word itself had some kind of magical power.

It's as if the Conservative Handbook has instructions that read: "Never mind the actual concept the word is supposed to represent - that shit's for the pansy-ass eggheads who spend way too much time thinking - just intone the word whenever you're in a debate that you know you're losing because you've brought nothing to the party but bumper stickers and t-shirts to rationalize putting your basest instincts into action.  Don't think, just act; and if anybody calls you on it, they're just a LibTard who's trying to take away your FREEDOM."

Here's a bit from a speech Mr Lincoln delivered in Baltimore almost 150 years ago.

"We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men's labor. Here are two, not only different, but incompatible things, called by the same name-liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different and incompatible names-liberty and tyranny.

"The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as a liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty, especially as the sheep was a black one. Plainly the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of the word liberty; and precisely the same difference prevails today among us human creatures, even in the North, and all professing to love liberty. Hence we behold the process by which thousands are daily passing from under the yoke of bondage, hailed by some as the advance of liberty, and bewailed by others as the destruction of all liberty. Recently, as it seems, the people of Maryland have been doing something to define liberty [abolishing slavery in the state]; and thanks to them that, in what they have done, the wolf's dictionary, has been repudiated."

giant hat tip = Blue Virginia

The KrugMan Speaks

Generally, I need people to play in their own yards, but if you have something worth saying you should say it.

To fully appreciate what just went down, listen to the rhetoric conservatives often use to justify eliminating safety-net programs. It goes something like this: “You’re personally free to help the poor. But the government has no right to take people’s money” — frequently, at this point, they add the words “at the point of a gun” — “and force them to give it to the poor.”

It is, however, apparently perfectly O.K. to take people’s money at the point of a gun and force them to give it to agribusinesses and the wealthy.

Now, some enemies of food stamps don’t quote libertarian philosophy; they quote the Bible instead. Representative Stephen Fincher of Tennessee, for example, cited the New Testament: “The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat.” Sure enough, it turns out that Mr. Fincher has personally received millions in farm subsidies.

 And if it's worth hearing then I'm listening.

Today's Pix

Zimmerman Walks - Reax

Zimmerman Walks

I guess I should own up to some things.

• I wasn't very into the Zimmerman trial.
• I half-expected the jury to let him off.
• I'm not overly surprised that the reaction from "the black community" hasn't been too bad (so far), mostly because I fear that reaction is coming in the form of outright reprisal.  So if you're looking for a great medium-to-long-run business opportunity, open a gun store in any Majority Black neighborhood ASAP.

But I'm more than a little bothered about the total lack of focus on the bullshit Stand Your Ground law itself.

There's a lot more to it than this, but the salient points are that Trayvon's walking home a little after dark when some misguided dipwad with a bad case of The Wyatt Earps goes out of his way (and against the cops' direct instruction) to confront the kid on the off chance that Martin is up to no good, and happens to fit with Zimmerman's bigoted imaginings of what a bad guy looks like according to some pretty fucked up cultural history in Sanford FL.

That's the synopsis when I'm feeling charitable; when I'm not assuming Zimmerman was just out looking to goad somebody into a fight so he'd have a plausible excuse to gun him down.

I don't want this to turn into a big long thesis, and I don't know how to make it good and short, so I'll just sum it up:  Without Stand Your Ground, the trial probably turns out differently, but without the gun, everything turns out differently.

One last thing - when we're looking back on the events and the causes leading to Civil War II, this is likely to be a big one.

Ya heard it here first.

Malala Yousafzai

She stood up at home to speak her mind. She said girls should have the same rights as boys - to go to school; to learn whatever they need to know to become who and what they want to be; to make their own decisions and to be left alone to guide their own destinies.  So last year, when she was 15 years old, the AfPak-equvalent of Ted Nugent & George Zimmerman shot her in the head because her ideas threatened their sense of 9th-century entitlement.

Yesterday, on her 16th birthday - which made it a classic go-blow-yourself gesture - Ms Yousafzai stood up at the UN and said in a clear strong voice (tho' not in these specific words), "Fuck you, Ted Nugent."

And fuck all ya'll if you think you have enough guns and ammo to silence everybody who wishes to speak openly about aspiring to make the world just a bit less hostile to people who only want to live their lives as they choose.  (And isn't that what the Nugents are always pretending to be saying anyway?)

Better men and bigger assholes than puny dicks like Nugent & Zimmerman have been trying to conquer the world for a coupla thousand centuries.  And guess what - the world remains undefeated.  Wanna know why?  Cuz good ideas are bulletproof, ya fuckin' doofus.

Our Esteemed Press

This made it onto the air at KTVU in Oakland:

According to PR Spokeswoman, Lotta Suxon-Swallows, KTVU's General Manager Edgar (Curly) Hawgpekker was unavailable for comment, but she did say a statement would be posted to their website by the company's legal advisors, Dumas & McPhail.

Would it come as a surprise for anybody to learn KTVU is the local affiliate for DumFux News?  Yeah - I didn't think it would.

big hat tip = Balloon Juice

Potentially Great News

We won't have Ol' Vaginal Bob to kick around anymore.

From The Richmonder blog via Democratic Underground:

Multiple sources in Richmond's legal community have confirmed to me that the investigation of Star Scientific by state and federal prosecutors turned up what they feel is sufficient evidence to charge Virginia's Republican Governor Bob McDonnell and his wife Maureen with one or more felonies and in consequence, McDonnell is attempting to negotiate his resignation in exchange for no prosecution of Virginia's first couple.

There seems to be a pretty good chance for this thing to splash a fair bit of sludge on Kenny The Kooch as well.

One other thing that remains is to see if Eric Cantor has been taking any steps to insulate himself from the fallout.  Prob'ly a pretty good bet that has/is, so I called Cantor's DC office for a statement, and the guy who answered the phone told me he wasn't "at liberty to talk about it", and that also he wasn't allowed to tell me when or if there would be any statement coming from Mr Cantor.

He did tell me I could check here: http://majorityleader.gov/Newsroom/

I'll keep checking and get back to ya'll if I learn anything.

Today's Pix

With a special edition of The Parade Of Stoopid:

Thank you.  We take you now to our regularly scheduled pix: