Today's Riddle

Q: Why don't blind people go skydiving?

A: It scares the dog.

Today's Pix

Today's Eternal Sadness

From the suburbs of Houston:

HARRIS COUNTY, Texas—Deputies said a 69-year-old homeowner, who died after he was shot by his own gun during a scuffle with a burglar, begged for his life.

Prosecutors said the suspect, Daniel Durham, has admitted to shooting the victim, who was later identified as Don Frazier, a preacher and writer who has made numerous TV appearances.

The crime happened around Friday 1:15 a.m. at Frazier’s home in the 4200 block of Amber Lake Dr. in northwest Harris County.

Sheriff’s deputies said the preacher and his wife heard a noise downstairs in their garage—it was the sound of their generator turning on. Deputies said when the preacher went down to investigate, somehow Durham managed to take the homeowner’s gun.

From Brady Campaign:

Where there are more guns, there are more gun deaths.

• Gun death rates are 7 times higher in the states with the highest compared with the lowest household gun ownership. (Harvard School of Public Health, Harvard Injury Control Research Center, 2009).
• An estimated 41% of gun-related homicides and 94% of gun-related suicides would not occur under the same circumstances had no guns been present (Wiebe, p. 780). 
• Household gun ownership levels vary greatly by state, from 60 percent in Wyoming to 9 percent in Hawaii (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2001).

And the kicker?  Don Frazier (hereinafter known as "the dead good guy with a gun") was a former cop.  He was a chaplain, but he wore the uniform and he carried a badge, and that means he was trained in weapons and tactics, and well aware of the dangers of confronting a perp.  

Obviously, we don't know what all happened, but what we do know - the one fact that we have to own up to and stop deliberately ignoring - is that if there's no gun in that situation, Don Frazier's probably still alive.

Need another kicker - all you steely-eyed pragmatic capitalists?  Doesn't it make you wonder what's happening to certain of your insurance premiums because of your blind unwillingness to recognize and deal with avoidable risk?

When you so eagerly jump into bed with the Ammosexuals, does it just never cross your mind that you're actually insisting on making it possible for outfits represented by the NRA to shift their liability burden onto the families of gun violence victims - the victims you're helping to create every time you vote for a Gun Fondler?

Sunday Evening Tunes

Reminiscing --Little River Band




Fooled around And Fell In Love --Elvin Bishop




Long Cool Woman In A Black Dress --Hollies




Keep Your Hands To Yourself --Georgia Satellites




Short Skirt, Long Jacket --Cake




Bring It On Home To Me (cover)--Dave Mason

'Scuse Me, Mr Erickson?

Exactly what "consequences", Erick?  And when you use the word consequences, aren't you inviting the inference that you think sex is "dirty" and that people who engage in such activities deserve to be punished for it?   What horrible "consequences" do you think should befall us for the sin of enjoying a little adult playtime by way of some mutually consensual sex, you pinch-faced blue-nosed twat waffle?

Are you really so totally muddled with shame (and the crushing guilt that you've imposed on yourself because of a neolithic fairy story about talking snakes) that you just can't help but project all your pre-adolescent sexual-identity confusion onto the rest of the world?

Seriously - I don't mean to Concern Troll you here, but you gotta talk to a professional about some of these issues, man.

Fuck - I get tired of this shit.

Today's Toons

Love Letters --Ketty Lester

Resolving Cognitive Dissonance

Alvin York was something of a rambunctious bad boy in rural Tennessee who got religion and tried to dodge the draft in 1918 by claiming Conscientious Objector status.  The draft board denied his petitions and appeals, and he was drafted for service in WW1.

His religious fervor conflicted with his "duties" as a soldier in the US Army, and since cognitive dissonance generally moves an individual to change his behavior and/or his thinking, Alvin did what most every young man does who gets hammered every day with military training and indoctrination - he (more or less) simply rationalized his way into thinking god wanted him to be a good little soldier, and of course, that led him to alter his beliefs enough to view the German soldiers as a line of turkeys that he then proceeded to shoot one-by-one in the back - and that makes him a true American hero and we all wish we could grow up to be just like him.

Are You Listening, America?

From The Telegraph:

BBC journalists are being sent on courses to stop them inviting so many cranks onto programmes to air ‘marginal views’. BBC Trust says 200 senior managers trained not to insert 'false balance' into stories when issues were non-contentious.

The BBC Trust on Thursday published a progress report into the corporation’s science coverage which was criticised in 2012 for giving too much air-time to critics who oppose non-contentious issues.

The report found that there was still an ‘over-rigid application of editorial guidelines on impartiality’ which sought to give the ‘other side’ of the argument, even if that viewpoint was widely dismissed.

Some 200 staff have already attended seminars and workshops and more will be invited on courses in the coming months to stop them giving ‘undue attention to marginal opinion.’

“The Trust wishes to emphasise the importance of attempting to establish where the weight of scientific agreement may be found and make that clear to audiences,” wrote the report authors. “Science coverage does not simply lie in reflecting a wide range of views but depends on the varying degree of prominence such views should be given.”

What They Say

The guy on the left is Bob Beauprez (running for Colorado Governor), and the other one's just a doofus blogger somewhere in central Virginia.

On occasion, Bob kinda channels Willard Romney and says things like "...we’ve got almost half the population perfectly happy that somebody else is paying the bill..."

Now, there're two guys pictured above.  Half of two is one.  So Bob thinks one of the guys in that picture is a deadbeat moocher who wants taxpayers to pick up the check.

But guess what, Bob; only one of the guys in that picture is trying to get on the government payroll - Bob.

It's not so much that guys like Beauprez love to show just how hollow and superficial and lazy their thinking is; and it's not even the fact that so many of us are willing to go along with it.

What makes me crazy is that the whole thing is just flat false.  Saying "half of the people want a freebie blah blah blah" is another way to reinforce the bullshit about "both sides do it"; "they're all same"; "everybody does it" etc etc etc, in order to keep us all paralyzed, in order to maintain the status quo, in order to keep us from electing people who want to serve rather than rule - you know; people who actually know what the fuck self-government's about and how to make it work.

So no, Bob - we're not all the same, and not even close to half of us are looking for the rest to support them - you are.

Here's An Ad

You can go here to help get this ad on the air.

hat tip = Addicting Info

Happy 4th Everybody

No One To Depend On --Santana

She's Not There (cover) --Santana

Our Poor Attempts At Justice

"...if there's any way to kill evil, it's not by killing men. And if there's any way of destroying hatred and all that goes with it, it's not through evil and hatred and cruelty - it's through charity and love and understanding..."



Leopold and Loeb

Dear Rush

So if them wimmins could just not "do the one thing that makes birth control necessary..." - funny how guys like Limbaugh can't quite bring themselves to talk about sex in any way that's not coded and secretive and laced with the adolescent snickering that reinforces the stilted manipulating notion that sex is dirty, and that a total slut is the only kind of woman who'd actually want to have sex - especially with an emotionally crippled bucket of pus like Rush Limbaugh.

But anyway, it does kinda pop into my brain that given the facts emerging now about sexual assault being lots more of a frequent and widespread problem, maybe birth control needs to be considered just another tool in the Self Defense Kit for every woman - right along with the whistle and the mace and the pocket .38, which of course, can be yours now for the low low price of $289.99 -  available online!

It's just a pure wonderment the NRA hasn't hired me on as a marketing consultant.  I got truly great ideas.

Today's Pix

What Big O Said

Obama's take during Sam Alito's confirmation hearings:

"But when you look at his record - when it comes to his understanding of the Constitution, I have found that in almost every case, he consistently sides on behalf of the powerful against the powerless; on behalf of a strong government or corporation against upholding American's individual rights."

"If there is a case involving an employer and an employee and the Supreme Court has not given clear direction, he'll rule in favor of the employer. If there's a claim between prosecutors and defendants, if the Supreme Court has not provided a clear rule of decision, then he'll rule in favor of the state. He's rejected countless claims of employer discrimination, even refusing to give some plaintiffs a hearing for their case. He's refused to hold corporations accountable numerous times for dumping toxic chemicals into water supplies, even against the decisions of the EPA. He's overturned a jury verdict that found a company liable for being a monopoly when it had over 90% of the market share at the time."

"It's not just his decisions in these individual cases that give me pause - it's that decisions like these are the rule for Samuel Alito, not the exception."

File it under:

hat tip = Democratic Underground

Science, Bitch

This just in -

LONDON (AP) — DNA testing is taking a bite out of the Bigfoot legend. After scientists analyzed more than 30 hair samples reportedly left behind by Bigfoot and similar mythical beasts like the Himalayan Yeti, they found all of them came from more mundane creatures like bears, wolves, cows and raccoons.

In 2012, researchers at Oxford University and the Lausanne Museum of Zoology issued an open call asking museums, scientists and Bigfoot aficionados to share any samples they thought were from the legendary ape-like creatures.
"I thought there was about a 5 percent chance of finding a sample from a Neanderthal or (a Yeti)," said Bryan Sykes of Oxford University, who led the research, the first peer-reviewed study of Bigfoot, Yeti and other "anomalous primates." The study was published online Wednesday in the journal, Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Sykes and colleagues tested 36 hair samples from Bhutan, India, Indonesia, Nepal, Russia and the U.S. using DNA sequencing and all of them matched DNA from known animals. Most were from bears, but there were also hairs from a Malaysian tapir, horses, porcupine, deer, sheep, and a human.

While Sykes said they didn't find any proof of Bigfoot-related creatures, he acknowledged their paper doesn't prove they don't exist.

That last bit - "he acknowledged their paper doesn't prove they don't exist" is an important thingie.  While it's likely that these bigfoot critters don't exist, nobody worth listening to is trying to disprove anything.  The point of the exercise is to test whatever "evidence" is presented simply to find out if that evidence supports the hypothesis or not.

The other thing to remember is that even tho' there's real proof that these hair samples are confirmed not bigfoot, I'm betting this disappointment doesn't portend the demise of the Bigfoot Industrial Complex.

There's a True Believer born every minute.

Today's Econ Lesson

Today's Pix