Just A Tho't

"A mote of dust suspended on a sunbeam." --Carl Sagan



hat tip = Facebook friend VWE

So, Earth is all we've got.  It's home and there's literally nowhere else to go.

And then there's a guy like Charles Koch (just an example), who seems to be going to great lengths to fuck up the joint, making life in our little corner of the universe less and less likely to continue.

If some nutball ammosexual suddenly got all tree-hugger-y and walked up to Ol' Chuckles and poked 5 or 6 holes in Mr Koch's torso with a Glock .40, do ya think the shooter's lawyer'd have a chance to get him off by claiming it was justifiable under the Stand Your Ground statutes?

Just wonderin'.



(No - seriously, you knuckleheads - don't be out there pullin' shit, OK?)

Almost In Passing

I've been trying to think my way through all this Mike Brown / Eric Garner stuff; crashing around in my head looking for some boiled-down guiding principle to apply that might help me sort it out.

And then: The law must be a shield, not a sword.

For a good 2,000 - 10,000 generations, The Law was used and abused as a way to rationalize Might-Makes-Right.  As long as I had some reasonable expectation of being able to take you in a fist fight, I could jack your shit; and fuck you if you don't like it cuz fuck you, that's why. All the big guys did it cuz that's just what a big guy could do.  And it worked - Egypt, Assyria, Greece, Rome, Britain, etc etc etc - you get the idea.

Unfortunately, saying it that way makes it sound like we'd have to look way far back to find good examples, and that makes me think we're feeling a little too comfortable about ignoring the need to examine our motives and our reasoning, and our willingness to shrug it all off like a buncha fuckin' Eloi.

But gosh, it seems we don't have to look back very far to find some examples of people doing some pretty fucked up things because they had the juice to make the law do whatever they wanted it to do in order to pad their bank accounts or act out their domination fantasies or whatever their issues were at the time.

--slavery in America was lawful; and so was Jim Crow after that.

-- the genocide committed by Nazi Germany was mostly lawful under German law, and according to most written international law in effect at the time.

-- apartheid in South Africa was established by law.

-- Saddam Hussein claimed at his trial in Baghdad in 2006 that his order mandating the execution of 148 persons in response to an attempted assassination of him was lawful.

-- the Israeli military justified their heavy use of cluster bombs during the 2006 war by stating that “[a]ll the weapons and munitions used by the IDF [Israeli Defense Forces] are legal under international law and their use conforms with international standards” (Shadid 2006, A01).

-- the 2003 US invasion and occupation of Iraq was lawful according to American interpretation of law.

The law has to be a shield.  It has to be there to protect us from overbearing, over-reaching, evermore ambitious and power-craving despots.  When the law instead protects the police (eg) from being held to the same standards of justice as apply to everybody else, then the law has become a sword against the people, and it will be changed by the people one way or another.  It has to be changed because it's become a contradiction.  And while contradictions exist, they can't prevail.
(all you 'conserva-tarians' might recognize that one from the Sacred Texts of Our Lady Ayn of Rand)

For my own self, I kinda like The American Exceptionalism way, and I'll keep trying to do it that way.  But if it has to be changed the old-fashioned way, then I'll be sadly watching from the bench, unsurprised.

I just really hope we can get back to being that exception.

I Hope Not

These 2 movies are not bad.  Some decent values statements, and some really good Movie Moments.

I only wish I could shake the creepy feeling that they're really just 2-hour ads for companies with piles of money so ridiculously gigundous that they can produce feature-length infomercials, and get us to pay twelve bucks a head for the privilege of absorbing their Corporate Branding Messages.

Today's Olbermann

Since he got back on the air, it seems like ESPN has been doing its best to hide him from us by bouncing his show time all over the damned place.

As of last night: ESPN2 at 5pm, and repeating once or twice a day at odd hours on other of the ESPN channels - like I said, ya gotta hunt for it.

Anyway, the guy can be a little bombastic and a bit precious on occasion, but there's no better truth-teller anywhere on TV.

Friday Music

Arms Of A Woman --Amos Lee





Gimme One Reason --Tracy Chapman





I Will --Beatles





For No One (cover) --Emmylou Harris





And So Begins The Task --Stephen Stills





Laughing --David Crosby

In Case You Missed It (updated)

...or in case you've forgotten what real journalism actually looks like:

BY ROLLING STONE | December 5, 2014

To Our Readers:
Last month, Rolling Stone published a story titled "A Rape on Campus" by Sabrina Rubin Erdely, which described a brutal gang rape of a woman named Jackie at a University of Virginia fraternity house; the university's failure to respond to this alleged assault – and the school's troubling history of indifference to many other instances of alleged sexual assaults. The story generated worldwide headlines and much soul-searching at UVA. University president Teresa Sullivan promised a full investigation and also to examine the way the school responds to sexual assault allegations.

Because of the sensitive nature of Jackie's story, we decided to honor her request not to contact the man she claimed orchestrated the attack on her nor any of the men she claimed participated in the attack for fear of retaliation against her. In the months Erdely spent reporting the story, Jackie neither said nor did anything that made Erdely, or Rolling Stone's editors and fact-checkers, question Jackie's credibility. Her friends and rape activists on campus strongly supported Jackie's account. She had spoken of the assault in campus forums. We reached out to both the local branch and the national leadership of the fraternity where Jackie said she was attacked. They responded that they couldn't confirm or deny her story but had concerns about the evidence. 

In the face of new information, there now appear to be discrepancies in Jackie's account, and we have come to the conclusion that our trust in her was misplaced. We were trying to be sensitive to the unfair shame and humiliation many women feel after a sexual assault and now regret the decision to not contact the alleged assaulters to get their account. We are taking this seriously and apologize to anyone who was affected by the story.

Will Dana
Managing Editor

It's something of a big deal because when you get it wrong you have to own it, and you have to stand up, and you have to say you got it wrong.  Which is something that happens once in a while, but which is something that seems never to happen in a certain segment of "the media" where they get it wrong a lot and never say so.  

But this development does nothing to lessen the rather dire state of affairs on- and off-campus. We have a problem here and we're not gonna get any nearer to finding the solutions we need unless everybody's willing to stand up and speak the truth as they see it - even when the truth is that they kinda blew the report by not properly vetting the fucking source - which just gives all the wrong people all the perfect excuses to do exactly what RS seems suddenly to be doing, which is to blame the fucking victim.

FUCK ME FUCKLESS WHAT THE FUCK!?!  ISN'T THAT PARTA THE FUCKING PROBLEM IN THE FIRST FUCKING PLACE!?!

Ahem - sorry - channeling Charlie Skinner there for a minute.

The thing that does change right now tho' is that all the usual Smarmroaches will probably come scurrying out to start chanting "Death to The Demon Liberal Media", and the rubes can go back to feeling smugly comfortable sitting and waiting for the Daddy State to tell them what to misunderstand about the next episode of All My Phony Outrage.

hat tip = Facebook friend HH

NPR Awakes

I don't do NPR much anymore because they've been beaten into submission, and they almost always skew to the Both-Sides malarkey.  But when they get one right, I wanna be here to say they got one right.

Part Of An Oldie

Tim Wise talking about Racial Profiling and the idiocy of some of our law enforcement policies.  

To wit:
Brown Males are 3 times more likely to be stopped and searched by the cops, even tho' White Males are 4 ½ times more likely to be in possession of contraband on those fairly rare occasions when they do get stopped and searched. (this bit starts at about 7:45)

And The Beat Goes On

Rolling Stone has a bit on 11 instances of Cops Killing Brown People:

Brown and Garner were two people living a thousand miles apart, at very different points in their lives. But they share one tragic fact in common: They were both black men executed in broad daylight by cops. And unless the U.S. Justice Department nails their killers on federal civil rights charges, neither of their families will get even the cold comfort of a day in court.

Sadly, there's nothing new about this pattern of lethal racial profiling. For far too long, African-Americans in this country have had to worry about whether police will kill their loved ones on the slightest pretext without facing any meaningful punishment. Racist violence is a deep-rooted part of this country's history, and it's going to take substantial nationwide reform of the policing and court systems to change this awful reality. Here are 11 of the most heartbreaking examples of black men, women and children killed by police in the last 15 years. Their stories are different in many ways, but none of them deserved to die the way they did – and we could fill many more pages with others like them.

1. Amadou Diallo (1999)
2. Patrick Dorismond (2000)
3. Ousmane Zongo (2003)
4. Timothy Stansbury (2004)
5. Sean Bell (2006)
6. Oscar Grant (2009)
7. Aiyana Stanley-Jones (2010)
8. Ramarley Graham (2012)
9. Tamon Robinson (2012)
10. Rekia Boyd (2012)
11. Kimani Gray (2013)

'Conservatives' spend a buncha time and lung capacity carping about Da Gubmint being overbearing and repressive, but not when it comes to killing brown people - then it's nothing but "cops making a noble effort to do a very dangerous job".

Almost as an aside, in all but a couple of these cases, the cops testified to being afraid the 'suspect' had a gun.  So, also too, 'conservatives', maybe you could rethink some of your bullshit rhetoric about the absolute-ness of the 2nd Amendment.  

After all, if it's OK for you guys to have any gun you want, and it's OK for you to do whatever you want with your guns (including defending yourselves from a violent and repressive Gubmint), then you should be praising brown people for doing exactly the same for themselves, and you should be condemning whoever shoots them down.  Unless of course y'all actually are the racist assholes your arguments and actions usually reveal you to be.

Today's Pix

Some Questions

From WaPo via Little Green Footballs:

Larry McQuilliams had “let me die” written in marker across his chest when he fired more than 100 rounds in downtown Austin early Friday morning.

McQuilliams, who Austin Police officials called a “homegrown American extremist” with ties to a Christian identity hate group, was shot dead on Friday by a police officer outside the department’s headquarters.

Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo told reporters on Monday that officers who searched the gunman’s home found a map with 34 targets, including two churches. McQuilliams had fired bullets into Austin police headquarters, a federal courthouse and the Mexican consulate in downtown Austin on Friday. He also tried to set the Mexican consulate building on fire.

--and--

Among other things investigators need to determine: How McQuilliams got his weapons. He had been arrested in 1998 for driving under the influence and in 1992 for aggravated robbery, Acevedo said. He also served time in prison for a bank robbery.

Phineas Priesthood affiliates were tied to a string of 1996 bank robberies and bombings in the state of Washington.

Mark Potok, a senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center, told The Post that the Phineas Priesthood is a “concept” that originated with “Vigilantes of Christendom,” which came out in 1990. The group takes its name from a story about the biblical figure of Phineas in the book of Numbers.

1) Isn't this exactly what the FBI and ATF and DoD and about a dozen other agencies have been trying to warn us about, while "conservatives" are always saying it's just Obama's anti-white-man propaganda?

2) When can we expect the NRA to chime in with, "we just need to enforce existing law" (when it comes to keeping guns away from convicted felons), while re-asserting the bullshit about how there's no need for background checks?

3) Shouldn't somebody out there on the Far Right be saying something shitty about Chief Acevedo?  (this one may take some time because they have to make some small effort to expressed it in terms couched ever so deeply in coded racist language so as to give themselves a little plausible deniability)

4) This happened Monday, and maybe I just missed it, but how come "the librul media" wasn't all over it?  Unless of course, "The Liberal Bias of Mainstream Media" is one big fucking lie.

Today's Homemade Music

The Children's Illustrated Book Of Music --Janapriya Levine



hat tip = Little Green Footballs

Today's Toon

And a comment from Keith:

Wanting And Getting Ain't The Same

We get a solid confluence of Religion and Rightwing Politics because there's a buttload of people out there who just flat-out gotta have answers that are simple and authoritative and permanent.

Their religious traditions condition them to receive Revealed Truth, and so they look for that process to play out with everything else.  They need that Father Figure to tell them what's what.

One of the best examples I can think of right now is the whole mess about Climate Change. How many times have you heard some Chucklehead say if Global Warming was a cause  for tropical storms like Rita and Katrina to be worse than they shoulda been way down there in Nawlins in the summertime, how can it then also be causing problems like Polar Vortex and killer snowstorms in Buffalo in the wintertime?  They're looking for that definitive immutable answer that explains everything for them; and once attained, never requires them to learn anything new.

Just like that crap about Mike Brown - it has to be a definitive pronouncement (which is usually pretty arbitrary), and not generally a logical conclusion following thought and deliberative consideration.

The Daddy State rules - but only until you start to understand that for every question which is gnarly and complicated and weird, there's an answer which is simple and elegant and fucking wrong.

Jim Webb

The guy says he's only "exploring" whether or not to run for Prez in 2016, and he seems to be a truly decent human being, but...

First, never let the facts get in the way of a good slogan.

But second, we really don't need another candidate who just sounds good.  

Add a little bullshit - a little - and the roses grow better.  But if all you start with is bullshit, then try not to act too surprised when we see you as just another Bullshit Marketeering Creation spouting cutesy little bromides.  (Hey - if you think that crap is good Tweet material, then you don't get to bitch at me about fucking up my metaphor)

Anyway, I'm not the one running for office.  

We deserve better - try harder.

Where's The Outrage?

From Deseret News, via HuffPo:

A Utah high school student nearly launched a shooting rampage but a classmate saw his loaded gun and prevented a tragedy on Monday, according to police.

The student who saw the gun told a school resource officer who apprehended the allegedly armed teenager, thwarting a potential shooting at Fremont High School in Plain City, Utah, according to Fox Salt Lake City. The school was evacuated.

The 16-year-old suspect was arrested and taken to a juvenile detention facility, according to Desert News.

He allegedly admitted to police that he wanted to shoot a girl with whom he'd had a relationship and then open fire on others, according to the New York Daily News.

"We do not think that there were any additional students who were armed," Weber County Sheriff's Lt. Lane Findlay told KUTV. "It appears to be a lone student."

The teen, who has not been identified because he is a minor, faces charges of possession of a weapon with intent to assault, possession of a firearm in a restricted area and possession of a firearm by a minor.

But wait just a durn minute - the kid with the gun hadn't done anything but exercise his god-given right to keep and bear arms. Why is the "hero student who stopped a potential shooting incident" getting away with this blatant and unwarranted imposition of Nanny State tyranny?

How did anybody know for sure - before anything happened - that the kid with the gun was intending to do anything other than making sure he could defend himself and his schoolmates against somebody else?

Where's the NRA when you really need 'em?

Happy Zappadan

Tonite (Bummernacht) marks the end of the 21st year since our dearly demented Brother Frank split the scene.  And tomorrow begins Zapandan 2014.  Blessed be the Sheiks and the Weasels and the Pygmy Ponies, and all the rest.

There are more love songs than anything else. If songs could make you do something we'd all love one another. --Frank Zappa

Cosmik Debris:

Today's Modern Policing

Hard to imagine why 'conservatives' haven't been totally maniacal about this shit - complete with brain foam erupting from their ears and every pore and follicle of their skull covers.  

Why has this not registered even the tiniest little blip on the Gubmint Conspiracy radar?

WaPo piece by Gene Robinson:

According to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report, in 2013 there were 461 “justifiable homicides” by police — defined as “the killing of a felon by a law enforcement officer in the line of duty.” In all but three of these reported killings, officers used firearms.

The true number of fatal police shootings is surely much higher, however, because many law enforcement agencies do not report to the FBI database. Attempts by journalists to compile more complete data by collating local news reports have resulted in estimates as high as 1,000 police killings a year. There is no way to know how many victims, like Brown, were unarmed.

By contrast, there were no fatal police shootings in Great Britain last year. Not one. In Germany, there have been eight police killings over the past two years. In Canada — a country with its own frontier ethos and no great aversion to firearms — police shootings average about a dozen a year.

If you pay any attention to the stories of Sherlock Holmes or Colombo or House or Scooby-fucking-Doo, then you know mysteries get solved when the hero sleuth manages to put one bit of info together with a coupla other bits of info, and suddenly everything starts to make sense.

Here in USAmerica Inc, it almost seems like somebody wants to keep us from putting certain bits of info together.

And in case this one slipped past ya - the NSA (eg) demands we shit-can our civil rights and allow them to put together all manner of bits of info.  

So anyway, how is it that in a system of Self-Government, regular people are always having to push rocks up the hill while a shrinking number of very privileged snoots are always hanging out at the top telling us we should just be grateful for the banana peels they're tossing our way?

It's a wonderment.

A Crowning Achievement

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,The Daily Show on Facebook,Daily Show Video Archive

Here's what I'd like to think: When you've twisted and warped your entire world into an elegant and obvious parody of yourself, it has to be over for you.  

That's what I'd like to think.

Go Places, Do Things

I have to wonder tho' - by thinking there's some place else we can go, we can continue the rationalization that it's OK for us not to take good care of this place.