A Mighty Metaphor

Jon Stewart having fun mocking the Press Poodles is nothing new - and also something that never gets old.  

The Daily Show
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But what really comes to mind is the Clauswitz bit - paraphrased for my purposes: A good plan for your news show can survive anything except contact with actual events.

But the suits are in charge now, so "actual events" - aka: Reality, aka: The-Fucking-Truth - none of that matters if it's in conflict with The Plan.

Management made enormous commitments and invested at great expense to come up with The Plan, and Management is never wrong.  We must stick to The Plan - The Plan is everything because fuck you, we'll drop you like a bad habit, that's why.

Of course, Stewart says it a lot better.

Unintended Truth

Some of those dirty fuckin' hippies have been trying to tell us for a pretty long time about how the "political center" has moved way to the right over the last 30 years, and practically everybody I know either shrugs it off or tells me I'm a fool for believing the left-leaning media which we all know has a wicked librul bias.

But then, along comes Steve King making a bit of a slip as he introduces Moose-alini at the annual meeting of the Kaptain Kornball Klub in Iowa.  

This turns into the Mother of All Word Salads as it appears Palin tries it without the teleprompter, but listen close in the first few seconds:



Yeah, I know - I couldn't stay with it either.  After the first few minutes, it's like you can hear your brain cells screaming as they start to die.

BTW - everybody and his fuckin' uncle is running on the Repub side so far, and I think it might be because the rubes' pockets aren't quite as deep as they used to be - having nuthin' at all to do with stoopid GOP economic policies of course - so you have to show up and do some of the huckstering in person - gotta work 'em a lot harder than just a coupla years ago.

I'll go out on what I consider a very short limb here, and I'll say that everybody not already positioned to get rich by holding an elected office is in this thing to boost their mailing lists, bolster their networks of "supporters", and make it all pay off by hittin' up every yokel for a generous donation...cuz that's what most of these jag-offs are - they're panhandlers; they're fuckin' moochers playin' every sucker for every dime, every chance they get. And boy has it been a good long run.

hat tip = Little Green Footballs

Today's Pix

Comin' Back On Ya, Barry

OK, to be real clear - I hate the thought of the Secret Service guys brainstorming on how to handle this new type of potential threat, and coming up with the idea of carrying Obama around in a bullet-proof sedan chair or some-fuckin'-thing, but at the same time, why am I having such a hard time not thinking, "Payback's a bitch, ain't it?"

--and--

As Meat-Space becomes too dangerous for everybody but the cops and the military, when might we expect the emergence of the first All Cyber-Space President?

Today's Quote

"If you're very very stupid, how can you possibly realize that you're very very stupid?  You'd have to be relatively intelligent to realize how stupid you are.  This explains almost the entirety of Fox News." --John Cleese

Monday Tunes

Fever (cover) --A Fine Frenzy





Albatross --Fleetwood Mac





Duck Before You Drown --Dinah Washingtion




La Vie En Rose (cover) --Sophie Milman




Exactly Like You --Diana Krall





Dance Me To The End Of Love --Madeleine Peyroux





Europa --Santana

Dearest Anti-Vaxxers

Sunday Funnies

Outa The Mouths Of Babes

So, "conservatives", DumFux News gets called out and then spanked by a dozen teenagers because it's just way obvious that Rupert World is a fantasy (aka: bald-faced lie), but you still hang in there believing practically everything that falls out of Bill O's ass - what does that say about you?  

We all find it difficult admitting we've been wrong, and/or that we've been bambozzled, but seriously, you can't just go on denying reality when a high school journalism class knows more about Press Corps Ethics than your #1 Cable News Channel.

The real danger in having your head that far up your ass is that even if you open your eyes, all you're gonna see is your own shit.

Today's Chart

I have to think long and hard about how the hell I'm gonna get a coupla 17-year-olds thru the next 4 years of college.

I don't like thinking about that right now, but what I really don't wanna have to fuck with is the belief on the part of so many rubes that "them durn thugs are getting all the scholarship money, and all the good placements in all the good schools just because they're black and it ain't fair that they're takin' the spot of a deserving white child blah blah blah."

(btw - the rubes really do use the word "thug" in polite company so they don't have to use the word "nigger".  Yes. Really.)

Anyway, here's another of my handy dandy charts to illustrate just how stupid some of these clowns can get.

That tiny blue line at about 12 o'clock on the doughnut is the one-quarter of one percent of the total scholarship money available which is actually "earmarked" for use by kids with brown skin.  Which means that the white people, who make up about 80% of the total population are collecting most of the remaining 99.75% of the bucks.  Sound familiar?

Could you please stop bitching about it now?

The Honesty Episode

Keep it 100.

Get Your Bucket List In Order

The hard-workin' kids at The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists did this presentation midday yesterday.  

But somehow, it just wasn't deemed quite as important as the story about Boehner once again gettin' butt-fucked behind the coat rack in DC.  

It didn't have the appeal of The NFL Scandal du Jour (I helped on this one - my bad).  

Somehow, we needed to know about the awesome manliness of Chaz Bono more than we needed to know that the people who actually understand this shit are kinda fucking worried that we're about to screw the pooch like we're all amped up on Ex and Crystal at a Lady-N-The-Tramp costume party.  

What the fuck, you guys!?!

See the whole nightmare here.

Billy Belichick

...rhymes (in a Slant Rhyme kinda way) with Lyin' Sack O' Shit.

hat tip = FB friend KH

Maybe That's It

We spend an awful lot of time and energy trying to figure out what's wrong up in this joint.  And for once, maybe looking to a nice simple bumper-sticker exlanation is all we need to do.

"You know that being American is more than a matter of where your parents came from.  It is a belief that all men are created equal and that everyone deserves an even break." --Harry Truman

"...everyone deserves an even break."  That's it.  So now all we have to do is figure out - do we have too many suckers, or do we have too many PT Barnums?

hat tip = FB friend VWE

Today's Pix

Playing The Turn-Around

It's all in the talent of the speaker to use the language of Reasonability and Anti-Theocracy in order to manipulate the crowd into 1) agreeing that what we have now is a Theocracy, and 2) since you agree that's what we have, then how can you disagree with replacing it with a better one?  Of course, he's banking on the rubes not being able to recognize the false premise, ie: that Atheism is just another religion.  

The whiplash from this kind of rhetorical gymnastics is enough to put normal people in traction.  But the rubes ain't normal people - they eat this shit up like it's 2-fer Tuesday down at Luby's.  It actually makes sense to 'em.

But in case you missed it, the kicker's up front; when he says it's not about how ol' Pappy Huck wants to be president - no - he hears the call of that god feller sayin' HE wants Ol' Pap to be president cuz we need somebody who's right with the lord; somebody righteous to straighten us all out and help us get our minds right; somebody god has anointed to be our leader.  So gosh, if god says he needs me to do it, I guess I should do it even tho' I really don't wanna do it unless of course god-his-own-bad-self says I should do it, so tarnation, I reckon I'll just hafta go ahead and do it then.

They pull this shit cuz it works.  Huckabee knows I'll see this clip, and he knows I'd never support him anyway so it doesn't matter what I think of it.  And he knows it'll get thru to his intended audience on the "conservative" websites, and he knows they're all duly afraid of guys like me so they're at practically no risk of reading anything contrary like my little post here, and he knows that even if a rube does hear some criticism, it'll make exactly zero difference because they're all pretty much the brand of "christians" who've been innoculated against the truth anyway.

And just for the hell of it (file this next bit under "I really don't give a fuck about Godwin"):

The bad guys don't come in looking like the bad guys.  The Little Corporal didn't just pop up in 1933 and say, "Hi, my name's Adolf and I'll be your fuhrer this evening - OK, so let's go fuck up the jews."

Star-Spangled Exceptions

Jon Stewart on DumFux News apology (no-go zones), and the one exception we have to make to The First Amendment in order to protect America from things like The First Amendment:

VICE is Nice

What we don't know will kill us.

DumFux News vs France

John and Mike from Fox News - Eric et Quentin du 16/01

Everybody knows:

--you never get involved in a land war in Asia
--you never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line

But only slightly less well-known is that you're just never gonna out-bitch-slap the French.

Just Shut Up And Listen

17 minutes that started continued some pretty momentous change.  The prospect of change (and the agents of that change) proved so scary and dangerous that the authoritarian assholes among us moved quickly to try to kill it.



The problems King was trying to tell us about haven't gone away.

Here's one of the more imprtant points from a longer talk by Tim Wise - I've put this one up a coupla times before, and I'll keep going back to it until I can recite it verbatim:



It's about what's fair vs what's unfair.  It's about getting USAmerica Inc to live up to its promises, and to stand by its word.  It's about demanding "the power" to behave like regular human beings.

We should never expect anything more, and we must never accept anything less.

And also too - if this doesn't apply to you, then why're you gettin' all bent outa shape about it?

Today's Worst

Seems like every other day or so, something pops up about something I've really loved for a long time that makes me have to consider blowin' it off for a while or telling it to take a flying fuck at a rollin' doughnut.

The world just kinda sucks right now.

Some Charts

So Obamacare isn't quite the disaster we were told it would be.  In fact, it's begininning to work very much like it's supposed to work, which isn't as good as it could be, but a shitload better than what we had before.

More people have coverage, which means the risk is spread thinner, which means the average cost goes down some, which means more people can get coverage, which means etc etc etc - gee it's almost as if there's some kind of Basic Principle Of Economics at work or something.

Anyway, The Commonwealth Fund did their survey, and guess what:

For the first time there are fewer working people without coverage.
For the first time, there are fewer working people struggling to pay their doctor bills.
For the first time, there are fewer working people putting off a visit to the doctor due to cost.

For the first fucking time - seems vaguely significant to me.

And yet it still seems like we've got a particular bunch of rat-bastard politicians trying to pull a very standard maneuver - where they fuck something up and then stand aside and say, "Hey look everybody - it's all fucked up.  We need to trash this thing and start over" 

("so we can take the credit for solving a problem we caused in the first fucking place" - that's the part you don't ever say out loud).

These people have no soul and no honor.

hat tip = Democratic Underground

Happy National Religious Freedom Day, Everybody

From a proclamation by The Prez in 2014:

In 1786, the Virginia General Assembly affirmed an ideal that has long been central to the American journey. The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, penned by Thomas Jefferson, declared religious liberty a natural right and any attempt to subvert it "a departure from the plan of the Holy Author of our religion, who being Lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either." The Statute inspired religious liberty protections in the First Amendment, which has stood for almost two and a quarter centuries.

Today, America embraces people of all faiths and of no faith. We are Christians and Jews, Muslims and Hindus, Buddhists and Sikhs, atheists and agnostics. Our religious diversity enriches our cultural fabric and reminds us that what binds us as one is not the tenets of our faiths, the colors of our skin, or the origins of our names. What makes us American is our adherence to shared ideals -- freedom, equality, justice, and our right as a people to set our own course.

Thomas Jefferson was asked what he tho't were his greatest achievements, and he listed his big 3:

Conspicuously absent are things like Minister to France, Sec'y of State, President of the United States. You know - the small stuff.

But it's that 2nd one that makes it all really shine.  We have a legitimate claim to being exceptional because we broke free from the cynical manipulations of politicians that grow from the arbitrary bullshit of religion and religious authoritarianism.

An Act for establishing religious Freedom.

Whereas, Almighty God hath created the mind free;

That all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens, or by civil incapacitations tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and therefore are a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, who being Lord, both of body and mind yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was in his Almighty power to do,

That the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavouring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world and through all time;

That to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions, which he disbelieves is sinful and tyrannical;

That even the forcing him to support this or that teacher of his own religious persuasion is depriving him of the comfortable liberty of giving his contributions to the particular pastor, whose morals he would make his pattern, and whose powers he feels most persuasive to righteousness, and is withdrawing from the Ministry those temporary rewards, which, proceeding from an approbation of their personal conduct are an additional incitement to earnest and unremitting labours for the instruction of mankind;

That our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions any more than our opinions in physics or geometry,

That therefore the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence, by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages, to which, in common with his fellow citizens, he has a natural right,

That it tends only to corrupt the principles of that very Religion it is meant to encourage, by bribing with a monopoly of worldly honours and emoluments those who will externally profess and conform to it;

That though indeed, these are criminal who do not withstand such temptation, yet neither are those innocent who lay the bait in their way;

That to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition of their ill tendency is a dangerous fallacy which at once destroys all religious liberty because he being of course judge of that tendency will make his opinions the rule of judgment and approve or condemn the sentiments of others only as they shall square with or differ from his own;

That it is time enough for the rightful purposes of civil government, for its officers to interfere when principles break out into overt acts against peace and good order;

And finally, that Truth is great, and will prevail if left to herself, that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons free argument and debate, errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them:

Be it enacted by General Assembly that no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief, but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of Religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge or affect their civil capacities. And though we well know that this Assembly elected by the people for the ordinary purposes of Legislation only, have no power to restrain the acts of succeeding Assemblies constituted with powers equal to our own, and that therefore to declare this act irrevocable would be of no effect in law; yet we are free to declare, and do declare that the rights hereby asserted, are of the natural rights of mankind, and that if any act shall be hereafter passed to repeal the present or to narrow its operation, such act will be an infringement of natural right.

It's all about the freedom to think.  Like the man said, "for I have sworn upon the altar of god eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."

Welcome To Pottersville

It's Russia TV, but the truth is what the truth is.

Know Your Rights: Medical, Dental and Mental Health Care (2012 resource): Prison officials are obligated under the Eighth Amendment to provide prisoners with adequate medical care. This principle applies regardless of whether the medical care is provided by governmental employees or by private medical staff under contract with the government.

Know Your Rights: Publications Sent by Mail (2012 Resource): Restrictions on prisoners’ access to publications cannot be arbitrary; they must be “reasonably related to legitimate penological interests.” That said, in practice, courts often will accept the judgment of prison authorities in deciding whether censoring a publication is reasonable.

Know Your Rights: Legal Rights of Disabled Prisoners (2012 Resource): Statutes exist under both the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) to protect the rights of prisoners with disabilities.

LA County Jails: The ACLU has served as a court-appointed monitor of the L.A. Country jails since 1985. During this time, the ACLU and the ACLU of Southern California have documented overcrowding, unsanitary conditions and extreme abuse of inmates at the hands of deputies. The ACLU is working to expose and put an end to the unconstitutional conditions and ongoing climate of violence the nation’s largest jail system.

Stop Solitary - The Dangerous Overuse of Solitary Confinement in the United States: Over the last two decades corrections systems have increasingly relied on solitary confinement as a prison management tool – even building entire institutions called “supermax prisons” where prisoners are held in conditions of extreme isolation, sometimes for years or decades. But solitary confinement jeopardizes our public safety, is fundamentally inhumane and wastes taxpayer dollars. We must insist on humane and more cost-effective methods of punishment and prison management.

Nice Work If You Can Get It

Per military.com:

At least 184 Humvees, 58 tanks and nearly 700 other vehicles have been destroyed or damaged in the more than 1,600 airstrike missions that have hit more than 3,200 ISIS targets in Iraq and Syria since bombing began last Aug. 8, the U.S. Central Command said Wednesday.

In addition, a total of 26 MRAP (Mine Resistant Ambush Protected) vehicles and armored personnel carriers, 79 artillery and mortar positions, and 673 infantry fighting positions were destroyed, CentCom officials said.

An unknown number of Humvees, M1A1 Abrams tanks and MRAPs were captured by ISIS when Iraqi national security forces fled and abandoned their equipment as ISIS swept into Iraq last June.

The formula for success in American Capitalism is pretty simple - at least it is in certain sectors of our economy, and once you've managed to put in place the basics of the incestuous Revolving Door setup that's been cultivated since before WW2:

Military Brass at the Pentagon recruited and groomed for executive positions at Big Defense once they "retire"

plus

Lobbyists who are almost invariably former and/or future Staffers at the Pentagon or in Congress

plus

Coin-Operated Politicians who collect monster campaign donations from Big Defense in return for their influence when it comes time to "appropriate" the Tera-Bucks for all the National Security shit we need in order to fend off invaders from anywhere from Ulan Bator to Alpha Centauri.

plus

The Press Poodles necessary to keep us confused as to who should be held responsible for fucking us with our pants on - paralyzing us in the middle with the Both Sides Narrative

But once in a while we hear the story I quoted above, and it gets a little clearer that some of these jokers are playing an even simpler and much shorter version of the game.

1) Sell large quantities of materiel to the Federal Government in order to supply "our friends" (Iraq, Syria, etc) with the means to defend themselves, making sure of course all that gear is not the latest and greatest.

2) Wait for "our friends" to lose all that gear to ISIS (eg) - we all knew that was gonna happen, but hey, how do we just sit around and do nothing blah blah blah.

3) Send in the air strikes that destroy the gear, which makes it necessary to supply more gear, which makes it necessary to destroy more gear as it falls into the wrong hands - and which also makes it vital to develop even better gear for ourselves, because - remember(?) what if that gear falls into the wrong hands!?! (and then begin again at #1 above).

What They Don't Tell Ya

"They" want us to believe (need us to believe, actually) that this:

...was an integral part of this:

 ...and this:

But it wasn't.

It was staged.  Hard for me to imagine anything sadder...

...except for how the "conservatives" are busy slagging Obama for not going there himself, and/or for not sending some high-profile representative, but c'mon, guys - if he was there, you'd be slagging him for doing another phony photo-op.  Get some new material - you're making this too easy.

hat tip = Little Green Footballs

Trying

Trying not to laugh while trying not to cry while trying not to puke, while trying to figure out how to make sense of these 1st World Problems of Privilege.

Ohio State wins the big game (beat the snot outa the Ducks), and it came as no surprise to anyone when the Traditional Celebratory Riot soon followed.


And so also too, I just can't resist:  When will the moderates of White Middle Class America step up and not only take full responsibility for the actions of their people - but take it upon themselves to eradicate the violent behavior of the Young-Adult-ish Extremists among them?

Today's Irony

NYPD Edition:

What's Next

A gazillion people turned out in Paris for a rally to show support for Charlie Hebdo, and now the magazine is set to pop their latest edition with this cover art:

Way to go, guys.

From The Guardian:

Zineb El Rhazoui, a surviving columnist at Charlie Hebdo magazine who worked on the new issue, said the cover was a call to forgive the terrorists who murdered her colleagues last week, saying she did not feel hate towards Chérif and Saïd Kouachi despite their deadly attack on the magazine, and urged Muslims to accept humour.

“We don’t feel any hate to them. We know that the struggle is not with them as people, but the struggle is with an ideology,” she told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

The two gunmen who launched the attack on the magazine’s offices last Wednesday killed five of France’s top cartoonists, saying that they wanted to avenge the prophet for Charlie Hebdo’s satire of him.

The grieving journalists who survived the murderous assault promised it would be business as usual at the weekly publication.

--and-- 

Asked to explain the magazine’s front cover, which features a cartoon of a crying Muhammad wearing a “Je suis Charlie” badge under the heading “All is forgiven”, Rhazoui said: “We feel that we have to forgive what happened. I think those who have been killed, if they would have been able to have a coffee today with the terrorists and just talk to ask them why have they done this … We feel at the Charlie Hebdo team that we need to forgive.”

So the exercise for a while will be to find as many Radical Islamist websites as possible (harder than I tho't), and post one of Charlie Hebdo's cartoons in the comments section.  

(Is it weird that Googling "islamist assholes" only gets a list of blogs here in the US where all they ever do is hate on Muslims?  Yeah, OK - I don't think it's weird either.  Just checking.)

Which BTW should remind us that this is about pushing back against a shitty ideology, and not about fucking up the everyday people who get bamboozled (or bullied) into going along with a shitty ideology.

Today's Molly

"There is no inverse relationship between freedom and security. Less of one does not lead to more of the other. People with no rights are not safe from terrorist attack.” --Molly Ivins

Quotes from Ms Ivins are almost invariably borderline spectacular - I may have to make this a regular feature.

Hands To Yourself, Rev

This one's been making the rounds lately.



I think maybe we start with whether or not the tough-guy routine is nothing more than standard macho fantasy bullshit.  Probably it is, but in light of recent events, maybe we shouldn't be making that assumption.  

But anyway, if we take it at face value, we need to be asking why your all-powerful god needs you to go around beatin' up on smart-ass teenagers.  That's number one, but second: has the statute of limitations run out on this obvious perpetration of Assault and Battery?  And couldn't we get after this asshole for the commission of a hate crime?

Thirdly - how come these knuckleheads don't realize they're demonstrating to most of us that they're no different from radical religionists all over the world (and all throughout history) who're more than a little willing to attack and to brutalize and to murder anybody daring to mock certain fairy tales?

hat tip = Raw Story

The Greatest Lessons

...are the ones you don't remember learning.



hat tip = Addicting Info

Crumb

Is It God?

No.  But when something like this pops up, it's easier to understand how some of us insist on thinking that way.

I guess I just don't see how stopping at god is somehow more wondrous than our ability to push a little bit past that point to where we can actually figure out how such an amazing thing can happen.

Like the man said - we are stardust.  We are made of the same stuff everything else in the universe is made of.  We are the cosmos trying to know itself.

More info at UPI.

Zimmerman III

...or IV, or whatever we're up to now.  It's hard to keep track.  I guess I'm wondering when they'll finally get tired of fucking around with this guy and just Cop-Murder him, and I'm not advocating for the cops to punch this asshole's ticket BTW, but isn't that kinda what we do now?  We have a Criminal Justice System that doesn't work for shit, and an awful lot of our cops have come out of a military where the basic policy is Kill Your Way To A Peaceful Resolution - what're we waiting for?

Or maybe he's still alive because he's not anonymous enough to be disposed of discreetly.  Celebrity has its privileges here in USAmerica Inc.

CNN:

George Zimmerman -- the man acquitted by a Florida jury over the death of Trayvon Martin -- was arrested Friday in Florida on suspicion of domestic violence with a weapon, local authorities said.

Zimmerman, 31, was arrested by police in Lake Mary around 10 p.m. and booked into the John E. Polk Correctional Facility, according to that facility's website.

In addition to domestic violence, Zimmerman faces a charge of aggravated assault, reports the Seminole County Sheriff's Office, which operates the Polk Correctional Facility.

And one more little thing - battalions of Daddy State Chicken Chokers spent buttloads of time and energy defending George Zimmerman and slagging Trayvon Martin; when might we expect them to step up and tell us they got that one wrong?

The Real Contagion

From Brother Charles at Esquire:

There is a very sad story in Cleveland concerning what happens when the TV lights dim, and when one 24-hour news-cycle crisis abates and another one erupts somewhere else.

You may recall that, back when Ebola was going to kill us all in our beds because President Barack Nkrumah-Kenyatta wanted all of western civilization to start spitting up its own entrails, a 29-year-old nurse named Amber Vinson contracted the disease and, before she was aware of that fact, flew to Cleveland, and then drove to Akron, for a wedding. She shopped for a dress at a place in Akron called Coming Attractions. Then, after the wedding, she flew back to Dallas, where she became symptomatic both of Ebola infection and of cable-news hysteria. The sad punchline is that, because of the publicity around Vinson's visit, and the subsequent mindless terror, Coming Attractions announced it was going out of business.

People stopped patronizing a store where their favorite Nightmare Du Jour went shopping - because they were afraid of getting the dread disease - never stopping to think that maybe they weren't in any real danger since the owners/employees of the store - the people who were there all day every day - weren't fucking sick.

But hey - we live in a time when it's important to be oblivious to having been issued your opinions by Corporate News, and that those opinions must never be examined in the light of actual evidence.

And so, unfortunately, once again, the clear-eyed pragmatic capitalist rubes fail to reach the obvious conclusion that being stoopid is bad for business.

Too Close For Comfort

Makes me wonder if "witnesses" and the sketch artist are just having us on a bit, or if we've arrived at the point where the Radical Assholes are feeling so immune to the law that they can do anything they want, knowing they can hide behind a veil of notoriety - claiming Political Witch Hunt if anybody decides to go after 'em.

(tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors is a fucking genius)