Today In Woo

(paraphrasing):

"Teaching one religion to children is called indoctrination.  Teaching all religions to children is call inoculation." --Matt Dillahunty

Here's what bugs me about the religiousness of a certain brand of TheoPolitics in USAmerica Inc right now:

Kids go off to school and they learn about Evolution, which eventually and necessarily requires them to question their religious training, especially if it's been all about Gardens and talking snakes and Jesus walking his pet velociraptor in the park etc.  Well, sometimes that leads to trouble because their parents have been so busy trying to make sure those kids are securely bubble-wrapped in dogma, they're gonna make sure the next school board meeting turns into Night Of The Living Dead.

And yes, you have the right to know what's going on in the classroom, and yes, you have the right to be heard when the curriculum decisions are made.  But let's not get off into the weeds, cuz here's the point: 

Let's say I've taught my kid that the world is a flat disc under a crystal dome, and it's being carried thru the ether on the back of giant turtle.  Then one day the kid comes home from school and he tells me his teacher has come up with this thing called "math" and he says the numbers lead him to believe the world is a sphere.  As a living thinking human possessed of a living thinking brain, do I conclude there must be something wrong with that stupid teacher and you can bet that stupid school's gonna hear from my lawyers?  Or am I honor-bound to consider that maybe there're things I don't know about - things I may find useful - and need to learn?

Science starts with a hypothesis, tests it against what's already been reasonably proven to be true, and then draws a conclusion as to what's now most likely to be true given this new information at this point in time.

Religion starts with an arbitrary conclusion, and then has to manufacture evidence (ie: make shit up) to support it.  The kicker: You don't really think it was simple coincidence that GW Bush made way too many of his disastrous policy decisions based on that model of "thinking" didya?

Ya'll knew all that already - but it bears repeating.

Openly Secular

Iraq-mire

NYT:

WASHINGTON — In a major shift of focus in the battle against the Islamic State, the Obama administration is planning to establish a new military base in Anbar Province, Iraq, and to send 400 American military trainers to help Iraqi forces retake the city of Ramadi.

The White House on Wednesday is expected to announce a plan that follows months of behind-the-scenes debate about how prominently plans to retake Mosul, another Iraqi city that fell to the Islamic State last year, should figure in the early phase of the military campaign against the group.

The fall of Ramadi last month effectively settled the administration debate, at least for the time being. American officials said Ramadi was now expected to become the focus of a lengthy campaign to regain Mosul at a later stage, possibly not until 2016.

The additional American troops will arrive as early as this summer, a United States official said, and will focus on training Sunni fighters with the Iraqi Army. The official called the coming announcement “an adjustment to try to get the right training to the right folks.”

--and today's Understatement-That-Makes-It-Sound-Like-Ya-Really-Don't-Give-A-Fuck award goes to:

The United States Central Command’s emphasis on retaking Mosul depended critically on efforts to retrain the Iraqi Army, which appear to have gotten off to a slow start. Some Iraqi officials also thought the schedule for taking Mosul was unrealistic, and some bridled when an official from the Central Command told reporters in February that an assault to capture the city was planned for this spring.

A slow start - from 2003.  12 years.  That's not a slow start.  That's not a start of any kind.  That's an ending, and it's called "petrification"; or "putrefaction"; or some other term we use to indicate that it's over.

Iraq has no army, and Iraq has nothing out of which anybody can hope to build an army; because there is no Iraq.  Iraq exists only as the memory of a few arbitrary lines the British drew on a piece of paper 90-some years ago.  It's Done. It's Kaput. It's Finished. It's Dead Dead and Fucking Dead.  Give it up already.

And gee - it's almost as if somebody put the whole thing in motion on purpose; like they figured on it being one big unfixable FUBAR; and they'd leave it for the Dems to waste time and resources trying to tidy up for a while; and when enough Rubes are ready for the Etch-A-Sketch move, they amp up the rhetoric with, "well - it's Obama's problem now - been Obama's problem for a while - he can't just blame it all on Cheney forever - looks like leadership trouble to me - y'know the Bush Doctrine is good policy, but Obama's incompetence blah blah blah..."

This is a very standard play. 

• Fuck something up
• Point at it and say, "Hey look - it's all fucked up"
• "I have a plan..."

But let's be sure not to talk about any of that.  And let's definitely not concentrate on how our mighty military will once again be showing us their Selflessly Courageous Awesomeness by going back to some desert shithole to fight and to bleed an to die so Halliburton and Royal Dutch Shell and Northrup Grumman can add a coupla nickels to their Quarterly Earnings Reports, and then turn around and use a good buncha those hard-earned Blood Dollars to create an even more reliable generation of Coin-Operated Politicians.

Let's just keep blabbin' about what a wonderment it is that there can be so many voters in the big squishy middle who can't quite make up their minds about all this.

Fuck me silly, Bubba - I just can't stand this shit sometimes.

The Golden Arrow

A classic from 2007:

Special note 1: starting at about 02:15, she makes the point that among the 100 biggest economies in the world, 51 of 'em are Corporations - 8 years ago in 2007.  

Things have "improved" since then, with the number of Corporations in those top 100 spots dwindling to 37 (as of about 2012 or 14).  So, OK, but take a look at how the smart money has been playing its hand of late, and you might notice that the power those companies can wield in terms of controlling interests in governments has increased (by orders of magnitude me thinks) - so the actual number of dollars in those "economies" isn't as significant as the fact that they've been very busily ensuring themselves of a reliable military capability (eg).

And how do they do that?  Well, in terms that are admittedly kinda simplistic, they don't have to own the whole government when they can own several of the key people who run the government.

Out of these 10 randomly selected folks: John McCain, Bruce Rauner, Lindsey Graham, John Boehner, Dianne Feinstein, Scott Walker, Jeb Bush, Hillary Clinton, Tom Cotton and Jack Lew - which ones do you think would go against the opinions of the people who spent the money to put them in their positions of power in the first place?

Special note 2: Externalizing The Costs - about 08:15 - is where she addresses the bullshit notions of Supply Side Economics.

Anyway, what really and truly bugs me is the fact that we're still not talking about sustainability as a guiding principle.  I can see some efforts here and there, but it looks more like a fashion thing than it does a real shift in how we do things.

Change is scary, but the like the man said, it's either change or die.  So yeah.

Today's Charlie

Charlie Pierce at Esquire Magazine:

It doesn't matter how many people climb into the Republican clown car or how close Bernie Sanders is polling in Iowa. The deep-seated rot that has been injected quite deliberately into our elections is the story from which all others flow. The primary and fundamental debate must be between those who profit from the corruption, those who simply accept it and opt out, and those people who want to reverse the slow suicide of democratic government. God help us all if the latter group doesn't win.

At the risk of being just the tiniest bit too fucking obvious, the results of an election literally mean nothing if the process itself is crooked.

In whatever despotic shithole you can name - Saddams' Iraq or Pol Pot's Kampuchea or Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe, et cetera ad nauseam - the election returns are always lopsided wins for the strong-arming dickhead du jour.

Cutting to the chase here - if I can manufacture a landslide, I can manufacture a horse race.  

So I have to ask myself, in a country where ⅔ of the voters are clearly in favor of 3 or 4 or 5 top issues, and when it's also fairly clear that generally the candidate of one party agrees with them and the candidate from the other party doesn't - how do we keep getting these down-to-the-wire-by-a-nose "victories"?

Seems more than a little curious to me.

Perspective

Via HuffPo:

Interesting that "war" isn't being fought quite the same these days.  Where it used to be all about sticks and rocks and guns and bombs and hyper-active teenagers blowin' shit up, now we use lawyers and trade agreements and Techie Hacker Interns and 30-something MBAs to keep the cost down.  Although one thing seems never to change - there's always a very aggressive media effort to make us think we're all gettin' a helluva deal.

But Conquest by Corporation does no less violence to the populace, it's just that the  infrastructure is left more or less intact - it's much more cost-effective that way - and it looks a lot better on TV.  I hear "Trade Agreement" now, and I'm thinking "White-Collar Neutron Bomb".

Of course, the resulting immiseration effect is almost exactly the same because you can't do greater violence to somebody than to push them down into the abject poverty that has always grown out of the kind of Run-Away Darwinian Capitalism being put in place by Coin-Operated Politicians.  And that last sentence should be more like "being put back in place..." because the world is starting to look a whole lot like the world of the 18th century - you remember, way way back when we decided not to play that fucked up game here; when we promised ourselves to work hard at being the exception to it.

So, trying not to go Full Cynical, and to maintain some glimmer of hope - even if it's only a hope for people I won't live long enough to know - my standard admonition still holds:  A wide variety of assholes have been out to conquer the world for 20,000 generations.  But somehow, the world remains undefeated.

Too Obvious?

Watch this:

...and try not to think of this:

But always always always try to remember that nobody's trying to save the planet.  The planet doesn't need saving any more than it "needs" people - or any other life form for that matter.

What we're trying to do is to keep the joint from becoming uninhabitable for our own bad selves.

The decisions we make about work and family determine how our kids will live.  

The "bigger" decisions we make about the economy and about politicians and governments and about the biosphere and how we all co-exist in (and with) the natural world - those decisions are all about how our kids will die.

Gotta start making some smarter choices.

hat tip = Addicting Info

Towards The Meritocracy

I have nothing against some good and healthy Intergenerational Wealth Transfer - it's an important tool in building strong communities.  And it's worked wonders for everybody who's been born into White Middle Class America because of course, our system is the perfect mechanism for separating the people who're smart and rich from the people who're lazy and stupid.

To paraphrase: Capitalism has not failed us; you have failed Capitalism.

But "good and healthy" is not what we're doing with the No-Taxes-For-Rich-People-Ever policy drift, and it should be really obvious that it's not what we're doing, now that we've been trying to do it that way for 35 years (rapidly accelerating for the last 15), and we've ended up having to spend billions of precious few tax dollars to subsidize millions of Americans who can't quite make it working their asses off at Wal-Mart just because we refuse to elect politicians who have the balls to tell Alice Walton she'll have to figure how to eke out a living on something less than the interest she "earns" on her personal fortune of more than THIRTY-FUCKING-BILLION-DOLLARS.

Tax the fuck outa the estates of the UberRich and we won't get any more Legacy-Fuck-Pukes like George W Bush as "president". 

Call it the Paris Hilton Prevention Act, and make sure it never sunsets.

Shut Up And Take My Money

Some Tweets

Rick Perry. Because America needs a leader who talks about quitting America.

— John Fugelsang (@JohnFugelsang) June 4, 2015

Rick Perry, the governor who signed off on the most executions in American history, asks voters for a second chance.

— John Fugelsang (@JohnFugelsang) June 4, 2015

Hats off to @LindseyGrahamSC for building a foreign policy using only 100% recycled Neocon crazytalk: http://t.co/sgwfrmKNJ1 @SMShow

— driftglass (@Mr_Electrico) June 4, 2015

Today's Charlie

Esquire:

Most of the poll-related buzz today has to do with the new CNN numbers that are alleged to be bad news for Hillary Rodham Clinton (and for Jeb too, truth be told). But The New York Times has another poll that is both a cause for great optimism, and a source of some dread. Simply put, the numbers in the poll show that an overwhelming majority of Americans of all ages, and of both parties, realize that the Citizens United decision and its progeny have deformed American politics almost beyond recognition.

--and ending with-- 

So what the polls shows is the country knows that its elections largely are a rigged business, but that the country also rather has given up on the only mechanism through which the problem can be corrected. At a fundamental level, this should surprise nobody, since we've had 30 years of successful propaganda about how politics and politicians, and the government they inhabit, is some sort of alien beast, rather than something we all create, over and over again. We've had almost a decade now of efforts to make it more difficult for people to vote, a campaign run by the people whom the tidal wave of campaign money have swept into office. So what we have now is a citizenry that realizes the corruption that the Supreme Court has embedded in the political life of the country when it legalized influence peddling. And it has convinced itself that there are no remedies. So what we end up with is a WWE democracy -- rigged as hell, but entertaining. All that's missing is somebody getting hit with a ladder.

Today's Pix

Today's Video

Amy Schumer seems to be working hard and she's getting better at it.

hat tip = Little Green Footballs

Today's Pix

A Poem For Memorial Day

"You Have No Fucking Clue" 
by Vietnam War veteran Joe Depaoli

A bunch of young men in their late teens riding a bus to MCRD San Diego,
“Get the hell out of the bus and on those yellow footprints, you fucking Maggots”.
You have no fucking idea

Congratulations Marine, 
the pride one has.
You have no fucking idea

On our way by ship to Vietnam, 
riding out a two day typhoon on an old WWII troop transport.
You have no fucking idea

Off the coast of Vietnam, 
watching flairs, tracer rounds flying, shell bursts.
You have no fucking idea

Getting on a Mike boat 
and setting foot on enemy land - locked and loaded,
You have no fucking idea

An officer comes and says we can’t fire on the enemy until they fire first,
You have no fucking idea

The first night in enemy country,
You have no fucking idea

Short round, several Marines wounded,
"Corporal, take those two new Marines out about 3 clicks and set up an LP."
Night, dark as hell, seeing movement, fire M16 full auto, 
hear yells of, "I’m hit, I’m hit - cease fire", 
we just fired on or own ambush.
You have no fucking idea

Not on point today, 
Why am I flying in the air, trip wire and a grenade;
You have no fucking idea

Scraping my wounds and the wounds of guys next to me out with a brush, 
no anesthetic, 
until they are clean and bleeding,
You have no fucking idea

On the hospital ship USS Sanctuary, standing on the railing, 
watching a CH46 attempting to land on the flight deck, 
it suddenly pitches right and 19 folks are in the water… only 5 survivors.
You have no fucking idea

Alfa Company is gridded in by the NVA, 
only 26 non casualties out of 115 marines, 
rescue effort to pick up the dead and wounded, 
place dead and wounded on tanks.
You have no fucking idea

Take the wounded and dead off the tanks, 
some flesh remains on the tank exhaust, 
the burning flesh of Marines, so hastily loaded aboard,
You have no fucking idea

Back at Con Thien, only a couple of hundred incoming today, 
buddy hit twice by shrapnel, 
blew my radio away and part of one of my fingers, 
got to get him to the chopper,
You have no fucking idea

Med evac buddy, 
he lost one eye, 
at the hospital in Da Nang, 
someone yells, everyone that can get under your beds - incoming,
You have no fucking idea

On a C130 flying over the South China sea, 
finally feel a little safe,
You have no fucking idea

One month later landing at Travis AFB,
the cheers of all aboard resound as we touchdown back in the world,
You have no fucking idea

Seeing my mother and father, 
round eyes, 
no smell of cordite, 
no smell of burning 55 gallon drums of shit, 
no orders to lock and load, 
no sound of incoming, 
no dead bloated maggot infested bodies of the enemy on the ground, 
no one screaming "I’m hit - medic up", 
no more shredded jungle fatigues, 
no more dumping of enemy bodies in town squares,
You have no fucking idea

I look at my mother and father, 
dad has a fucking idea because he was in WWII, 
and my mother has a fucking idea because of being in an occupied country in WWII, 
nothing is said or needs to be said other than, “Glad you're home son.”

My wife, 
my children, 
my grandchildren, 
most of my family and friends,
You have no fucking idea

Dear Lord, 
Dear Ancient ones, 
how I wish I had no fucking idea.

hat tip = The Rude Pundit

On Memorial Day Eve

Relax and be mellow - and melancholy if you've been reflecting at all on the extraordinarily shitty reasons for feel-good bullshit celebrations on a day intended to memorialize lives cut short in service to the venal ambitions of politicians bent on conquest driven by corporate profit.

Freedom rings loudly now
Listen up, hear the sound
Screamin’ as the shots ring out
That’s what freedom sounds like now

Beating drums, fathers’ sons
Teach ‘em well to kingdom come
Steal the daylight from the sun
That’s what freedom has become

Stand over the shadow of a man
Starin’ at his lifetime with blood-stained hands
What had you planned to say?

Underground, out to sea
Bodies come to rest in peace
Fighting for the right for more
That’s what freedom has in store

Asphalt burns the un-soled feet
Vacant eyes in defeat
Lost the thread on every dream
That’s what freedom’s come to mean

Stand behind the handle of a gun
Starin’ down the future, darin’ time to run
Like time could run away

Freedom’s blowin’ sadly now
Listen up, love came ‘round
Candles burn in memory
Freedom is a fading dream

A Sunny Day In Ireland

It's generally a lousy idea to put Human Rights to a vote, but in a country that's 85% Catholic, marriage equality is now the law in Ireland. 

Way to go, Irelanders.

With the world watching, the Republic of Ireland has become the first nation to enact marriage equality by popular vote.

The leader of the opposition, David Quinn, has already conceded the loss. “Congratulations to the Yes side on their win,” tweeted Quinn, who is director of the Iona Institute. And in a more lengthy statement Quinn is already pivoting to the next fight, saying "We hope the Government will address the concerns voters on the No side have about the implications for freedom of religion and freedom of conscience."

But today is a day of celebration for supporters of LGBT rights, both in Ireland and worldwide. The margin is still being finalized but all reports say Irish voters Friday overwhelmingly approved adding this language to the country’s constitution: “Marriage may be contracted in accordance with law by two persons without distinction as to their sex.”

Coupla things:
While Ireland is the first to make it official by way of popular vote, they're the 19th country in the world to make Marriage Equality the law nation-wide.  USAmerica Inc (aka The Land Of The Free and The Home Of The Brave) funnily enough isn't among them.

And also too:

Irish people from all over the world went to great lengths and considerable expense for the  chance to go home and vote.  We've seen similar phenomena in South Africa and Argentina and Panama and Iraq and Afghanistan and Poland and Ukraine and Egypt - and we never see it here in the US.  I guess it's just another good example of how fucking exceptional we are.

Crumbling

hat tip = FB buddy LM-M

Basically - we don't wanna bust the biggies because that'll be bad for business; it could hurt some companies that are very important to all of us in a lot of ways, and could have a really bad impact on the economy as a whole.

By that logic, we don't wanna bust the meth peddler on the corner down the block because that could drive down the property values of the whole neighborhood(?)

World Music

By way of Little Green Footballs

DakhaBrahka:

Maybe I'm growing up or maybe I'm just getting weirder as I grow old, but even though there's a tinge of 1960s East Coast ersatz Bohemian (Faux-hemian?) in this, there's something I find compelling about it - and I'm not going to bail on it by calling it "oddly compelling".

There's just something kinda noble and soulful about talented people creating something interesting enough to get past the barriers of culture or politics or whatever.

Bonus - looking them up on Google and Wikipedia was worth the effort if only to have discovered there's a music genre known as Ethno-Chaos.

The world is out there - we should go take a look at it once in a while.

Today In Fashion

In the last dozen years or so, it seems like a bajillion middle-aged middle-class American men (guys with more money than either common sense or hair) grew goatees and started riding Harleys - evidence of how fucked up and phony we can get in our obsessive pursuit of a personal identity driven by the whims of fashion and imposed from the outside by marketeers bean-counters and peer pressure instead of reflection study and insight.

Or maybe I'm just feeling the effects of having binge-watched way too much Mad Men over the weekend, trying to catch myself up on a part of Cultura Americanus Vulgaris.

Anyway, along comes this - via KWTX:

WACO: (May 17, 2015) Rival motorcycle gangs turned a local restaurant into a shooting gallery Sunday afternoon and when the gunfire was over, nine people were dead and 18 were injured.

Early Monday, law enforcement had turned their attention to the risk of additional bike gang members looking to retaliate, and initiate further violence in the Waco area.

Sunday afternoon, Waco Police, assisted by Department of Public Safety troopers, police officers from several cities and deputies from the McLennan County Sheriff's Office were surrounding the Twin Peaks Restaurant, in the Central Texas Market Place after several people were reported shot during a rival motorcycle gang fight, Waco police Sgt. W. Patrick Swanton said.

Police initially said three gangs were involved, but later said factions from at least five gangs took part in the melee.

Police and troopers were in the parking lot trying to secure the area and protect citizens when a fight broke out inside the restaurant and spilled into the parking lot.

Swanton said the fight quickly escalated from fists and feet to chains, clubs and knives, then to gunfire.

Gang members were shooting at each other and officers at the scene fired their weapons, as well, Swanton said.

So - a few questions:

Assuming there're good-guy bikers with guns and bad-guy bikers with guns, which was which when the shooting started?

When the cops showed up, were they able to spot the good-guy bikers?  Or did they just assume everybody with a gun (but without a cop suit) was a bad guy who needed to be seen as a threat?

And when can we expect all you CosPlay Bikers to stand up and condemn the extremists in your midst?

The Bias Runs Deep

We learn that things are supposed to be a certain way, and it can be a ridiculously arduous task to un-learn them in order to re-learn them in a different way.

I understand it, but it still kinda pisses me off that we'll have to spend the next 30 years trying to undo the damage caused by the Political Psychology of the last 30 years and that it's more than a little probable that we'll just have to wait for the UltraCons to start dying off.

hat tip = Little Green Footballs