My POTUS

Because there's no contradiction in having a hard head and a soft heart.

I'm not a fan - Obama's done some things I strongly oppose, and he's left some things undone I wish he'd tried a lot harder to get done.  But that's just how this shit works.  And the guy's still pretty fuckin' amazing.

The Farce Awakens

"... we're not about fear; we're not about force; we're not about intimidation ..."  

That's why your action is considered an "armed occupation of federal property"?  And you brought all the guns because you have no intention of threatening violence or making a show of force?  

OK.

BTW - Messianic much, Mr Bundy?  

Here's the thing, schmuck - maybe you and the Goober Squad could just go the fuck home and let the good folks in Harney County decide what's best for the good folks in Harney County.  Could we try that?

An Acculturated Callousness

In WWI, civilian casualties accounted for about 10% of the total.  By the time we got around to invading Iraq almost 100 years later, that number had climbed to 90%. 

It's pretty simple really.  First, it's a transaction - there's lotsa people, so we can spend them - the cost of war.   

Second, in spite of our efforts to impose "Rules Of War", WWII made it very clear that nothing much had actually changed at all. 

Counter Force = kill their soldiers; destroy their weapons and equipment 
Counter Value = destroy roads and bridges and factories and farms
Counter Collateral = kill their people - the ones who become the soldiers, build the roads and grow the food.

Whoever loses the least gets to call themselves the winners, and put the other guys on trial for "war crimes".

All of that gets real clear about 42 minutes into this film:

Forgive The Oxymoron

EJ Dionne points out "conservative thinking":

"Forgive me for noting that conservatives seem to believe that the rich will work harder if we give them more, and the poor will work harder if we give them less."

Here's your visual on that one:

Today's Pix

And Another One

Poe's Law applies.

Give The Lady A Hand

I'm not looking forward to having to vote for Hillary.  I'm down with Bernie and I'll stay with him for as long as I can, but if / when the time comes, I'm not gonna behave like some crackpot wingnut.  We get plenty of that nonsense from the GOP.  This is not the movies; we don't always get everything we want; sometimes we have to go with the least bad option; etc etc etc

And please don't give me the crap about "having to choose between the lesser of two evils".  When faced with that choice, isn't it really kind of an imperative to make every effort to support the lesser of the two evils in an attempt to keep the greater of those two evils out of power?  

Or are you just too fucking stoopid to grasp the basic concept of Greater vs Lesser? 

I very much want Bernie to win it all.

But what I think is actually more important than that is to make sure the Repubs don't win much of anything.

So anyway, Hillary did a townhall thing - always a risk - and of course she got a troll in the audience who stood and heckled her for something, and she nailed the reply:

“You are very rude and I’m not never ever going to call on you. Thank you.”

And in response to the inevitable "what about Bill" question:

"He's not running for President, I am.  And as his wife I've moved on; shouldn't you?"

She'll hit back; she's starting to get that part of her playbook in place.  And she deserves props for that.

Today's Toon

hat tip = Democratic Underground

This Is Just Too Good

From HuffPo:

The gunmen who have seized a federal building in Oregon claim they're patriots.

But on social media, many are calling the self-styled "militia" terrorists -- and mocking the group that has taken over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge headquarters with derisive nicknames.

Whomever came up with #YallQaeda to describe the Oregon militia, I take my hat off to you. And then put it back on and take it off again.

— Colin Miner (@cominer) January 3, 2016

The emergence of #VanillaISIS in Oregon sparks fears of radicalizing disaffected hipsters in Portland.

— Khaled Bey (@KhaledBeydoun) January 4, 2016

You know you're a badass Tea Party patriot when your militia takes over an unprotected bird sanctuary

— Stonekettle (@Stonekettle) January 3, 2016

Still others have taken to using terms such as #YokelHaram and #al-Shabubba, and say the group is waging #YeeHawd.

Get all the latest on Y'allQaeda and Vanilla ISIS at Mock Paper Scissors

Today's Tweet

Breaking : A member of #YallQaeda leaks his photo out to the public #OregonUnderAttack pic.twitter.com/SwKJLCx596

— Packers (10-5) (@whovian15) January 4, 2016

BTW - "YallQaeda" is courtesy of Mock Paper Scissors

The Bundy Redux

Civil Disobedience being in the eye of the beholder, I'm not at all sure what it is specifically, but there's a fair degree of certainty that what's going on in Oregon ain't it.

militarized law enforcement responses almost always bad idea, but we only raise this point when it's about criminal right wingers

— Atrios (@Atrios) January 3, 2016

Trying hard not to say, "It's time to regulate the fuck outa that militia." https://t.co/n018rc9ENf

— Mike Roberts (@EvilleMike) January 3, 2016

There's so much happening, and so many flips and turns, and so much that's gone before that leads up to this, it's hard to find the room to step back far enough to get the whole picture.

One of the big things is that outfits like The Bundy Gang have been playing this "I'm not gonna be da gubmint's bitch" game for a very long time.  Well sorry-not-sorry, guys, but you're not the government's bitch.  You're Sheldon Adelson's bitch. You're Charlie Koch's bitch.  You're Roger Ailes's bitch.  You've been lied to and manipulated into being pissed off at all the wrong people.  Which makes you a very useful bitch for anybody with a sizable media budget, who plays on your need for martyrdom and pity in order to hide his own power-grabbing agenda.  In the old story, you're Guy of Gisborne to Rush Limbaugh's Prince John.  Not to put too fine a point on it for ya, Sparky, but you're on the wrong fucking side. Again.

So anyway -

Nobody ever taught these moochers about The Tragedy Of The Commons. They see "open land" that belongs to all Americans; they need to expand their operation to make it pay for an expanding clan of (eg) Bundy kids; and so they believe in their hearts that they can just take what they need because all that land is right there and they feel entitled to it.

And none of that ever registers as ironic in their pea-pickin' little brain pans.  And if you try to teach them a little sumpthin' about how they have to share - or at least they have to pay for what they get - they go into that cornered-animal crouch and start whining about being the victims of Oppressive Gubmint again.  

These guys seem never to have matured past being hormone-poisoned teenagers.  They're subsumed by that deadly combination of ignorance and adolescent bravado which makes it impossible for them to know their conclusion can't be true when they start from a false premise.

--BTW: that last bit is Ayn Rand.  You remember Ayn Rand - the patron saint of your Radically Libertarian Douchenozzlery, right, Sparky?  Yeah, no - it never sounds like you remember shit about it even if you ever fucking read any of it.

Don't worry Even as we speak the media is sending their best thesauruses to Oregon to find other words than "terrorists." #OregonUnderAttack

— Steve Marmel (@Marmel) January 3, 2016

I remember watching some Western on TV and the typical barroom brawl breaks out, and I asked my dad why everybody gets in on the fight when it was just a beef between two guys.  He told me something like - some jokers got nuthin' better to do than hang around waitin' for an excuse to punch somebody.  

So now we wait.

Today's Chart

From a few years ago, and still more than a little troubling.

We can't go on like this - and you know it's not any better now than it was in 2012 when the guy put this up. You can see it if you look.

New Vocabulary For A New Year

via imgur

hat tip = Facebook friend SF-B

Dots

Once is an anomaly:

I think every LEO needs a complete BG check by FBI, just as a person working in top secrete field, eliminate threats https://t.co/EY9h6HCex7

— Mickey Cox (@TheRightImageLV) January 2, 2016

Twice is a coincidence:

Entiire Florida police department busted for laundering millions for international drug cartels https://t.co/I1zGsr1r9d

— margaret stuart md (@marstu67) January 2, 2016

Just waiting for that third occurrence to confirm the trend.

We became allergic to the basics of paying for the things a healthy civilization needs - Education, Infrastructure, Healthcare, Science, Justice.  We decided making rich people richer was more important than looking out for everybody as best we can.  So it forced public servants to look for ways of stretching their budgets.  Some of that is a good thing, but most of it turns out to be a very bad thing when the people looking for creative ways to augment their budgets are the ones who carry badges and guns and who have our tacit blessing to treat people extremely badly as long as it's "those other people" catching the shit and not us.

So - when somebody says "Police Department", think "Sheriff".  And when they say [insert your town's name here], think "Nottingham".

And BTW - not to blow up the analogy or anything, but fuck Robin Hood; where's Frank Serpico when ya need him?

Be It Hereby Resolved

I resolve to revert to all my old bad habits 

a coupla days later than I did last year.

A Year Of Eternal Sadness

Here’s my 2015 year in review.

— Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) December 31, 2015

2015 started in the early hours of January 1st when 5 people were shot on a New Year’s Eve party bus in Memphis.

— Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) December 31, 2015

The next day, another mass shooting (defined as at least 4 people shot, including the shooter) in Savannah Georgia.

— Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) December 31, 2015

Two days later, 2 dead, 1 injured in Dallas, and 2 dead, 4 injured in Roanoke, VA.

— Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) December 31, 2015

2 days later, 1 dead, 3 injured in Miami. Next day, 1 dead, 3 injured in Chattanooga.

— Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) December 31, 2015

--and--

All this data is compiled by https://t.co/KEvaS5kOvN and the redditors at @rGunsAreCool, which tracked 372 shootings & counting in 2015

— Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) December 31, 2015

and on and on and on

Required Viewing

It's locked up pretty tight behind pay walls, but John Frankenheimer's Seven Days in May is a mighty good thing to see now and again.

Lotta weird shit goes on most of the time, but now it seems the weird shit meter is about to peg in the red again.  

"...this threat from the far right is never very far from us."

$3.99 on Amazon Video

Today's Pix

Say No To Shitty Ad Practices

I've recently bailed on 2 of my favorite sites - Addicting Info and Little Green Footballs - because their ads got way too pushy and intrusive.

Don't get me wrong, ya gotta pay for things, and these websites don't stay in the Content Business for very long unless somebody ponies up.  

So I'm good with just about everything, but not when (eg) MacKeeper pops up and freezes my browser so I can't do anything if I don't click on their OK button.  Go fuck yourself with a pine cone, MacKeeper.

I'll go back to those sites eventually - I suppose - but for now, this is just one more of my little protests.

About That Christmas Story

So everybody's holiday favorite is the story of how a kid is growing up in Ohio, and he has a toy gun, and how everybody warns him about not getting hurt because of it and his dad buys a weird lamp and some kid gets his tongue froze to the flag pole and it all turns out OK because Ralphie's a white kid and the local cops don't murder him for no fucking reason.