quote for the day

"When outsiders hear that the right to bear arms is enshrined in the second amendment of the US constitution, I suspect many imagine this is like saying it's "protected by law", something that can easily be changed, as it would be in their own countries. But this is to underestimate what the constitution means to Americans.

It is indeed a sacred text. Despite, or perhaps because, the US is a country animated by faith, the "founding fathers" are treated as deities, their every word analysed as if it contained gospel truth. Any new idea or policy proposal, no matter how worthy on its own merits, must be proven compatible with what those long-dead politicians of the late 18th century set down – otherwise it's unconstitutional and can be thrown out by the supreme court, the high priesthood selected to interpret what the great prophets of Philadelphia intended."

Jonathan Freedland at The Guardian, Friday 21 December 2012 13.32 EST


Oh, boy, aint that the truth. Criminy.

Merry Christmas, Everyone!

No really, I mean it. I mean, sure, all the stuff I posted up until now have been mocking the season, even the Pogues classic below isnt exactly traditional happy fare.
Still, I hope you all have a lovely day, that everything goes well and that everyone is happy at whatever gathering you attend. Or, if you're alone today, I hope you're okay with that anyway. Sometimes that's just the way it is. Next year doesnt have to be the same, and probably wont be.

Oh, and in case you're wondering, it didnt take a midnight visit or two to make me be nice here. I just felt like doing so.

So really, Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas

Here's one of my favorite Christmas songs

another christmas comic

christmas comic

the meaning of christmas

saturday matinee: santacademy

via

a few words

My condolences to all the apocalyptophiles out there whose death wishes were once again thwarted. Good luck on getting the end of the world to occur next time. Enjoy your Saturday.

alternate post

Well, the video that I had set up a while back to run today is now marked "private video" or something like that, whatever that means (why put a video on YouTube if not for the world to see?).

Anyway, instead I'll just take this opportunity to say "goodbye", since the world will possibly be ending today. I believe that it is scheduled for some time right after the monkeys fly out of my butt.

christmassy pic

via

Terry Gilliam's Christmas Card

via

too late

So, I was wondering what kind of gun that the Sandy Hook shooter used, so I googled it. It's a Bushmaster AR 15. Why anyone who isnt in a paramilitary squad needs a gun like this, I dont know, but it's what he had. Anyway, this image is from the Cabela's ad that I used to see the gun.

I dont know how well you can see it on this copy, but here's a clearer image of the yellow box at the bottom.

Very considerate.

An idea

Okay, so here's a simple idea to change the gun laws in this country: Stop trying to ban guns. Regardless of the carnage, it's not going to happen, certainly not any time soon. The NRA with its gun nuts (and weapons industry) who support them are all too loud and well-funded to beat without another such incident every two months for the next two years.
Rather, how about coming at this from another direction? Instead of banning guns, how about we make gun owners carry liability insurance on them?
After all, all states (except Wisconsin and New Hampshire) now require that automobile drivers carry at least some liability insurance to cover the cost of any damage that misuse of your automobile may inflict upon others, so why not have a similar rule for guns? The more dangerous the weapon, the higher the premium. Doesnt that seem reasonable? If you have a .22 caliber single shot, you'll pay a lower rate than someone with an assault rifle. Got more guns, carry more insurance. Take a class on gun safety, get a discount. Have a mentally unbalanced family member in your household? Then you'll pay more, just as those families with teenaged drivers pay more for auto insurance.

The best part of my idea is that if you can get the insurance companies in on this, then they will most likely join in lobbying on the side of some (not all*) gun control, because that will help their own bottom line. Why would insurance companies want to get behind this idea? Because it represents a potentially huge and untapped revenue stream, which would be mandated by the government. All in the name of public safety! And it'll be privately controlled. Guns wont be taken away, nor taxed, just insured against calamity, like insurance is supposed to be for.

But Dave, you say, how do you make sure that people claim their guns, rather than simply hiding them away and avoiding the insurance. Well, I suppose that you could use the already in place gun registries. But another route that we could go is to simply not worry about insurance on those particular guns until something happens with them. At that point, have laws in place which make whatever assets of the gun owner forfeit up to the point where recompense is made (plus a fine of some sort). That should bring out some folks voluntarily, and perhaps make the others a whole lot more careful.

Seriously, how hard could it be for the insurance lobby to find a GOP member of congress who is beholden to them? Or twenty for that matter. Instead of wasting our time engaging in protests that no one in the government pays attention to, let's try to pit two massive and well-funded lobbies against each other! Congress does a fine job ignoring voters, but they cant ignore lobbyists.

Anyway, it's just an idea. But it seems to me that when a significant segment of the population thinks that a reasonable answer to the crisis is to arm teachers, there's probably not much chance of any kind of solution banning anything anytime soon.



* they cant ban too many guns, because of the higher premium thing; but rest assured, they'll figure out where the profit ends and losses begin and guns beyond that point will be lobbied against.

quote for the day

The day after Columbine, I was interviewed for the Tom Brokaw news program. The reporter had been assigned a theory and was seeking sound bites to support it. “Wouldn’t you say,” she asked, “that killings like this are influenced by violent movies?” No, I said, I wouldn’t say that. “But what about Basketball Diaries?” she asked. “Doesn’t that have a scene of a boy walking into a school with a machine gun?” The obscure 1995 Leonardo Di Caprio movie did indeed have a brief fantasy scene of that nature, I said, but the movie failed at the box office (it grossed only $2.5 million), and it’s unlikely the Columbine killers saw it. The reporter looked disappointed, so I offered her my theory.

“Events like this,” I said, “if they are influenced by anything, are influenced by news programs like your own. When an unbalanced kid walks into a school and starts shooting, it becomes a major media event. Cable news drops ordinary programming and goes around the clock with it. The story is assigned a logo and a theme song; these two kids were packaged as the Trench Coat Mafia. The message is clear to other disturbed kids around the country: If I shoot up my school, I can be famous. The TV will talk about nothing else but me. Experts will try to figure out what I was thinking. The kids and teachers at school will see they shouldn’t have messed with me. I’ll go out in a blaze of glory.”

In short, I said, events like Columbine are influenced far less by violent movies than by CNN, the NBC Nightly News and all the other news media, who glorify the killers in the guise of “explaining” them. I commended the policy at the Sun-Times, where our editor said the paper would no longer feature school killings on Page 1. The reporter thanked me and turned off the camera. Of course the interview was never used. They found plenty of talking heads to condemn violent movies, and everybody was happy.

Roger Ebert

via

sunday funny

saturday matinee

Why is the night sky dark?



via

quotes for the day

"Jesus, I am so sick of this country and its goddamn cargo cult of deadly weapons."

Read more: Connecticut Elementary School Shooting - A Short Question To Ponder Over The Weekend - Esquire http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/connecticut-elementary-school-shooting-121412#ixzz2F8fyis36

Addendum:

"When we were hit on 9/11 and 3,000 people were killed, we then spent a decade and trillions of dollars fighting ill-fated wars. How many of you still take your fucking shoes off at an airport because of ONE fucking shoebomber attempt? Yet every year, we have the equivalent of three 9/11’s due to gun violence, and our response is to let the Assault Weapons Ban lapse and then underfund mental health care and can’t even spend enough money to computerize records so the background check to purchase firearms. I’m used to Republican stupidity and obstructionism (and there are plenty of Dems on the wrong side of the gun debate- JOHN DINGELL, I AM LOOKING AT YOU), but other than the drug war, find me a way our congress and political leadership have failed us more than this."

John Cole, at Balloon Juice

quote for the day

"Who would’ve thought giving Egyptians, who have lived under a military dictatorship for 30 years, the right to choose their own leaders would’ve lead to them choosing anti-liberal, theocratic leaders, who would immediately grant themselves dictatorial powers?

Answer: everyone who knows how people operate.

Guys. Democracy doesn’t work unless the people who are voting understand the obligation of choosing leaders. If people are used to dictatorship, and you tell them they can vote, they’re going to assume that means they get to pick the next dictator, and they’re going to do this. Look at Russia and Eastern Europe and Africa. They don’t know any other form of government. You can’t expect them to.

Democracy isn’t in our genes. It’s something that has to be learned. If you shake down all the autocracies and turn them into democracies, you’re going to get democratically-elected autocrats, and the immediate end to democracy.

America needs to stop acting like a hipster doing a semester in the Peace Corps, and start acting on policies that have a bit more of a world-wise adult perspective of human behavior.

Because history isn’t going to give us credit for stopping the Stalins, if our method is simply letting people choose their own new Stalins."

the Virgin Prince

special day

Today is the day, folks! 12/12/12, and this is the last time this century that you'll be able to do that.

Actually, it could be said that the really money shot was 12/12/1212, and we've missed it by 800 years, but where's the fun in that?

quote for the day

" America’s Internet started out as No. 1 in speed. It now ranks 26th, far behind the networks in Bulgaria, Ukraine and Lithuania. Americans pay the sixth highest median price in the modern world for Internet data — 16 times the rates paid by South Koreans, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Just as serious is the problem of coverage: in France, South Korea and other modern countries a superfast Internet is or will soon be available everywhere. In America, AT&T’s fiber optic lines stop short of homes and small businesses, while Verizon plans to end its fiber-optic installation work once it reaches 18 million residences.

As of now huge parts of the United States will never get on the information superhighway but will rather slog along on the digital equivalent of a country road. This presents a genuine economic threat to America: the future industries and jobs that require a universal ultra-high-speed network, after all, will most likely be developed somewhere else. "

David Cay Johnston, Bad Connections

And of course, if you dont really care about competitiveness, how much do you care about being fucked by monopolies?

via

photo for the day

Dubaï sky view by AirPano.com

By Charles Nouÿrit

Just image how much money this required.

quote for the day

"It’s almost like you can’t trust an organization that only exists to kill people to handle its own justice…"

The Virgin Prince, discussing sexual assault of females in the U.S. military, where, according to the Department of Defense, approximately one in three military women has been sexually assaulted compared to one in six civilians (Foster & Vince, 2009).

saturday matinee - double feature

Okay, so "most" is a bit of hyperbole, but the numbers are way too high even so.

Instead of "proper" ID, how about a quick exam over the government before anyone is allowed to vote?

More:

quote for the day

"The problem isn’t that Mitt Romney was a bad candidate for Republicans, but rather that Mitt Romney was the best candidate Republicans had.

Republicans can complain all they want about the candidates they had, and wish someone else had run, but they did this to themselves.

A year ago I wrote that when you spend four years calling the President of the United States a socialist Nazi Kenyan anti-American terrorist agent of the Devil killing old people and destroying the country, and you whip up your base to a frenzy that moves your party so far to the right that moderates become an endangered species, then you create a foundation where the only candidates you can possibly attract are Herman Cain, Donald Trump, Michele Bachmann, Jon Huntsman, Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum. And Mitt Romney ends up as your best chance.

In his play, Julius Caesar, Shakespeare wrote, “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars. It’s in ourselves.” And so it is with today’s Republican Party. The fault is not with Mitt Romney — he did better than most Republican presidential candidates have done in 24 years. The fault, dear Brutus, is with the Republican Party itself. When looking for a culprit for the 2012 Presidential, Senate and House losses, Republicans need only look in the mirror.

In the middle of a recession, Republicans should have won big. But they created their “#1 Priority.” They created the direction of their party. They created their anti-women, anti-Hispanic, anti-health care, anti-Climate Change, anti-tax the wealthy, pro-legitimate rape agenda.

You make your bed, you lie in it"

Robert J. Elisberg: In Defense of Mitt Romney


via

quote for the day

"It may be that your sole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others."

- anonymous

did you know: christmas edition

In the Catalonia region of Spain, there is an extra figure in their nativity sets. It is located at the back of the manger, and it is a person, squatting to take a dump.
No, really.
The figure is called a "caganer". Often, they are made to look like celebrities.
The belief is that with his/her "fertile depositions" the soil of the manger will became rich and productive for the coming year. It was also believed that he "would bring good health and calm to the body and the soul". The figure is in the back of the manger because putting it up front would "show a lack of respect".

via

sunday funny

Oh My God! That's me!

You really ought to read them all.

saturday matinee

So, when I first saw this video, it came with the following explanation:

We’ve all heard examples of fake Chinese or German from speakers who lack familiarity with either language. While typically cringe-worthy, these examples do raise interesting questions regarding our own language. What does English sound like to non-English speakers? After more than 40 years, Adriano Celentano’s “Prisencolinensinainciusol” remains one of the most illuminating examples.

The entire song is nonsense verse, neither English nor Italian, but the sounds are meant to resemble English. Linguist Mark Liberman wrote an interesting post about this sort of thing over at Language Log discussing yaourter, the French word for an attempt to speak or sing in a foreign language that one doesn’t know all that well. This often involves trying to sing a foreign song with nonsense or random words filling in the blanks. Liberman shares this wonderful quote from a random Internet user:

"Just for the story, in France, when we don’t speak English and we want to imitate the sound, we call it 'yaourter'(to yoghourt), the imitation sounds like a very nasal language, kind of like a baby crying. It mostly imitates the 'cowboy' accent."

Remember this video the next time some idiot goes "ching chong chang" as a jokey attempt to sound Chinese.

via

Actually, now that I think about it, this reminds me a bit of Elton John's song "Solar Prestige a Gammon".

Also, here's another take on the English thing, this time by actual English speakers!

Taking on the Household Analogy, or, some help making a common conservative argument for not increasing taxes on the rich look a bit more stupid

Okay, so, you know that "model" of America's budget woes that Republicans like to use? The one that goes on about how America is like a house that's gone over budget and is now in debt and has to cut spending in order to pay its debts? Yeah, it's not a perfect metaphor. In fact, it's a perfectly awful metaphor. Here's a better one:

An extended family is living in a big house. The adults all work, contributing a share of their income to the maintenance and expenses of the household. For some reason, say, an infestation of rodents requiring a major extermination maybe, combined with some major repairs, the household is way out of its budget. Now, logically, the thing to do would be for everyone to buckle down a bit, maybe eat some store brand foods and such for a while, and pay in a bit larger share of their money into the expenses. But this time, the biggest earner (Dad?) refuses to up his contribution, complaining that everyone needs to pay more because he already pays more than everyone else does, paying more will hurt his business prospects, blah blah blah. Everyone else, well aware of how they already brown bag their lunches while dad goes out to eat every day, find this a bit unfair. After all, they're all members of the same family, arent they?

Let's take this farther: In any large family, there are members who contribute nothing to the whole. We generally think of them as children. If you have kids, you know that they are messy and expensive and getting any kind of contribution out of them is sometimes almost as much effort as doing the work yourself. Do you toss them onto the street to fend for themselves? No, you feed them, cloth them and try to teach them what they need to be productive adults. As evidenced by the twenty-something still sleeping on the couch, some of them are slow learners, but they're family, so you keep doing at least a little something in the hopes that they one day will grow all the way up.

Or how about the grandparent living in this large household? They (probably) worked all their lives, giving you what they could to make sure that you become a productive adult. So now that they no longer contribute much to the household budget, do you boot them out? "Sorry Grandma, if you cant put more into the kitty, we're going to have to put you out on the ice. I mean, we'd love to do what we could to keep you comfortable, but we've got important stuff to do with our money, so you're out of luck". Yeah, thanks for raising us, now fuck off.

What about immigrants, especially the dreaded illegal ones? How about we consider them to be an adopted kid? Do we love them any less than our own flesh and blood? Honestly? Yeah, probably. But as (supposedly) decent human beings, we still take care of them, provide at least the essentials, until, again, they grow up to be adults, productive members of the family. If you think about it, and hard thought isnt required, I'm pretty sure you can come up with some fairly successful adoptees in American history. If you cannot, try thinking harder, or perhaps consider their children*. As for all the ballyhoo about Illegals, they represent about a fourth of America's immigrant population, and I'd be willing to bet that while we've gotten better at tracking and detecting them, that the percentage of those entering the country through legitimate channels and those not hasnt actually changed in the whole 200+ years of our history.

So that's my thought. Feel free to use this when arguing with Republicans who dont think that the wealthy ought to be asked to pay more to maintain the country. The arguments against that are well-honed, but no less dumb for that. If Liberals had as much money to burn as conservatives did, no doubt they'd have some carefully crafted and polished arguments as well, but I'm afraid we'll have to rely on crowd-sourcing instead.

Interesting tidbit regarding the above photo. It is, naturally, from Google Images. After the first page, all the rest of the extended families were, well, browner. How's that for a metaphor?




* odds are pretty good that you are one of them.

sleeping in

Plus, I hate crowds and standing in line, and I have a deep suspicion of things that are only a bargain for an extremely limited time.

quote for the day

"I didn’t learn until I was in college about all the other cultures, and I should have learned that in the first grade. A first grader should understand that his or her culture isn’t a rational invention; that there are thousands of other cultures and they all work pretty well; that all cultures function on faith rather than truth; that there are lots of alternatives to our own society. Cultural relativism is defensible and attractive. It’s also a source of hope. It means we don’t have to continue this way if we don’t like it."

Kurt Vonnegut

via Gerry Canavan, the source of much goodness.

saturday matinee

Man, I love thrift stores. But seriously, if you go to a thrift store, dont be throwing stuff all over the place, 'cause that's just plain rude.

black friday funny

No, they shouldnt.

There's more, of course, if you click on the image.

happy thanksgiving!

quote for the day

"They do that by a process known as the Delphi technique. The Delphi technique was developed by the Rand Corporation during the Cold War as a mind-control technique. It's also known as "consensive process." But basically the goal of the Delphi technique is to lead a targeted group of people to a pre-determined outcome while keeping the illusion of being open to public input."

Field Searcy, speaking at a briefing delivered to Republican state senators at the Georgia state Capitol last month.

Maybe I'm wrong, but in what way is this different from how the GOP does business? I mean, a group for whom "compromise" seems to be defined as "do it our way or we wont play" and who claims to respond to the "will" of the people but only seems to listen to lobbyists and other un-elected bigwigs doesnt strike me as having a lot to say about "pre-determined" outcomes.

Which is irrelevant anyway, because all this really is is a justification for further Republican intransigence.

quote for the day

"No matter who wins the presidential race, no matter which party controls Congress, can we at least agree as reasonable adults that when it comes to voting itself the election of 2012 is a national disgrace? We ask our sons and daughters, our husbands and wives, to give their lives abroad for noble concepts like "freedom" and "democracy." And yet we are content as a nation, and as a people, to tolerate another cycle of election rules that require our fellow citizens to sacrifice a measure of basic human dignity simply to exercise their right to vote.
...
This is happening not because of a natural disaster or breakdown in machinery. It is happening by partisan design. Alarmed by the strong Democratic turnout in early voting in 2008, Republican lawmakers, including Governor Rick Scott, reduced the number of early voting days from 14 to eight. When the restrictions were challenged in federal court under the Voting Rights Act, a three-judge panel said they would have a discriminatory impact upon minority voters. But only five of the state's 67 counties are covered by the federal civil rights law."

Andrew Cohen, No One in America Should Have to Wait 7 Hours to Vote


via

The evolution of Conservatism

I'm debating whether to assault Facebook with this or not.

via

sunday funny

via

follow-up quote for the day

"If American churches had pooled their money and decided to use it exclusively to help the poor and downtrodden, the government would never have had to get involved.

The joke is, Jesus ordered his followers to do just this. It’s a basic tenant at the core of Biblical Christianity.

But building grand churches and administrative structures to impress a god who directly told us he is not impressed by either was deemed more important than spreading his universal love of all humankind throughout the world.

We had a choice: willingly tithe 10% of our income and use it to fix the world, or abandon that and be forced to pay upwards of 30% of our income so the government can use a fraction of it to fix the world (and give the rest of it away to people they really like). We chose the second option.

There is of course a third alternative: clutch all your wealth to your chest and let the poor die of starvation and disease. But since even non-human apes are socially advanced enough to avoid that, it really shouldn’t be an option."

The Virgin Prince.

I think I like this person.

quote for the day

"I can’t think of anything more conceited than prayer.

"I mean, let me say in the first place that there is no spiritual world, so it’s a waste of time to begin with.

But let’s assume for a second that God is real. You really think he’s going to personally intervene in your situation and radically, miraculously alter the laws of physics and time just to give you something you want? Who the fuck do you think you are?! Even if he says he loves you, so what? Jesus was tortured to death. Babies die of starvation in Africa and Asia all the time. Politicians get cancer. Planes crash. 30,000 get wiped out in a half-hour because the sea floor farts, creating a tsunami.

But sure, yeah, the guy who lets this happen is going to magically fix your stupid kid’s diabetes because you took 30 seconds to bug him about it. That’s why he created the universe and killed himself. Because you and your stupid problems are so terribly important to the guy who supposedly invented black holes.

See, even if God is real, your faith is irrational and small-minded."

The Virgin Prince (via)

I dont consider myself to be an atheist. I suspect that there is a form of higher intelligent organization. Whether it's some sort of meta-mind, or an actual bearded dude in a robe, I dont know. But I'm reasonably sure that whatever God may be, God is not the petty, spiteful, mean-spirited egoist that the most vocal of Christians in America (and elsewhere) make him out to be.

Let's include Muslims and Jews in that column also.

quote for the post election hangover

"Make sure you vote this year, because OMG it fucking matters.

For all of you still pretending our system is some kind of quaint democracy, here’s what we’re actually doing: two groups of super-rich people let you chose which one of two slightly-less-rich people gets to be military supervisor and de-facto political party leader for the next four years. And a “political party leader’s” job is 100% to determine which groups of super-rich people get taxpayer money given to them over that period of time.

Don’t worry about the military supervisor part - either guy will basically just let the military do what its been doing consistently for the last 50 years, which is making sure stupid poor foreigners don’t fuck with the super-rich people and their stuff.

And they only let us choose the glorious leader at this point because it gives us a sense that we matter. Which keeps us from rioting and attacking the super-rich people every time things go bad for us. Which they always will, because the only reason they don’t consistently is because sometimes the stuff the super-rich want accidentally happens to benefit the rest of us. That’s what makes our system better than what the Chinese do - our system is loose enough that there’s still some overlap between the rich and wannabe-rich. And that’s what you need to keep the wannabe’s happy.

That said, as the slice of the wealth pie controlled by the super-rich continues to grow at the expense of our slice of it, it’s going to be harder and harder for our collective wants and needs to line up. The top 20% currently control 85% of the nation’s wealth, and it’s increasing every year. When the Recession happened, it hit us, and was barely a blip to them (if they didn’t directly profit from it - many did). How much less will they care about economic crises when they control 90% of the wealth, 95%, 98%?

I’m not a Communist. I believe in free enterprise on a rational scale. But that’s not what we do in America anymore. Yes, you can run a small business, but how many of those exist only in service to enormous corporations? Look at our structure. There is no capitalism in a vacuum. We’re a republic controlled by a class of billionaire aristocrats who control the economy by the sheer size and power of their companies, which control elected lawmakers through lobbying. We are an unofficial, backroom plutocracy.

I oppose big-C Communism largely because it always turns into 10% of the population controlling 100% of the wealth and telling everyone else what they have to do to earn temporary access to tiny portions of it. We’re moving there. That’s why both parties dictate social ethics - they only represent minority viewpoints, but those viewpoints are supported by the aristocratic class, so they are more important than what the rest of us want. From there, it’s up to the billionaires to propagandize us into caring about their views on abortion, gay marriage, government debt, public healthcare, etc. They dictate, they get us on board, and then they pass what they wanted all along and act like it was our idea. And we feel like we matter.

So go vote. Feel important. It’s just like wearing makeup or getting plastic surgery, or buying overpriced junk you don’t need, or yelling out to nothing in church - you feel temporarily important on the basis of delusional romantic fantasy, and forget how fucked-over you are for another few hours. That’s the American Dream, after all. That’s why people come here. Because at least here, we have a good enough infrastructure that you can be comfortable while you delude yourself.

Enjoy it while you can. This expensive carousel will only spin so long, before the rich owners decide to pack it up and move the fair to another town."

The Virgin Prince

Okay, that's a bit over the top. I dont think it's as bad as all that. Not really. Hopefully.

quote for the election

"You see, there are a lot of scientific data that I've found out as a scientist that actually show that this is really a young Earth. I don't believe that the earth's but about 9,000 years old. I believe it was created in six days as we know them. That's what the Bible says."

Congressman Paul Broun (R-Ga.), chairman of Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight which has general and special investigative authority on all matters within the jurisdiction of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology.

This is America under the Republican Party, folks. Think on that today if you havent yet voted.

Unless you intend to pull the "R" level. In which case, why dont you just go get so drunk you cant think straight, and then go around hitting poor people, children and anyone else who isnt exactly like you with a stick, which is pretty much just like being a Republican, but more localized*.

Addendum:

Did you know that Paul Broun was running unopposed? How does that even happen for an office at the national level?



* i.e., wont take down the rest of the country while you're doing it.

quote for the day before the election

"Obama’s best line came when he told Romney, “You seem to want to import the foreign policies of the 1980s, just like the social policies of the 1950s and the economic policies of the 1920s.” That wasn’t just a good zinger, it’s a great summary of what’s at stake in this election. I hope voters ignore the supposedly savvy horse race coverage of this crucial debate, and pay attention to Romney’s lack of core convictions on foreign policy or anything else."

The man without a soul - Salon.com

via

quote for the day

"Ayn Rand is one of those things that a lot of us, when we were 17 or 18 and feeling misunderstood, we’d pick up. Then, as we get older, we realize that a world in which we’re only thinking about ourselves and not thinking about anybody else, in which we’re considering the entire project of developing ourselves as more important than our relationships to other people and making sure that everybody else has opportunity – that that’s a pretty narrow vision."

President Obama, in an interview with Rolling Stone, when asked about Paul Ryan’s “obsession” with Rand.

via

just saw this on FB

Ha ha ha ha ha. Ha.


Asshole.

sunday funny

saturday matinee - halloween edition

quote for the day

Chris Hayes on how Romney broke the rules of the debate, and why it matters:

"I thought the moment of the oil drilling, that debate to me was a key moment. The reason was this. Mitt Romney asked the president a direct question numerous times, kept interrupting him, “Isn’t it true? Isn’t it true? Didn’t it go down?” Now the rules for the debate, that we all got leaked, number five, subsection E: “The candidates may not ask each other direct questions during any of the four debates.”

Now, at a certain level, who cares, right? Who cares? Here’s why I care. The theme of the last ten years of this country is the people at the top have felt the rules don’t apply to them. And you send your people to sit down and negotiate a set of rules, and 20 minutes into it you throw it out the window. And everything we’ve seen, from the financial crisis to everything else that’s happened in this country, has been about the oligarchs and the ruling class and the people at the top feeling that they are not a party to the social contract. So some stupid little contract that was negotiated by your people, you don’t worry about."


stolen from

quote for the day

quote for the day

"You know what's become "shrunken"? You know what's been degraded? The meaning of liberalism. At this point, "liberal" apparently is just used to describe anyone who has a vaguely different opinion than the most radical conservatives. There is no longer space for moderates to be called "moderates." In other words, if you think that war shouldn't be eternal and that rich people should pay a little more in taxes and that the government should, well, govern, you are a liberal. That's why David Frum and Jill Stein can both be called "liberal" when, in reality, they have virtually nothing in common. It's as if the writing of the dictionary had been handed over to the fattest flag-hatted teabagger on a scooter."

The Rude Pundit

quote for the day

Look, Mitt Romney is rich. He was born rich, and he's going to die rich. He's going to always have access to the best of everything. So he has no idea. He has no idea what it's like to be at the mercy of an insurance company, or to be uninsured and know you're just one major illness away from bankruptcy, debt, and maybe even tragedy. He just doesn't understand, and he never will. He doesn't know what it's like to choose between getting medication and eating for the week. He'll never want for care because he can afford it.

And it just pisses me off. Not that he's rich and I'm not, because I honestly don't care. All I want is to one day have the security of knowing that health care won't bankrupt me. What pisses me off is that he has no idea what it's like to be in my position, and he has the unmitigated gall to tell me that his for-profit thinking is somehow better for me. That he knows what he's talking about when it comes to struggling families because his idea of being poor is having to sell some of his stock. That's what gets me right in the bile duct. That he thinks he can tell me what's good for me as a poor person who's barely employed and completely uninsured.

Samurai Frog

quote for the last debate

“I’m very curious to see which one of these two clinically sociopathic individuals will present the most convincing and authentic approximation of an actual human conscience tonight,” said Cincinnati-area voter Miranda Harrick, 40, adding that both candidates, like all successful politicians, were undeniably skilled at such calculated artifice. “I think whoever is able to best manipulate me into thinking they experience normative emotional states such as empathy and regret will probably have my vote come November, so I’m excited to see what happens.”

The debate figures to be especially important for undecided voters, 91 percent of whom said in a pre-debate poll that they were still waiting for one sociopath to win them over with the perfect combination of superficial charm, deluded grandeur, and pathological lying.

from The Onion, which contains far more truth than a lot of news sources.

a reminder

saturday matinee

via

"Let's face it, the genepool needs a little chlorine"

Jimmy Carr, on QI, discussing the Darwin Awards.

By the way, if you've never watched the show QI, I highly recommend you do

quote for the day

I am used to people telling partial truths, massaging statistics, spinning, taking anecdotal evidence out of context, and all of the other tricks necessary to make things like trickle-down economics and Intelligent Design sound plausible. It comes with the territory for those of us who choose to follow politics. But there is nothing lazier, more damaging, or less intellectually honest than a constantly variable weight that gives different values to the same information at different points in time. In the case of the poll data and unemployment statistics this phenomenon is stretched to the limit – when the data do not confirm your preconceived idea of the world around you, they must be fabricated. Yep. Anything that contradicts your belief system is made up.

. . .

Such people are, in an intellectual if not literal sense, brain dead. They're not processing any new information except to sift it through the filter of their beliefs and reject anything that doesn't fit. Yet at the same time, and at a more basic level, they seem incapable of believing anything. Do the polls matter, or are they made up? Does the unemployment rate measure the health of the economy, or is it politically manipulated? Are the troops being removed from the Middle East too soon, or not soon enough? If the answer to any of these questions is "It depends on who's winning / who's in power", congratulations. You're what's wrong with America. This is why we can't have nice things, like a half decent debate about our problems and how we might go about solving them.

Ed, at Gin And Tacos

Happy Birthday

To my lovely first-born, who turns "sweet" sixteen today. I feel excessively proud of her, which is perhaps a bit selfish, but what are you going to do.

it's bosses day

I know everyone says this, but it's true: Isnt every day Bosses Day? They do not need an extra-special one.

not quite

An idiot friend posted this on Facebook with the comment "On Target in 1949. Jeeesh!", and I just wasnt interested in doing the drama there, so I'll comment here instead. Obviously, he didnt read the text closely:

"...He simply soaks the filthy rich
And helps the common man."

But, father, wont there come a time
When they run out of cash
And we have left them not a dime
When things will go to smash?"

Yeah, things went smash, but the rich havent exactly run out of cash. Unless you count have more than at any time since the 1920s as running out.

So who's not thinking.

saturday matinee

A coherent argument against the opponents of same-sex marriage.

image on friday

via

image on tuesday

image on monday

sunday funny

click on picture for original

saturday matinee

Man, I love Jon Stewart during election season. You can tell he's pissed off, and barely maintaining his level of civility. And, as I've said before, there's a reason that Jon Stewart is the most trusted name in the news business, and it aint cause he deals in better facts.


Addendum:

sigh. Never mind. Just go to the damn Daily Show site.

for the election

a video for the election

'Cause pretty much everyone involved deserves at least one of these.

quote for the day

"Information isn't the new oil; opacity is the new oil. The ability to be opaque -- the opposite of transparent -- is increasingly rare, valuable, and in many cases worth fighting for. It's also potentially quite dangerous, often dirty, and can be a catalyst for trouble. In short, it's just like oil."

Jamais Cascio, in Opaque Projections on Open the Future.

quote for the day

"Needless to say, my view on smoking is pretty much zero tolerance. It smells horrible. It’s a waste of money. It’s not good for you in any way, and most people only start because they’re not strong enough to say no to their friends in high school. With so much awesome stuff in the world, I am truly baffled at how it still exists."

Caanan, saying what needs to be said to my kids. There's a comic that goes with it, by the way.

quote for the day

Science is reality. At a time when a large and increasing fraction of the U.S. population does not "believe in" science (i.e., objectively provable reality) - or, worse, has bought into the idea that science is just one choice on the reality menu - NASA has again given concrete reason to understand that science works, and that science is not an option, not a theory, not a menu item, but instead represents the finest efforts of human minds in understanding, and addressing, objective reality.

Those on Earth who currently think that science is a political football should take note: not only are you endangering your own reputation, you are endangering the welfare of your constituents, and today, of the planet itself.

Any person or party which mocks science should be considered for what he or it is: a threat to the welfare and future of us all. Under the influence of political propagandists, misled religious zealots, and truly dangerous television and radio empires (such as Fox (Not) News and Rush Limbaugh), too many people today have been led to believe that science is in some way an option to opinion.

Science is as optional as gravity. Ignorant delusion is the only real option.

It is time for the U.S. to catch back up to the world in this matter, and recognize the value of scientific study and theory, the use of scientific consensus in guiding public policy, and the wonders that we can achieve when we abandon self-aggrandizing political fantasy in favor of objective scientific knowledge.

...

It is time for all Earth inhabitants to recognize the value of science. In doing so, we will find common ground for agreeing on other important things.

Mark Anderson, quoted by David Brin

quote for the day

"Ignorant themselves of the forces of nature, and wanting company in their ignorance, they don't want people to look into anything. They want us to believe like peasants and not ask the reason behind things... But we say the reason behind everything should be sought out."

Philosopher William of Conches, engaging in the raging Middle Ages debate on whether there was any value to scientific inquiry*. Some things never change, I guess. He also said this, referring to the need for the exploration and understanding of all things:

"To slight the perfection of created things is to slight the perfection of the divine power."




* As they understood it in the Middle Ages.

rerun

You know, there's a lot of talk talk talk out there about politics. The internet especially has lots of folks making earnest arguments for and against various and sundry things. Everyone is trying to come up with a truly killer line that will swing others into the "right" belief. I include myself in this cacophony, by the way.
Well, guess what? It's a complete waste of time.
Almost nobody changes their minds, not since they sprouted hair around their kiwis. Oh sure, there have been a few, struck down in the roadway like Saul, loudly proclaiming after how they've seen the light one way or another. But they are pretty rare.
You know what the secret is to the Republican success of the last three decades (and probably the next one or two to come)? Here it is: Political discussion is not the presentation of competing arguments in the hope of converting the undecided. It is nothing more than a dominance game. The chest-thumping and roaring of silverbacks, battling for their place in the hierarchy.
Currently, "conservatives" do it best. Consider the terms that people use to describe Democrats: "spineless", "wishy-washy", "pussies"; and that's people on the progressive side. However much of a bastard you may think that this or that member of the GOP may be, they are always powerful bastards, arent they? How many Democrats can you describe that way?
Obama won not because he provided America with a sound set of policies and was trusted to bring them to fruition, he won because he appeared unflappable and dignified, staying admirably focused and on-message. John McCain, on the other hand, had his own campaign usurped by his running mate.
Now we approach the mid-term elections and Republicans, however much they appear to be assholes, however little they appear to be accomplishing aside from derailing the train of State, are undeniably bull-roaring, chest-thumping, liberal-squashing, badass mutherfuckers. Democrats, who apparently cant even be bothered to support their own agenda, cave in at every turn to the bullying of the GOP, and as such appear to be (undeniably) lily-livered, yellow-(dog)-bellied, amoral, honorless, characterless, weak-willed, gutless pussies of a degree that would make Ichabod Crane look like Rambo.


I originally wrote this two years ago today. Not much has changed, sadly, except that Republicans continue to get crazier and the Democrats just wait around as if the GOP is just going to disappear up its own considerable asshole.

It is not.

quote for the day

"We worship money instead of honor. A billionaire, in our estimation, is much greater in these days in the eyes of the people than the public servant who works for the public interest. It makes no difference if the billionaire road to wealth on the sweat of little children and the blood of underpaid labor. No one ever considered Carnegie libraries steeped in the blood of the Homestead steelworkers, but they are. We do not remember that the Rockefeller Foundation is founded on the dead miners of the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company and a dozen other similar performances. We worship Mammon: and until we go back to ancient fundamentals and return to the Giver of the Tablets of Law and His teachings these conditions are going to remain with us. It is a pity that Wall Street, with its ability to control all the wealth of the nation and to hire the best law brains in the country has not produced some statesmen, some men who could see the dangers of bigness and concentration of the control of wealth. Instead of working to meet the situation [the Depression], they are still employing the best law brains to serve greed and self interest. People can stand only so much and one of these days there will be a settlement…"

Harry Truman, quoted in David McCullough’s Truman (page 233.)

via

for International Talk Like A Pirate Day

geeking out... again

Death Star tea infuser, available here.

via

quote for the day

"The real difference between the far-right and the far-left? Both extremes are crazy. Both despise science. But one of them owns and operates an entire political party and ran the nation off a cliff. The other dominates a hundred university soft-studies departments, and almost nothing else. Big deal."

David Brin

quote for the campaign

"Candidates campaign in poetry but govern in prose."

Mario Cuomo

quote for the day

"If you expect to find people who will understand you, you will grow murderous with disappointment. The best you’ll ever do is to understand yourself, know what it is that you want, and not let the cattle stand in your way."

Janet Fitch, White Oleander

(via)

poetry time

Thought for a sunshiny morning

It costs me never a stab nor squirm
To tread by chance upon a worm.
"Aha, my little dear," I say,
"your clan will pay me back one day."

Dorothy Parker, from The Portable Dorothy Parker

questions

Okay, so, do the winds increase as the temperature does?
If so, does something like a wind turbine, which absorbs the energy of the wind, also reduce temperature by absorbing energy?
If so, can we lower the planets temperature by building enough windmills?

This is probably all wrong, but I thought I'd ask anyway.

quote for the day

"We didnt put a man on the moon because some company thought they might be able to make a profit doing it. It takes vision to involve the common good of the American people without regard for profit. If you're charting a course for this country and your big idea is 'No We Can't', then I dont want you leading the country."

Rachel Maddow

sunday funny

Oh Boy. Actually, he can spout several contradictory belief systems simultaneously. What he actually believes is no doubt not for public consumption, but probably contains a lot of self-rewarding.

Click on the image for the full cartoon.

quote for the day

"People would have to be my age (61 next month) to get just what this post means to me. In the Spring of 1968, I was a high school senior, presented with the almost ridiculous luxory of choosing whether to campaign for Bobby Kennedy or Gene McCarthy (I chose McCarthy). Six months later, Kennedy (and MLK) were dead, McCarthy had been wiped out by the Democratic party machine in the aftermath of the police riot at the Chicago Democratic convention, Nixon was on the way to the White House, and the Viet Nam war raged on for five more years.

In the 40+ years since, the party of which I am ashamed to say I remain a member has marched inexorably to the right, chasing the Republicans in that direction, to the point where today's politics would be unrecognizable, I think, to people like Bobby Kennedy, or even to the plutocrat's own father, George Romney. Does anyone remember that Richard Nixon supported the establishment of the EPA? Can anyone imagine any Republican doing so today? Over the years there were brief rays of hope from Carter, and then from Clinton, but nothing altered the Democratic party's slow but steady abandonment of its FDR-inspired ideals, and its core constituents.

Then Obama was elected. When he stood before that crowd on election night in Chicago, with his black wife and two black daughters beside him, my wife and I watched from home and cried.

And now, virtually nothing remains from that euphria [sic]. In retrospect, it all seems like it was just so much wishful thinking.

I will vote for Barack Obama, and I will do what I can to get others to do so, largely for one reason - his reelection is absolutely necessary to prevent the complete destruction of the U. S. Supreme Court for the next 30 to 40 years. Apart from that, sorry to say, it's hard for me to care anymore.

Sorry, folks. My generation of progressives failed, and failed utterly. The ball's in your court now. You can do great things, as evidenced by OWS and the events in Madison last year. Good luck - I hope to someday have something to cheer for again."

Jim McFaul, commenting on an article called; "Something Is Very, Very Wrong Here"

quote for the day

"When you really begin to think about it, the similarities between a corporate takeover attempt and the Romney campaign to be president are numerous.

He has certainly lined up a wealthy group of investors for the takeover attempt, and given the background of those investors, I am pretty sure what kinds of profits they are expecting."

Mark Davies

question

Why hasnt the Right gone after Labor Day? At least made some tentative stabs at it? I mean, short of May Day, you cant get a much more socialist/communist/marxist holiday, can you? I mean, okay, maybe Put The Rich Up Against A Wall And Shoot Them All Day, but that's not a popular one here, now is it?

Can you tell I've been putting pointless questions into this post in order to bulk it up?

picture post

via

sunday funny

quote for the day

"What you write first is a first draft. When you get to the end of it, you’ve got a first draft. Anything can happen after that.

(In the first draft of Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, while Charlie was touring Wonka’s factory, he was accidentally encased in chocolate and sent to Wonka’s house, where he foiled a burglary.)

There’s nothing to stop you fixing anything as you go, but it’s wiser to get to the end first, and then look at what you’ve got.

The book in your mind will pretty much always be better than the one that hits the paper. That’s just how it works."

— Neil Gaiman, on writing. (via)

thought for the day

quote for the day

"What you do speaks so loudly, I cant hear what you are saying."

Henry Adams

a thought on management

Management has two functions.

1. To provide those who work under you with the tools, resources, etc (as best as your budget allows at least) to do their jobs in the most effective and efficient way possible.

2. Cop.

Everything else is extraneous and self-serving.

Granted, people dont usually go into management out of a sense of altruism, they go into it in order to better their own lives, so a certain level of taking advantage of ones power for ones own gain is at least understandable, even if the ethics of it are perhaps questionable. Still, if you're not doing both of the two functions listed above, or only doing the second, then you are not a good manager. In fact, I'd hazard a guess that says that if you do the first part of the job well, then you probably wont have much of the second part to worry about (especially if you do that part well, also).

sunday funny

stolen from Welcome To The Now

I got a new header, hope you like it. I stole the image from Jim Benton, so here's hoping he doesnt mind.

Hey, for bonus fun, guess which banner belongs to me!

watch this race

"Rep. Todd Akin, the Republican nominee for Senate in Missouri who is running against Sen. Claire McCaskill, justified his opposition to abortion rights even in case of rape with a claim that victims of “legitimate rape” have unnamed biological defenses that prevent pregnancy." (source)

Really, watch this race. I think that we can safely assume that if this man is actually able to win a place in our national government, then the people of the United States of America are simply too stupid to survive, and make plans to get, if not yourself, then your children out of the country as soon as it is viable. For someone this stupid, ignorant, backwards and just simply asinine to have been able to convince over one half of a state to send him to Washington D.C. for six years says a whole host of sad things about about our country and its possible future.

Seriously, what. The. Fuck. Is wrong. With us.

quote for the day

"In decades to come, Fox News and nearly every talking head, anchor, fake expert, and host associated with its programming will be looked back upon as the sickening propaganda arm of a failed attempt to create an American Reich. When you look back at old propaganda reels, they seem silly and archaic. To the public of their time, they were as slickly produced, glib, self assured, and manipulative as Fox News personas act today. The names and faces change, but the song remains the same."

toydragoninblue, commenting on a video where FOX talking heads ascribe the woes of a generation to Fred Rogers.

sunday funny

Why stop with alternative medicine? How about we treat those who dont believe in science that way, also?

quote for the campaign season

"I dont know how they do politics in your Fisher-Price country, but here in America this freak show is how our politicians make up for the next four years of fuckin' us in the ass."

Aubrey speaking to former Canadian Peejee in Something Positive

linkage

- Remember the flap over the Mohammad/bomb-head cartoon? Remember how ridiculous that seemed? Turns out Muslims arent alone. Warning: may induce feelings of despair.

- Stolen direct from Gerry Canavan: "Rick Perlstein argues the problem isn’t that conservatives are crazier than they were fifty years ago; the problem is they’re exactly as crazy as they were fifty years ago."

- Imagine this: Pharmaceutical companies may be basing research on profits rather than need. Who'd'a thunkit? (via)

- Marvel at the scale issues of Michael Paul Smith.

- Glove And Boots.

- Calming Manatee

- If this turns out to happen, Wi-Fi will become the next thing you pay way to much for. via.

- American Fascism: Nuthin' new. (via)

um, sure I do, but...

I thought this was a pretty good poll, although there is a big discrepancy between the party agreement result that I was given and the one that showed up on the above image, where the numbers were 95% Democratic, 76% Green, 51% Libertarian and 13% Republican, which sounds a lot more reasonable to me.

And seriously, who the hell is Jill Stein? If the race wasnt going to be as tight as I expect it to be, I might be tempted to make a statement by voting for the Green Party. As it is? No, dont think so.

Addendum:

Oops! Forgot. Via Welcome To the Now.

thought for the day

quote for the day

"Where does the lion's share of our taxes go? As Paul Krugman puts it, the U.S. government is basically an insurance company with an army: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the military make up the large majority of federal discretionary spending. Everything else we normally think of as "government" - education, law enforcement, national parks, roads and bridges, unemployment insurance, food stamps, farm subsidies, foreign aid, art and science funding, international diplomacy - is a relative minority of the budget. (See here for a more detailed breakdown.)"


Adam Lee, One-Half of One Cent

sunday funny

saturday daytrip

Go see the gallery of Roberto Ferri. There is a large collection of 140 images, all gorgeous paintings and drawings that have the look of the Renaissance, yet the feel of the Modern.

Since when did Truth become an election? Or morality? This goes for both sides.

6 years!

WOOT!

Aaaand, that's about all the excitement I can muster.

So, it's been six years since I started blogging writing actual posts. I'm not sure how long it's been since I stopped, yet still the blog continues on. I dont want to end it, it's become a part of my identity, but it's in a kind of limbo state these days while I... not re-asses... I dont know what to call it. I'll keep putting stuff here, for the rest of my life, I hope.
Sometimes I think that when this blog hasnt kept up with who I am, but I'm not sure how to reconcile then and now. I dunno. I've been playing with my various blogs more lately (I started a new one, which I've kind of been obsessing over in my mildly OCD way), but nothing so far has really replaced the outlet that this blog once was for me. Maybe I just dont have the rage anymore (though that seems unlikely), or maybe I just got tired of the pointless spleen-venting. Actually, thinking about it, it may that as Blogger separated itself into more partisan pieces, and as people drifted of to other venues, the fun of ranting and counter-ranting has worn away.
I miss some of the folks who've gone away, Reverend Billy Bob, Holster, Chance, Saur, UWL, sometimes even Uncle Logician and jsull. But then there are plenty of real-life people I miss, too. Sometimes I see them again, sometimes I dont. Such is life.

So, if you're a regular reader (do I still have those?), and yes, I mean you Lydia, Pooby, and Pryme, then dont worry too hard about not getting your occasional shot o' Dave, because I plan on being here for years to come.