saturday matinee

Though, let's be honest: For many people, religion is a convenient place to rest their douchiness. If they didnt have religion, they'd find some other place for it, with little or no diminution of bad behavior.

saturday matinee

quote for the day

"Forget the Syria debate, we need a debate on why we’re always debating whether to bomb someone. Because we’re starting to look not so much like the world’s policeman, but more like George Zimmerman. Itching to use force and then pretending it’s because we had no choice."

Bill Maher

via

saturday matinee

My daughter found this. Dont ask. I dont.

quote for the day

"There are few things more bizarre than watching people advocate that another country be bombed even while acknowledging that it will achieve no good outcomes other than safeguarding the “credibility” of those doing the bombing. Relatedly, it’s hard to imagine a more potent sign of a weak, declining empire than having one’s national “credibility” depend upon periodically bombing other countries."

Obama, Congress and Syria

via

quote for the day

"It doesn’t matter that Bush was (kind of) a cowboy, and that Obama was (kind of) a law professor; all of that became irrelevant, or at least superfluous, when they became American presidents. To embody the sovereign will of the United States—to be the world’s only superpower, the world policeman—is to be bound by the logic of arbitrary power, to be forced to occupy and preserve the state of exception in which American exceptionalism is founded. Because the United States is powerful, it has the power to decide where and how and when and to whom the rules apply. If it does not have that power, it is not powerful; if it is not powerful, it is not the United States. The stakes for every American president, then, are existential. If Syria is allowed to cross the red line unpunished, it will threaten the very basis of American identity, the exceptionalism which makes America the solitary sovereign actor on the world stage. Punishing them for doing so—with a handful of inconsequential cruise missiles or even a more aggressive and disastrous bombing campaign—would accomplish no more than re-instating that narrative, that the United States is, still, the decider. But that’s all its meant to accomplish."

Aaron Bady, The Sovereign Double-Standard

saturday matinee

It's all a matter of perspective, mother-fuckers!

quote for the day

"The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness."

Neils Bohr

happy labor day!