“The Man” in Boulder was trying to mess with Michael Grab aka Gravity Glue guy, because stupid reasons, but the prosecuting attorney told those cops to piss off, which I like in a prosecutor.
If you go to Grab’s video list on YouTube, you’ll find all kinds of awesome balancing going on.
Is it just me, or does anyone else’s hands get super cold watching him convincing those stones to do what he wants them to do? Brrrrr….
This is our daily open thread — Enjoy it while you can, cuz 2016 is coming…
Cuba has finally been removed from the “State-Sponsored Terrorism” list, leaving only 3 nations on the short list: Iran, Sudan and Syria.
And about fucking time. C’mon, we at least have to make some concession to the fact that OUR abomination of a hellhole, that stinking albatross around America’s neck that seems to get little notice anymore, that unholy, immoral “Pit of Despair” known as GTMO, occupies part of THEIR country. We – the United States of America – cannot claim much of a moral high ground when we are deliberately and indifferently crushing hundreds of souls, day by day, year by year, simply because the greatest nation on the face of the earth ever doesn’t want to admit to or clean up the horror it spawned.
Sorry, where was I? Oh, here’s a few articles on Cuba’s elevation in status:
As The New York Times’ Julie Hirshfeld Davis reminds us, President Obama gave official notice of his intent to Congress on April 14th, 2015, beginning the 45-day “Congressional notification period”, which expired yesterday. An excerpt:
“Cuba’s removal from the terrorism list was harshly criticized by several declared or prospective Republican presidential candidates and members of Congress, a sign that the détente may become an issue in the 2016 campaign.
Former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida, who is widely expected to run, called the decision “further evidence that President Obama seems more interested in capitulating to our adversaries than in confronting them.”The House speaker, John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio, said the administration had “handed the Castro regime a significant political win in return for nothing.” He vowed that the House would ensure that sanctions on Cuba would stay in place.”
One Washington Post article mentions that Jeb also said “I call on Congress to keep pressure on Cuba and hold the administration accountable.” [Does he mean the Cuban “administration”, or the Obama “administration”?] On Congress’ role, the article says:
“Removing the terror designation lifts only some of the numerous U.S. trade barriers against Cuba. An economic embargo remains in effect, and reversing it requires a congressional vote. President Obama has said he hopes to work with Congress to get it lifted.”
Why does President Obama, after all this time, still hold out any hope that Congress will work with him towards any goal? I mean, to Congress, Obama is just continuing his communist/socialist/Muslim/dictator/America-hating/atheist agenda, right? (sigh) Moving on…
A very informative WasPo article by Ishaan Tharoor helps to explain how a country qualifies for the “State-Sponsored Terrorism List”, and why some nations that one would think belonged on the list aren’t. The article also discusses nations who were previously on the list but have been removed. i.e., Iraq (maybe because we totally fucked up their country and left it in no shape to sponsor terrorism?); Libya (maybe because we killed enough members of Mohumar Gaddafi’s family that he finally cried Uncle Sam?)
FoxNews.com has this article, which adds a bit to the Speaker Boehner knee-jerk bluster:
“The communist dictatorship has offered no assurances it will address its long record of repression and human rights at home,” Boehner said in a statement.”
Fair enough, but ONLY if Boehner promises to end the Republicans’ long record of repression and human rights violations in OUR country AND theirs. Better ‘tend to that log in your own eye’, Boehner.
This is our daily Open Thread – have at it!
Two of these three gents started their careers in bluegrass and went on to become giants in country music. Both accomplished multi-instrumentalists, Ricky Skaggs and Marty Stuart have their roots in Southern Appalachian music. Coincidentally, I saw both perform when they were teenagers at a bluegrass festival in Delaware. Skaggs was playing with Ralp Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys and Stuart was palying with Lester Flatt and the Nashville Grass.
Brian Setzer, and American born rock guitarist made his name in the post punk scene in England with the Stray Cats. His career has evolved to include rockabilly and big band sounds. Here are the three of them on stage in Nashville.
It seems obvious to me that what I choose to call Constitutional IQ is a yardstick of sorts, one which measures a candidate’s (or elected official’s) appreciation of constitutional details when putting forth a proposition for action. For my purposes here, I assume that those who comprehend and appreciate constitutional premises fall into the positive range where the pinnacle is, say, +100. Similarly, those who willingly (or unknowingly) disavow constitutional guarantees fall into the negative range where -100 is as low as anyone can ever attain.
With that in mind, we can begin by citing the basic premises of the American Constitution’s intent, premises which are briefly noted in its Preamble as follows:
We the people of the United States, in order to
form a more perfect union,
establish justice,
insure domestic tranquility,
provide for the common defense,
promote the general welfare,
and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity,
do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Notice that the general term “people” is not broken down into categories; there is no mention of origin, or whether immigrant or native born. Nor is there any mention of gender, race, ethnicity, or even of sexual preference. There is no mention of religion and certainly no mandate, nor is there recognition of any preference of belief, and no penalty for non-belief. My best guess is that each and all ‘non-mentioned’ concepts and realities were deemed by the founders to fall under the blessings of liberty umbrella.
There is also no mandate anywhere in the entire document (as amended) that ‘hate and fear’ be deemed drivers of American constitutionalism, although today if one listens to the current crop of Republican 2016 presidential candidates, one might assume that their collective vision of the Constitution requires that each and all of its premises are most assuredly driven by same.
For example: Republican candidate Rick Santorum invariably finds fault in so many of the nondescript blessings of liberty that it becomes difficult to fairly judge his constitutional IQ. Here, for example are ten of his most bizarre theses which, when coupled with his 5 Worst Smears — Attacking Gay Rights, Working Women & Church-State Separation amply demonstrate his constitutional illiteracy. And since all of the above amount to just a surface scratch on his political agenda, it’s a mark of utmost courtesy on my part to assign him a constitutional IQ somewhere in the range of -50.
And then there’s presidential candidate Rand Paul whose recent remark that the issue of abortion rights would be best handled “by the states” rather than “under the 14th Amendment” and his ambiguous answer to the question of “when does life begin” were, as commentators on the left and the right have pointed out, somewhat confounding since Paul has sponsored a Senate bill that aims to undermine Roe v. Wade by defining life as beginning “at conception.” Tossing aside the fourteenth amendment in favor of a panoply of religious arguments doesn’t sound like something a genuine constitutional advocate would ever even contemplate. On the other hand, he does recognize the privacy premises of the fourth amendment, so I’m guessing Rand Paul’s constitutional IQ to fall somewhere in the vicinity of -10.
Meanwhile, Scott Walker, Wisconsin’s contribution to the 2016 Republican clown car is engaged in his current task of doing whatever he deems necessary to convince the religious right that he’s one of them. In one of his recent gigs, he attempted to convince anti-choice leader that he really Didn’t Mean What He Said About Abortion Being Between ‘A Woman And Her Doctor’. And according to the head of the Susan B. Anthony list, Walker said that “using the language of the other side to support our own position is a good thing, but you can only do it if people aren’t trying to call you out and quoting you out of context.” Right. Use any excuse possible to convince the far right religious movers and shakers that the blessings of liberty do not apply to those who violate a religious opinion while undergoing procedures that are constitutionally acceptable and protected. Clever, Scott, very clever. For that I assess your constitutional IQ at -104!
OK, that’s about all I can handle today. And gee, I haven’t touched on Ted Cruz, or Lindsey Graham, or Carly Fiorina, or any of the rest of the current and projected stars in 2016’s Theater of the Absurd. I do suspect, however, that the three listed above have viably demonstrated their sub-basement constitutional IQ’s. I also assume the rest of the field to be extremely competent at doing the same. I cannot, in fact, recall a single instance where any one of the 2016 clown car candidates has ever spoken in support of a more perfect union, or unencumbered justice, or domestic tranquility, or an unencumbered common defense, and definitely not any level whatsoever of general welfare. They are all, however, definitely supporters of the blessings of liberty — for corporate entities and for the ultra-wealthy 1% who enthusiastically fund their bogus loyalties and will apparently stand any unconstitutional ground imaginable — for the right payoff.
OPEN THREAD
PS: This just in. Marco Rubio points out that Gay Rights are ‘A Real And Present Danger’ To Freedom, thereby earning himself at least a -35 in the constitutional IQ department.
Bernie Sanders, in his first campaign speech, spoke volumes concerning details of the course this country MUST take to enable its return to those long-past days of prosperity, and in the process he said absolutely nothing with which I do not unanimously and enthusiastically agree. He is absolutely the 180 degree-opposite of the entire of the Republican clown car occupants, both announced and not yet announced, and I suspect his IQ is greater than the aggregate sum of . . . well, you know.
I do find it odd that this prime candidate for President — standing tall in these, my “old timer” years — is every bit as inspiring to me as the POTUS on my date of birth, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, became in my growing-up retro view. Curious too that both Roosevelt and Sanders popped up at times of parallel turmoil. Roosevelt overcame it and changed America in the most positive way imaginable, and now Sanders is proposing to do the same.
Here’s his speech. If you’ve not seen it, I strongly suggest you find the time to do so. It’s a minute or two short of 40 minutes in length, but suffice to say that he lays out more substance in those few minutes than all Republican candidates since FDR — combined — have managed.
A further Sanders tidbit is this interesting lunchtime discussion he had with CNBC’s John Harwood in which Bernie lays out some of his income tax revision propositions. And finally this Daily Kos post entitled Bernie Sanders blows Wolf Blitzer’s mind with a simple idea (guess it doesn’t take much) in which Sanders explains how to eliminate college tuition with a small tax on Wall Street money transference.
As the Kos article concludes, “By the way, who says he [Sanders] can’t win??” Not I.
OPEN THREAD
I’m Briseadh na Faire, and I’m running for President. Here are a few of my positions on issues important to the American People today. Between now and November 2016, I will post additional policy and platform statements.
Taxes. The problem with trickle-down economics isn’t that it doesn’t work. It is that we have not fully implemented it. We’re still taxing the very rich. We have to change our tax laws so that all income over $1,000,000 a year is not taxed at all. That’s not just wages, but unearned income, too, like dividends and capital gains and interest and rental income, etc. And corporations shouldn’t be taxed at all. After all, taxes on corporations just punish corporations for making a profit. So we must stop discouraging corporations from making profits. That way, everyone wins.
Speaking of profits, there’s lots of ways we keep corporations from making profits and creating jobs. Take the minimum wage. Seriously. Take it, and don’t give it back. People should be paid what they’re worth, not what the government forces job creators to pay. Labor should compete on the open market. Everyone should be free to market their labor, to set their own price. And that includes kids, too. Why force them to go to school. Hell, studies show most of them aren’t learning anything any way. Kids should be free to go out and make money for themselves, if that’s what they want.
Of course, women, on the other hand, were created by God for one purpose: to bear children. Men weren’t. Women need to return to the role God planned for them from the beginning: to be man’s companion and to bear his children. Once we take women out of the workplace, it will free up millions of jobs. Now THAT’S a jobs program that benefits everyone! Unemployment will drop to zero virtually overnight.
The environment. Everyone wants to regulate the environment. But I’m here to tell you it can’t be done. God controls the environment and you cannot regulate God. We need to stop trying. We need to get rid of all those laws that try to regulate the environment because that’s an offense to God. I mean, NO WONDER we’re having all kinds of weird weather lately. By trying to regulate God, we’re incurring God’s just wrath!
God gave man, man, not woman, mind you…God gave MAN dominion over all the earth – to subdue the earth and use its resources for our gain. If we tie up vast amounts of resources in public lands, lands owned by the government, we’re not following God’s command. We must take those lands away from the government and put them to good use creating jobs, giving us energy independence, and creating wealth and security for everyone. This is just being good stewards of the earth that God gave us.
And speaking of God…yes…it is about time we accept the fact that we are a Christian Nation. Now I know all about the First Amendment…and I quote, Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, end quote. But we’ve got a long history of the President issuing executive orders. And, when I’m elected President, that’s just what I’ll do. I will issue an Executive Order establishing the One True Church as the official religion of the United States of America. I’ll keep the tax-exempt status for the One True Church. But all other churches will be shut down because they preach a false doctrine and that does nothing but incur God’s just wrath and punishment. And, frankly, I think the United States has been punished enough.
So, come 2016, vote Briseadh na Faire for President. I’m the only candidate for President who knows what’s best for America; the only candidate who acknowledges up front that I will break each and every one of my campaign promises, and, when I do, you won’t be disappointed!
[Briseadh na Faire – it’s hard to pronounce.]
I’m Briseadh na Faire, and I approve this message.
[BriseadhNaFaireforPresidentisnotaffiliatedwithanyPolitcalActionCommitteenorhasreceivedtheendorcementofTPZoonoranyotherindividualbusinessnonprofitorganizationorgod.]
OPEN THREAD
Non-sequitur:
Why is it that the strongest part of a roll of toilet paper is always the perforations?
Under different circumstances, after different choices, it could have been me. It wasn’t, of course, or I wouldn’t be here to write this. And by accident or design, depending on what you wish to believe, I was never in the circumstances, probably as a result of some of my choices, where it ever might have been me. But there have been more than one million three hundred thousand United States service members who died while serving in our nation’s armed forces, more than half of them (counting both sides) in our own civil war. I have never seen the honor of serving my country under combat, so I was never in a situation where I could expect to be killed. I honestly can’t say how I would have behaved in combat, but I’ve always thought of myself as the kind of person who would sacrifice himself to make sure others survived a situation. Maybe we all do, I don’t know. But I do know that because of the sacrifices those million brave people made, I can enjoy the freedom and luxury of being able to sit in my own home writing this blog post, and you can enjoy the freedom and luxury of reading it. Our nation, by and large, doesn’t treat the brave men and women who serve to protect our country (simply by being the biggest bad-asses on the planet) well enough, and we remember those who gave the ultimate sacrifice even less than we should.
The true origins of the holiday we’ve come to know as Memorial Day are in some dispute, partly because there isn’t general agreement on what is meant by “first,” and also by “holiday.” Many of you reading this blog (because many of you are Liberals like me) know of the first official ceremony to honor the war dead, known then as Decoration Day, and that it was started by African Americans in May 1865 (the month following the Civil War’s end) and is recounted by Snopes here. But as the article indicates, there is no evidence that this ceremony, wonderful as it was, had any influence on the decision by Major General Logan to hold an annual holiday. I wanted to confirm that story before posting it here as the official start of Memorial Day, but I couldn’t find any mention of it on the History Channel website, the PBS website, or even the Department of Veterans Affairs website. I wonder why that is. The Charleston, South Carolina, ceremony was certainly the first observation of Decoration Day, and its purpose was largely similar to that of today’s Memorial Day (though it was restricted to remembering the Civil War dead.) But why it’s not credited with being the first Memorial Day is unknown. Instead, Congress declared that Waterloo, NY, was the site of the first Memorial Day observance (though other places claim the title, too.)
The important thing is not how it began but that it continue. You owe the freedom you still enjoy today to them. Remember them.
Here are some pictures my wife posted last year. Please enjoy a safe and happy holiday celebration. And if you see a veteran among the parade goers today, it wouldn’t hurt to stop and thank them for their service to our country. I promise you that inside it can really help make them feel their sacrifices are worthwhile.
World War I Memorial, Washington, DC
World War II Memorials, Washington, DC
Korean War Memorials, Washington, DC
Vietnam War Memorials, Washington, DC
Tomb of the Unknown
This is our daily open thread. Feel free to spend time honoring the fallen close to you, or those who, as President Lincoln put it, gave the last full measure of devotion, or anything else you wish to discuss.
We knew it was coming, right? Huckabee sticks up for those poor, poor Duggars.
Janet and I want to affirm our support for the Duggar family. Josh’s actions when he was an underage teen are as he described them himself, ‘inexcusable,’ but that doesn’t mean ‘unforgivable.’ He and his family dealt with it and were honest and open about it with the victims and the authorities. No purpose whatsoever is served by those who are now trying to discredit Josh or his family by sensationalizing the story. Good people make mistakes and do regrettable and even disgusting things. The reason that the law protects disclosure of many actions on the part of a minor is that the society has traditionally understood something that today’s blood-thirsty media does not understand—that being a minor means that one’s judgement is not mature.
Unless you’re Black or Hispanic…or from a broken home or unwed mother…or have gay parents, OF COURSE. BTW, “mistakes” happen once or twice, not over and over again, leaving child victims in one’s wake. A fourteen year old isn’t fully mature, but he should have a basic understanding of what’s right and what’s wrong — especially since the Duggar claim to be on higher ground than the rest of us in that area.
Those who have enjoyed revealing this long ago sins in order to discredit the Duggar family have actually revealed their own insensitive bloodthirst, for there was no consideration of the fact that the victims wanted this to be left in the past and ultimately a judge had the information on file destroyed—not to protect Josh, but the innocent victims.
Hmmmm, I would argue that revealing that Josh Duggar was (is?) a child molester was not to discredit the Duggar family, but to protect any little girls in his vicinity from being sexually abused. Frankly, the “fact” that the victims wanted their sexual abuse at the hands of their own brother “left in the past” is suspect, since the parents who failed to protect the girls in the first place were the ones influencing such a decision-making process — AND they allowed the molester to return to the home.
Huck wraps it up with a brand new shovel:
It is precisely because we are all sinners that we need His grace and His forgiveness. We have been blessed to receive God’s love and we would do no less than to extend our love and support for our friends. In fact, it is such times as this, when real friends show up and stand up. Today, Janet and I want to show up and stand up for our friends. Let others run from them. We will run to them with our support.
Awwwww, Huck didn’t really want to be presidunce anyway, but don’t worry — he’ll keep up his folksy snake oil sales/sham campaign as long as he possibly can.
Huckabee’s self-satisfied assholierthanthou attitude has caught up to him, and his minions are not amused.
Oopsy. Huck forgot to consider that some of his followers had been in the Duggar girls’ position. Of course, he’s pretty consistent in forgetting unpleasantness.
Brava, Carisa!! Critical thinking! Keep up the good work. Huck’s going to miss your subscription to “Learn Our History” most of all…
Montel Williams chimed in with this tweet:
And continued on facebook, with a nasty dose of Tony Perkins, as seen on RawStory.
In short, Mike Huckabee thinks he’s a brilliant, intelligent, compassionate Christian, who’s promoting excellent family values and sticking by his friends in hard times, but he’s actually a slimy bigoted skeev, who thinks anyone who DOESN’T believe what he believes is “less than,” and anyone who DOES believe what he believes can molest little girls (including his own sisters) and it’s just a “mistake” awaiting forgiveness from “god,” and we big meanies just need to get over. He doesn’t give a shit about the harm done to John Duggar’s sisters, and I highly doubt he cares about the Duggar family at all, except for the weird political boost and associated publicity attached to them, and he’s stupid enough to believe we don’t know it (I’m pretty sure the Duggars are completely clueless when it comes to Huck — and everything else, except money). Even worse, Huck KNOWS most of his followers are stupid enough not to know it, but is too filled with hubris to see past the end of his self-centered, hateful, bigoted agenda.
Buh bye, Mike. I’d ask that you return to the underside of the rock from which you crawled, but I know the money’s just too good for a “good” “Christian” “man” like you to resist.
This is our very late daily open thread — I’m cranky.
Last night I was doing an extremely necessary cleanup of my emails, and was about to delete some recent ones from our local Republican NYS Assemblyman, when I decided to take a look to see what he was writing about. Here’s one of them:
Cuomo’s Undemocratic Minimum Wage Hike Will Kill Jobs
East Fishkill, NY – (5/7/15) – Assemblyman Kieran Michael Lalor (R,C,I – East Fishkill) issued a statement today criticizing Governor Cuomo’s decision to unilaterally move to raise the minimum wage for some businesses without legislative approval.
“Dictating new regulations outside the legislative process is a recklessly undemocratic decision by Governor Cuomo,” said Lalor. “We have a process for passing new laws and the governor has chosen to bypass it because he was only able to get part of his job-killing minimum wage through the legislature. It seems he’s taking a page from President Obama’s playbook and simply dictating new laws when he can’t do what he wants through the legislature. Impaneling a wage board gives Cuomo’s action a veneer of unbiased approval, but is there any doubt that the board will simply follow Cuomo’s directions? We know how closely Cuomo has controlled previous ‘independent’ commissions.”
Lalor added, “This isn’t just undemocratic, it’s a job killer. San Francisco’s recent minimum wage hike is pushing small businesses to the brink of closure. [emphasis mine] This will hurt minimum-wage earners when businesses that can’t afford the increase start cutting jobs. Studies have shown entry-level job opportunities decline with minimum wage increases. The governor can’t simply mandate a better economy. Small businesses are struggling with New York’s high taxes and never-ending regulations. New York’s economy is struggling because of those taxes and regulations. The only way for government to increase wages and opportunities is to cut taxes and regulations across the board. We need to open up opportunities for businesses to thrive and create jobs in New York.”
“It’s also inappropriate for the governor to target just one industry,” Lalor added. “Governor Cuomo says he wants to raise fast food wages because fast food CEOs are millionaires. But, many fast food restaurants operate as franchises. They’re small businesses. This isn’t just hitting big corporations, Governor Cuomo, this is hitting small businesses. Cuomo’s dictate is so vague, we don’t even know how far this will go. It’s up to his wage board to decide what jobs will be defined as within the ‘fast food industry’. Pizzeria and deli owners, among other small businesses, don’t know if they’ll be included. They might not even know that this regulation could affect them until it’s already passed, missing the chance to voice their opposition.”
###
Assemblyman Kieran Michael Lalor, a former teacher at Our Lady of Lourdes in Poughkeepsie, is a Marine Corps veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom and a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel…”
I started to search for any information regarding what problems have been caused by San Francisco’s recent minimum-wage raise. The Google brought up several articles referencing “a San Francisco newspaper says that some restaurants and grocery stores in Oakland’s Chinatown have closed…” Okay, that’s Oakland, which, as far as I know, is still a separate city across the bay from SF. And my search for even that one “San Francisco newspaper” story yielded nothing but references to it from right-wing sources, i.e., The American Spectator and World Net Daily. As you can see, Thomas Sowell of The American Spectator has apparently coined (or at least emphasized) a new buzzword for the right, “ruinous compassion” – don’t be surprised if you start hearing that phrase in conjunction with any minimim-wage-raise arguments.
I finally found one article from Yahoo! Finance titled “Minimum Wage Hike Closes San Francisco Bookstore.” Although I had seen other stories from 2011 on about several booksellers such as the Borders chain losing business or closing, none of those seemed to be as a result of minimum wage hikes; it’s been pretty much a given for several years now that any bookseller would be in tough competition with current technology, with which one can access any book one wants with a few clicks. However, even this particular bookstore in San Francisco isn’t exactly going out of business entirely:
“Borderland Books, which specializes in science fiction and horror, says it has withstood a host of challenges since it opened in 1997, including the rise of Amazon.com and e-books, a landlord who supposedly doubled their rent while dotcoms were first booming, and a deep recession that the owners say “hit us very hard.” A higher minimum wage, though, would take the business from being modestly profitable to being a money loser, the owner says. “Although all of us at Borderlands support the concept of a living wage in principal and we believe that it’s possible that the new law will be good for San Francisco — Borderlands Books as it exists is not a financially viable business if subject to that minimum wage.”
But according to the article:
“The blog post went on to say that the Borderlands café business will stay open and should have “no difficulty at all” with the new minimum wage because it will be able to raise prices as needed. The bookselling business is different, the blog post argued, because book prices are set by the publishers and clearly printed on the books.”
So, although the owner wasn’t making much of a profit anyway from selling books, he’s still going to do just fine with the cafe associated with his bookstore. The last paragraph of the article itself links to this survey of economists who are mostly supportive of minimum-wage raises.
Hmm…So why is this one bookstore being used as, it appears, the definitive argument against all minimum-wage hikes, and why does it sound like the Ronald Reagan “Cadillac-driving welfare queen”? And since when does ONE = ALL?
I think I’m going to have to write to Assemblyman Lalor about his research team – if he has one.
This is our (very late) Daily Open Thread–what’s on your mind?
In these days where political insanity seems to rule the world in which we’re stuck, it’s most enjoyable to head out and commune with critters that have never heard the word ‘Wingnut,’ and most certainly would head for the tall weeds if ever they should happen to encounter one — a concept with which I happen to be totally sympathetic.
Ergo, whenever the opportunity shows itself, I grab at the chance to turn my back on the ‘madding crowd’ and head for a more peaceful surround — assuming the weather cooperates, a rare happenstance so far this year (I could make some sort of snide comment concerning the science of climate change, but won’t because I don’t want to come across as “really arrogant” ).
So here are a couple of critters that share the lake with the local flock of Canadian Geese. First up is what I’m guessing to be a Western Painted Turtle. He likes to hang out on an old bleached beaver-felled log that lies in the shallows very near the shore. He’s a fairly good sized fella, shell about 12″ in diameter, plus or minus one or two. He’s also a very peaceful dude; was sprawled on the same log on both days last week that we spotted him. We watched him for close to a half-hour each day, and he was the most statuesque critter I’ve ever seen — never moved a single muscle.
In the turtle’s general neighbood we spotted this other fellow as well. S/he is one half of a mating pair of Great Blue Herons which appear to have set up houskeeping at the lake this year. At least they’ve been hanging around for several weeks — time will tell if they choose to settle in. They are, however, very elusive, very secretive, and quite skilled at avoiding people. I got lucky with this one — spotted it standing near the shore a hundred yards or so distant. Fortunately, the camera’s 60X zoom was ready and willing to do its job!
In the immortal words of Robert Burns,
“Still thou art blest, compar’d wi’ me
The present only toucheth thee:
But, Och! I backward cast my e’e.
On prospects drear!
An’ forward, tho’ I canna see,
I guess an’ fear!”
That’s a very fair summation of what rolls about in the back of my mind every time I leave “we the people” behind and venture out for a mingle with the Higher Animals. The main downside to the whole process is the inevitable return to “civilization” and all of the noise that keeps it operational. Such as current political news, even little tidbits thereof. I think it was just yesterday morning, for example, when I heard that Rick Perry is going to announce on June 3rd or thereabouts that he’s decided to become the first Presidential candidate in US history to enter the race while under criminal indictment. WOW! He’s also just recently made it clear that nobody will worry about jade helm-type conspiracy theories when HE is president. Double WOW! For some odd reason, those two headlines, along with recollections of his brief candidacy in 2012 B.G. (Before Glasses), reminded me of an old joke which, if based on genuine fact, would explain a lot of that WOW stuff:
A few decades back, a Texas family – mom, dad, and son – moved to another state. Come fall, mom and dad enrolled their son in first grade in the local school and told him that from the first day onward they wanted to hear all about what school was like, how things were going, etc. Dad said, “Son, always remember one thing: we’re from TEXAS and proud of it! And being from Texas means we got a heads up on everybody else, cause that’s what happens when you’re born in TEXAS!”
Son nodded and smiled. “Yes, daddy, I know. We’re from TEXAS!”
Over supper the night after the boy’s first day in school, dad asked, “So, son, how was school today? What’s it like?”
“It was ok, daddy. We all got told by the teacher where we should sit and I’m in the front row! Then she asked if anybody knew the alphabet and I raised my hand and she called on me, had me go to the blackboard and write it out, and I did! And I got all the letters wrote just right and teacher said I was the only one in first grade that ever knew all the alphabet on the first day! Is that cause we’re from Texas, daddy?”
“Yep, son, that’s cause we’re from TEXAS!”
The next night at supper, daddy asked again how school went. The boy smiled big and said, “It went great, daddy. Today the teacher asked if anybody could count all the way to twenty, and I raised my hand and she had me stand up and do it, and I done it! She was really happy, cause most kids can’t even count to ten and get it right. Is that cause we’re from Texas, daddy?”
“Yep, that’s cause we’re from TEXAS, son.”
On the third night, daddy again asked the boy how school went.
“Well daddy, today we went to the gym and they gave us shorts and a shirt to wear when we learnt how to do exercisins on the gym floor.”
“How’d you do, son?” Daddy asked.
“Oh, I done good. But afterwards we all had to take a shower get cleaned up afore we went back to class, and in the shower I noticed that all them boys had little bitty weenies compared to me.” The son paused, then asked, “Why is that, daddy? Is that cause I’m from Texas?”
Daddy thought a minute, then finally said, “No, son. It’s because you’re seventeen.”
The following year the Perry family moved back to the cotton farm in TEXAS.
Yep, that would pretty much define the Rick Perry with which I’m familiar. And I should add that while I’m definitely NOT a Democrat who has ‘sold my soul’ for immigrant votes (in spite of what one of the potential Clown Car Creepoids proclaims), it remains a FACT that I’d happily vote for either a turtle of a Great Blue Heron — immigrant or native, no worries —before I’d vote for ANYONE in said Clown Car!
Ok, that’s enough for now. The OPEN THREAD is now . . . ummm . . . open.
“Animals are reliable, many full of love, true in their affections,
predictable in their actions, grateful and loyal.
Difficult standards for people to live up to.”
Alfred A. Montapert
About two weeks ago, I posted here a series of ten photos, taken on May 2 and 3, of a Canadian Goose “family” which included three newly hatched goslings, probably out on one of their very first forays into their new world.
Then a week ago and for no apparent reason, those three little guys were nowhere to be seen. I noted here our fears that the “odds against them being somewhere — even in the nest — unsupervised are quite high. Dare we hope? In any case, time will tell if they’re still around or gone for good. We do intend to keep a close eye on the situation and will report back if anything happens to pop up.”
Later that same day, fellow bird-watcher Woody-the-Goose-Guy stopped by late in the afternoon to say he’d spotted the little ones in another corner of the lake. So last weekend when the weather finally cleared up long enough for us to go take a look, we got lucky. There they were!
Here’s the “family” as of May 16, pretty close to exactly two weeks since the goslings first left the nest (note that the newbies have grown a bit in those two weeks — apparently there’s adequate chow available!).
So all is well, at least with what appears to be the ONLY local Canadian Goose family that has managed to reproduce this year, and that’s out of an overall population where potential mating pairs likely number in the hundreds. Also curious, there are only three goslings; usually in years past the number is typically more like six, maybe seven goslings per family. So what’s up with that?
I asked Woody-the-Goose-Guy the same question, and he explained that “they” (Homo sapiens sapiens) who monitor and control the local goose population are sending their people out during spring nesting season with instruction to locate eggs and coat them with vegetable oil. That prevents the embryos from developing (by disallowing the eggs to “breathe”), and when most eggs don’t hatch there are obviously going to be far fewer goslings and, as a result, far less goose crap on the lake’s paved walkway come late summer/early fall — which means far less complaining by people who are offended by goose crap. Problem solved. More or less. Humans are SO clever, aren’t we?
One thing I have to wonder when I ponder these human-inspired “lower” animal birth control agendas is highlighted by this pair of recent ‘headline’ links:
Trent Franks: 20-Week Abortion Ban Will Make Americans Realize Legal Abortion Is Like Slavery
So “fundamentally” it’s OK to control birth rates in (and numbers of) every other species of life on the planet, but it’s NOT permissible to allow the same or similar privilege to fellow humans? Why the difference? Just curious.
Stephen Jay Gould once wrote,
“The fundamentalists, by ‘knowing’ the answers before they start examining evolution, and then forcing nature into the straitjacket of their discredited preconceptions, lie outside the domain of science —
or of any honest intellectual inquiry.”
I think I agree.
OPEN THREAD
open thread
Nanotechnology means not only where do you put it when its life is over, but can you even find it? 
Open Thread.
There are some male opponents of same-sex marriage who desperately need for it to remain illegal lest they leave their wives and follow their hearts to find the man of their dreams and settle down to a life of happiness. I’m beginning to wonder if Bryan Fischer is one of them. The very idea that the Supreme Court might actually strike down all bans on marriage equality and declare it a constitutional right (thanks, in part, to Justice Antonin Scalia’s own opinions, in which he suggested the strategy to use for marriage equality proponents to win) has Fischer scared. Very scared. But what does he have to fear if his own marriage is solid and loving? In what way would the right of people (who have no interest in him) to marry each other affect him? Is he afraid that the last thing to stop him from leaving his wife to shack up with another man is a law making that relationship with that man illegal? What else makes sense? Unless he means the violence.
Fischer is pretending that what he fears is the civil unrest that a ruling in support of marriage equality would make inevitable.
“The Supreme Court can be slapped down through a deliberative and representative process,” he said, “rather than through chaos and civil unrest which I and a lot of other pro-family leaders fear is the alternative. If the Supreme Court continues to overreach and they aren’t checked, we are headed towards civil unrest, I don’t think there is any other way around it. If it’s not stopped and reversed, the tyrannical overreach of the Supreme Court, we are to have social dislocation and I believe we are going to have violence as a result. And that is simply because freedom is too deeply ingrained in the DNA of the American people to permit tyranny to continue unchecked forever. The solution: state legislatures rediscovering their constitutional authority under the Ninth and 10th Amendments. “
Tell us something, Bryan. Who would be committing these acts of chaos, these acts of civil unrest, these acts of violence? Would it be the people who support marriage equality? Or would it be the people like you and the other “pro-family leaders” who will be taking to the streets to spread chaos, be civilly unrestful, and commit acts of violence? I think we who support marriage equality are the ones who have something to fear from the people who oppose it, not the other way around. When we start hearing we might lose, we start taking action to elect Democratic Senators and Presidents who will make sure these socially deficient rulings are reversed. When your side starts hearing it might lose, you talk about taking to the streets and committing violence. Who are the real domestic terrorists in this scenario, the ones who want a peaceful remedy to our disagreements, or the ones who talk casually about violence?
Lastly, I think you States Rights’ advocates don’t seem to have gotten the memo yet. The Constitution is not the Articles of Confederation. You keep talking about how the States have the power to enact these same-sex marriage bans because the Constitution doesn’t give the federal government the right to regulate marriage. You frequently refer to the Tenth Amendment and how it means the States have the power over things the federal government doesn’t. But that’s only partly correct. First, you’re deliberately misinterpreting the Ninth Amendment as having something to do with States’ Rights. A plain reading of it proves it doesn’t. Here it is.
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
You have to read the Tenth Amendment in conjunction with the Ninth to understand why the People have rights even the states can’t take away.
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
In all your States’ Rights talk, you leave out the rights reserved to the people, the ones who have specifically have rights not mentioned in the Constitution. And one of those rights reserved to the people is the right to marry the person of your choice. Not people, not pets, not some perversion I don’t wish to name, but person. One person. So stop the polygamy and polyandry claims, stop the bestiality claims, stop the perversion claims. Nobody has ever seriously argued that marriage should be between anything other than two, and only two, people. (Some nutjobs might have, but they are few in number and can safely be regarded as totally without public influence. In fact, if you never brought them up, we’d never hear about them.)
You also leave out the Fourteenth Amendment, one of the most important constitutional amendments in human history. Without the 14th, your 1st Amendment rights mean nothing. If you read the Bill of Rights carefully, it says nothing about the States not being allowed to infringe upon your right to freedom of religion, or free speech, or a free press, or free assembly, or the freedom to petition the government. The 14th Amendment does. It says:
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
That means the rights you have as a federal citizen are now the rights you have as a citizen of your state. So your state can’t block your right to freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly or petitioning. What never ceases to amaze me, Bryan, is how you States’ Rights advocates get all up in arms about freedoms you claim the federal government is taking away from its citizens, but you are perfectly happy with your own state taking away those same freedoms. So why are you so opposed to the federal government saying the states can’t deny citizens within its borders their right to marry? What is it you’re so afraid will happen. Bryan? That you’ll run out into the streets to commit acts of violence against your fellow citizens, or that you’ll leave your wife for another man? I’ll support you 100% on the latter, but not on the former.
This is our daily open thread. Feel free to make fun of Bryan Fischer’s paranoia, how my interpretations of the Constitution are off the mark, or anything else you wish to discuss.
May 18, 1980, thirty-five years ago tomorrow, Mt St Helens in Washington State went off like a bomb, killing 57 people and turning hundreds of square miles of beautiful forest into a wasteland.
Here’s a handy dandy graphic from the Wiki page of what happened during the blast:
I was living near Lake Shasta at the time, and working at the K-Mart just off I-5 in Redding. I was amazed at the uptick in the numbers of travelers going north; we could tell who they were because they were buying stacks and stacks of crappy K-Mart air filters for their cars. My thought was, “Why drive into that mess on purpose?,” but I guess they had their reasons — maybe selling crappy air filters to the masses. 😀
Thankfully, no one in my family was living in northern at the time. My parents and younger sister moved to Moscow the next year, so they could establish residency before my dad started law school in 1982. To hear the old people around Moscow tell it, they received anywhere from a couple inches to 12 feet of ash. As much of a nightmare as it was, I’m pretty sure it was closer to a couple inches than it was to a foot — let alone 12 feet.
Exciting times!! My inner geology geek was pinging like mad…
This is our daily open thread — where were you the day Mt St Helens went off?
Karma is a Bitch…
You Reap What You Sow…
The Law of Unintended Consequences…
A Homer Simpson “D’OH!” moment…
A Simpsons’ Nelson “HA-ha!” moment…
What Goes Around Comes Around…
Revenge is a Dish Best Served Stoned?
However you want to describe it, it’s going to be a fun time in Indiana on July 1st. July 1st is the day that Indiana’s revised RFRA law goes into effect. It is also the day that the State-of-Indiana-approved “First Church of Cannabis” holds their inaugural worship service. So when July 1st rolls around, prepare your favorite snacks, roll a fattie/fill a bowl/fire up the bong/bake some ‘special’ brownies, and get ready to enjoy the circus and the fireworks.
An excerpt from yesterday’s Think Progress thread about the Church, which was formed in March subsequent to Indiana’s revised RFRA law:
“It’s going to be a standard service,” Bill Levin, the group’s leader and self-proclaimed “Grand Poohba and Minister of Love,” told ThinkProgress. He explained the ceremony will last around 45 minutes, complete with music and teachings, but will conclude with an unusual benediction: “At the end of the service … we will enjoy cannabis, because it’s how we enjoy life.”
An article from the Christian Post website, written by Vincent Funaro, is also informative. (I would have posted a link to it, but pop-up ads there refuse to go away – while, yes, I DO want to look at The Home Decorator’s big Outlet sale, I got their email yesterday so right now it’s just blocking an entire paragraph – but I digress!) While the article is written in a straightforward, non-committal way, I thought the stock photo they used to begin the article, although captioned appropriately, was just a tad over-the-top, not to mention outright misleading.
(Photo: Reuters/ Navesh Chitrakar)
A Hindu holy man, or sadhu, smokes marijuana in a chillum on the premises of Pashupatinath Temple in Kathmandu February 17, 2015. Hindu holy men from Nepal and India come to this temple to take part in the Maha Shivaratri festival annually for holiday when it is legal to smoke the otherwise illegal drug. Celebrated by Hindu devotees all over the world, Shivaratri is dedicated to Lord Shiva, and holy men mark the occasion by praying, smoking marijuana or smearing their bodies with ashes.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
An Indiana organization dedicated to marijuana that calls itself the First Church of Cannabis will host its first “worship service” on July 1, the same day that the state’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act goes into effect.
The organization will test the law’s ban on government burdens on the exercise of religion as it will feature a pot-smoking session that is illegal in the state of Indiana.
The cannabis group’s founder Bill Levin explained plans for the service to U.S. News and said it will open with “Amazing Grace” played on a harmonica by a popular young musician and move to a quick sermon followed by a “call to worship,” which is actually just a time for smoking marijuana.
“I’m an old-school producer,” Levin told U.S. News. “We start off the show soft and we have a build-up and then in the end we explode in glory and we all dance around the hall.”
Levin is searching for a church that will lease him space for the event and will also consider holding it on a religious campground or in a public park. It’s still unclear if local police and prosecutors are prepared to accept pot smoking as protected conduct under the state’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
Peg McLeish, a spokeswoman for the Marion County Prosecutor’s Office in Indiana told U.S. News that the Religious Freedom Law doesn’t necessarily protect people who commit crimes from being arrested.
“It’s that they could assert [their religious beliefs are] a defense if they are prosecuted,” she said.
Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act says the government cannot “substantially burden” a person’s ability to follow their religious beliefs, unless it can prove a compelling interest in imposing that burden and it does so in the least restrictive way.
Critics of the law contended that it could be used to discriminate against the LGBT community on the basis of religion. This would apply to Christian business owners refusing to service gay weddings based on their beliefs.
Indiana Gov. Mike Pence later clarified RFRA after signing it into law in March stating that it “does not give businesses a right to deny services to anyone.”
To appease detractors, Pence signed revisions into the law to remove fears that it would allow businesses to discriminate against the LBGT community in April.
However, the article fails to point out that part of the Church’s raison d’etre is the celebration of the healing and medicinal powers of the ‘blessed’ plant.
And yes, folks, there is a membership application posted on The Church of Cannabis’ Facebook page – in fact, I see that someone we know visited before I did. 😉
Hmm…is anyone else thinking what I’m thinking? 😀
This is our daily Open Thread – have fun!
The Thrill is Gone
BB King (September 16, 1925 – May 14, 2015)
“The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure
and the intelligent full of doubt.”
~Bertrand Russell
A decade or two ago, I happened across a quote by Bertrand Russell. Two things caught my eye: (1) his ‘definition’ of fascism matched what appeared to be underway in the US at least since the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan, and (2) Russell had penned the line in 1940, two years before I was born.
“The first step in a fascist movement is the combination under an energetic leader of a number of men who possess more than the average share of leisure, brutality, and stupidity. The next step is to fascinate fools and muzzle the intelligent, by emotional excitement on the one hand and terrorism on the other.” ~Bertrand Russell: Freedom; (Harcourt Brace, 1940)
I was curious. I had heard of Russell, of course, but having not been much of a humanities student whilst in college all those years ago, I was largely unfamiliar with the specifics of his work, of his ideas. So I dug a little deeper and found tons more tidbits of B.R. wisdom. Here are a small handful that demonstrate, to me, Russell’s immense capacity for rational thought as well as his amazing ability to clearly summarize most any topic, all-the-while subtly exposing popular fallacies in the process.
“Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear.”
“We may define ‘faith’ as a firm belief in something for which there is no evidence. [and] We only speak of faith when we wish to substitute emotion for evidence.”
“If throughout your life you abstain from murder, theft, fornication, perjury, blasphemy, and disrespect towards your parents, your Church, and your king, you are conventionally held to deserve moral admiration even if you have never done a single kind or generous or useful action. This very inadequate notion of virtue . . . has done untold harm.”
“If you think that your belief is based upon reason, you will support it by argument, rather than by persecution, and will abandon it if the argument goes against you. But if your belief is based on faith, you will realize that argument is useless, and will therefore resort to force either in the form of persecution or by stunting and distorting the minds of the young in what is called ‘education.’ This last is peculiarly dastardly since it takes advantage of the defenselessness of immature minds. Unfortunately it is practiced in a greater or less degree in the schools of every civilized country.”
And then there’s this GEM!
“The date of the creation of the world (according to the orthodox view) can be inferred from the genealogies in Genesis, which tell how old each patriarch was when his oldest son was born. Some margin of controversy was permissible, owing to certain ambiguities and to differences between the Septuagint and the Hebrew text; but in the end Protestant Christendom generally accepted the date 4004 B.C., fixed by Archbishop Usher. Dr. Lightfoot, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, who accepted this date for the Creation, thought that a careful study of Genesis made even greater precision possible; the creation of man, according to him, took place at 9.00 A.M. on October 23rd. This, however, has never been an article of faith; you might believe, without risk of heresy, that Adam and Eve came into existence on October 16th or October 30th, provided your reasons were derived from Genesis. The day of the week was, of course, known to have been Friday, since God rested on the Saturday.”
Undercurrent thesis stated another way,
“Dogma demands authority, rather than intelligent thought, as the source of opinion; it requires persecution of heretics and hostility to unbelievers; it asks of its disciples that they should inhibit natural kindliness in favor of systematic hatred.”
Bertrand Russell (1872 – 1970) lived a long and extremely productive life. I’ll not even attempt to make a list his accomplishments — the multi-paged Wikipedia link embedded above offers a detailed summary of his life; it also includes links to more detailed information for any who so desire. Suffice to say that in my somewhat shriveled and mediocre mind, I see the world in much the same way as he did — a footnote I readily admit and accept.
Here, for example, is Russell speaking of God and Religion in 1959. Curiously, he and I do share one tiny bit of religious ‘history.’ When asked when he decided not to remain a believer in the Christian beliefs he’d been taught, he said that “by the time I was eighteen, I discarded the last of them.” For me, likewise. 🙂
21st Century GOP defined. Amen.
OPEN THREAD
The day was Monday, May 11, 2015. Springtime, right? I was up early, and when I first looked out the window this is what I saw: the endpoint of an overnight snowstorm, some five, maybe six inches of heavy wet stuff. Looked like the middle of January out there, and certainly not like a happy time for springtime’s nesting bird life. 
A few hours later the temp had climbed into the low forties, and the clouds had begun to break up, revealing this view of the Front Range where, according to reports, as much as two feet of snow had fallen. 
The following day, the PM temps returned to the low seventies where they typically reside this time of year. That afternoon, we decided to take a walk around the local lake, see if we could again spot the Canadian Goose family that had been busily exploring its corner of the lake during the week before the storms came. The photo below was taken on May third, very near the day the goslings first left the nest to explore their new world. 
So on Tuesday the twelfth we returned to their corner of the world and eventually spotted the mating pair of Canadians (Branta canadensis) relaxing near the shore of a small island that lies about a hundred yards out. They were, as usual, in the company of the only remaining pair of Chinese geese (Anser anser domesticus) in the lake’s current goose colony. 
In the photo above, note the absence of goslings — they were nowhere to be seen, which is most unusual as the days approach the middle of May. Where were they? Normally if they were nearby, either the Canadian mating pair or the Chinese geese would be supervising, watching carefully. Such was clearly not the case, so the first assumption was that something had gone awry. Were they victims of the sudden snowstorm? The recent weather had certainly been goofy enough to be assumed a possible threat to days-old chicks. Or maybe a fox stopped by? Or a cougar? Dog? Feral cat? Take your pick. One thing I did notice — later in the day while reviewing the above photo — was what appeared to be a battle wound of some sort on the neck of the white Chinese goose: 
Chinese geese are a popular domestic breed, well-known to be an efficient watchdog that is typically very noisy when anything unusual is around. In this local semi-wild setting, the two of them are always and invariably in the company of their Canadian ‘friends.’ They are, in fact, extremely protective of Canadian goslings. They seem to watch from a distance, but whenever another critter pops up in the neighborhood (humans included) they immediately start honking loudly as they hurry over to offer whatever help might be needed. My first glance at the neck wound above, therefore, definitely made me wonder if maybe the goslings had indeed “gotten got” by one or another of our furry critter locals. The odds against them being somewhere — even in the nest — unsupervised are quite high. Dare we hope? In any case, time will tell if they’re still around or gone for good. We do intend to keep a close eye on the situation and will report back if anything happens to pop up.
Meanwhile, back to the human world where the idiocy continues unabashed, as evidenced in these few recent headlines:
Poll: One-Third Of Republicans Think Obama Wants To Invade Texas
Conservative Pundit: ‘Major Outbreak Of Violence’ Against Obama Administration Imminent
And finally, this absolute GEM!
Beck: Free Community College Is A Government Plot To Enslave People Through Student Loan Debt
OPEN THREAD
RIP
SATIRE
10,000 B.C. – 2015 A.D.
Satire died last night in its sleep. Overworked to the point of exhaustion, Satire expired quietly in the night. A forensic autopsy indicated Satire was overcome by recent events, as Republican after Republican outdid each other – to the point where no longer could a satirical extreme be found. Pundits tried, to no avail. No one could out-extreme the extremists on the extreme fringe of what has now become the mainstream of Republican politics. Satire no longer had the advantage of being outrageous, yet somewhat believable, as more and more outrageous claims and positions were taken each day by candidates who took themselves seriously, even while the sane world looked on with incredulity.
Satire will be sorely missed. Satire is survived by its relatives: irony, puns and limericks.
Services will be held at 11 and Happy Hour.
OPEN THREAD
Nonewhere is experiencing “technical difficulties” so he asked me to post something so that bloggers have a place to discuss the issues of the day.
I’m going to regress to Sunday’s special day, Mother’s Day. My mother had a beautiful singing voice and she sang a variety of different songs throughout the day. She gave me my love of music. Here’s one of the songs she would sing.
This is your Open Thread for the day. It’s your turn to Speak Up or Sing if you like 🙂
Glenn Beck, who can best be remembered from me opening this post with his name, has finally said something with which I completely agree: He has no credibility. After talking about (rush transcript) the Bubba Effect,
What I’m afraid of is the Bubba Effect. And I’ve talked about this for about six years. I said, there’s going to come a time when you’ll start to have riots on the streets. There’s going to come a time when you’ll have terrorists come and do something. And the — and the feds will come in or the government will come in, and they will try to quell it or they’ll try to arrest somebody. And the town will say, uh-uh. Nope! You, United States government, you knew about it. You’re part of the problem. And the Bubba Effect comes from the one idea that — a Muslim goes and shoots somebody. And then Bubba, who just doesn’t — is not really paying attention. Sees a Sikh some place who wears a turban. Not a Muslim, but he’s a Sikh. But Bubba sees him and is like, you people. And he’s all enraged and he shoots a Sikh. Now, what’s going to happen? The DOJ has to come in and try him for murder. But because that town just experienced some sort of, you know, 40 kids in an elementary school shot and they knew that the federal government kept the borders open and these guys came across the borders, they were here illegally, or they were from that mosque down the street that everybody knew was an extremist mosque, but they did nothing about it. That’s when the citizens grab their guns and say to the DOJ, get the hell out of here. What Bubba did was wrong, but we’ll take care of it. We don’t need you here.
While it can certainly be classified as a hate crime, the DOJ usually doesn’t need to step in and try Bubba for murder unless the state, who normally prosecutes homicides, fails to convict him. And let’s be real, Glenn, those 40 fictitious kids who got shot in a school were, in all likelihood if this happened in this country, killed by a deranged white American kid who had no religious or quasi-religious motivations whatsoever. So any connection to our borders is just the paranoia or the bigotry talking, and who says it can’t be both? Also, it’s important to know exactly how everybody “knew” that mosque was extremist. Did they ever set foot inside it, or talk to anyone who had? I’m sure they didn’t, but they’re going to “grab their guns” anyway. because there isn’t a social problem in the world that can’t be solved with a gun, is there, Glenn? Where do you come up with this shit, anyway?
Now, this is not my theory. This is the theory that I learned from the Special Forces command about eight years ago. This is about 2004, and I go to the east coast. I go, where is that? Is that in Virginia? Where was that? Special Forces command? Fort Bragg. I’m at Fort Bragg and I’m talking to the press, and I said, what is your number one concern? And they said the Bubba Effect. They said, that’s coming at some point in the future.
Okay, 2004 was eleven years ago, not eight, and Fort Bragg is in North Carolina, not Virginia, but other than that…
Imagine Hillary Clinton making a gaffe like that on the campaign trail. “Eleven is the new eight” will be the new “Fifty-seven states.” We’d never hear the end of it. “Is she planning to be president for eleven years?” Actually, I’d like to hear them say something like that because it would mean they were admitting defeat before the votes take place. Then some of the wheels on Glenn’s Crazy Train started to wobble a bit…
Now, that hadn’t even occurred to me. This is before we’re really having any kind of real hatred and animosity toward each another. It’s the Michael Moore, you know, Fahrenheit 911 stuff. But we can handle all of that. It just happened. The beginning. Stage one just happened here in Dallas this weekend. And here it is. These marchers, they come in, Moms Against Police Brutality, and marchers for I don’t know, free all the Mexicans. I don’t know. Something about the border.
It was at this point, I believe, that the Lithium wore off completely…
Let them come in. Let them take jobs, whatever. So they’re marching down the street. And these guys are connected. They’re connected to the Nation of Islam. They’re connected to Open Society. George Soros. They’re connected to the Tides Foundation. This is a front group. This is front group. Pure and simple. The police are there. These groups are marching. But there’s somebody in between. It’s the open carry people.
Nation of Islam? Open Society? George Soros? Tides Foundation? All connected? All connected to these protests in Baltimore over the police murdering someone in their custody? And we should have no fear because the open carry people are there?
So now here are just citizens with long arms. They have a right to have the long arms. When asked by a reporter friend, what are you guys doing here? Well, we’re kind of the buffer between these guys and the police. What do you mean you’re the buffer between these guys and the police? Well, we know how the police reacted, listen to this, we know how the police reacted in Baltimore, and we want to make sure that, A, if there was any police brutality, we could kind of buffer that zone. If they start to push the cops, that we could be in between them so that the cops couldn’t really respond — so no bad stuff is going to happen. And if somebody starts looting our city, we’ll stop it. Because the police are going to be told like they were in Baltimore to stand down.
I’ll be candid with you. I didn’t follow the Baltimore stories really closely, as I try to avoid getting sucked into watching TV 24/7, so I don’t know if there were open carry enthusiasts standing guard to prevent looting or not, but I do know that the Crips, Bloods, and Black Guerrilla Family gangs called a truce to come together to do their own business protection. Glenn forgot to mention them.
Bubba Effect. There it is. That’s stage one. Nothing happened. So those guys went home. But now let me ask you something: If Bubba, who is carrying a long arm, they see somebody throwing mazel tov cocktails and they stop it, how many people in our community will say, no, no, no, wait a minute. You were told to stand down. These guys were burning our city down. They’re just neighbors in our neighborhood that are trying to stop these guys from burning our neighborhood down? A lot.
Good thing it wasn’t Molotov cocktails, because those things are really dangerous. I’m not sure that speculating about what might have happened is helpful when half the scenario you’re describing may have happened in your mind.
We’re being set up, guys. We are absolutely being set up. And I don’t know — this is what I pray every night. I don’t know how to do this, Lord. I don’t know what you want. I don’t know — I don’t know what you want. I can’t wake up any — oh, if I had the voice of an angel. I can’t wake anybody else up. They’ve smeared me. I’ve helped them smear me. I don’t have any credibility. Nobody is listening. I can tell you what’s coming. I’ve told you every step of the way. I know what’s coming next. [Boldface mine.]
Finally, Glenn Beck has said something with which I agree 100%. He has no credibility. How could he? He’s a self-described “rodeo clown.” Right Wing Watch has more about this recent beck meltdown.
Glenn wants you to be prepared. To be prepared for the day when he, and the voices of leaders like him, are silenced by the government.
How shall we prepare for the day when you are silenced by the government, Glenn? I’m thinking some weed should be involved.
This is our daily open thread. Feel free to talk about, ridicule, denigrate, or otherwise demean Glenn Beck, or even me, for that matter, or anything else you wish to talk about.
Awwww, it’s my Mom… on a tiny pony. She looks to be about three years old, which dates this photo to the WWII years.
I’ve always wondered about this photo — why was such a photo taken, when her parents weren’t country people? They lived in the big city of Cleveland, Ohio! Then I remember that, of my maternal grandmother’s many pregnancies, my Mom was her only living child. So when the opportunity arose to put her only baby girl on the back of a pony for a photo-op, you know that was totally happening.
I never met my maternal grandparents — my grandmother having died of breast cancer when my Mom was 13, and my grandfather having died suddenly when Mom was in her last year of high school — but I like to think they were nice people. She didn’t talk about them much. They gave her a good foundation, and she made the best of it. Isn’t that what parents are supposed to do? Especially on a shortened time frame…
Miss you bunches, Mom.
This is our daily open thread — Call your Mom! Or spend time with happy memories.
I have next to nothing today, simply because there’s way too much crazy shit out there and I’m just overloaded.
Looking at: the several Republican 2016 Presidential hopefuls who have come out of their nutshells just this past week alone; the freaking HUGE sums of money being thrown at them and other possible candidates by the Kochs, Sheldon Adelson, and “interest groups” (aka front men for the Kochs, Adelson, and powerful ne’er-do-well corporations); the newest batshit crazy delusions that they’re all spouting; not to mention the frightening impact that climate change is already having and knowing that there’s worse to come; on top of way too fucking many murderous “law enforcement officers” and dead young black men…well, I could go on and on, but the point is that my brain just can’t take in much more.
Last night, while watching the Star Trek Next Gen episode “Tin Man”, I felt a kinship with the character Tam Elbrun, a Betazoid whose unnaturally strong telepathic ability has caused lifelong psychological problems because he hears everybody’s thoughts, all of the time, and cannot shut them out. Tam is brought on board the Enterprise for an unusual first-contact mission, an attempt to communicate with with an alien “ship”, nicknamed “Tin Man”, which turns out to be the last surviving member of a sentient species of space travelers. Tin Man is saved from suicide by its contact with Tam, and Tam decides to remain inside Tin Man. Traveling through space with Tin Man enables Tam to eliminate all the thoughts hurled at his mind by humans and humanoids.
Most of the times that I’ve watched this episode in the past, I couldn’t really empathize with Tam Elbrun. These days, I envy him.
This is our daily Open Thread – talk about whatever you want.
TheZoo 