Best Picture: Beasts of The Southern Wild

Beasts of the Southern Wild is an extraordinary film. It tells the story of a father and his daughter who are part of a community that lives off the grid down in the Bayou near New Oreleans. When a storm floods their little island, their already impoverished life becomes even worse.

I found myself sitting in judgement of these people throughout the film and, quite frankly, didn't like the things I was feeling. Hush Puppy, the main character of the story, is treated horribly by her father and the mandated reporter in me wanted to haul his ass to jail. Yet the entire community seemed to function perfectly well on their own, albeit in squalor. When a relief organization comes in to bring them medical aid and shelter, they react strongly against the assistance. It is a fascinating thing to watch as they reflect on how it's the outside world, not them, that are trapped.

In many ways, this film is a testament to libertarianism and, if you can stand the miserable living conditions, freedom is indeed a beautiful thing.

Hand Grenade Man

The Tick was a superhero comic first published in the early Nineties. The Tick was a parody of Superman, Batman, Hulk, Spiderman, the Fantastic Four, the Punisher and the rest of four-color universe — and it was published in black and white. The Tick was turned into a half-hour Saturday morning cartoon on Fox for three seasons.

In one issue Tick and his sidekick Arthur go to New York where superheroes are hanging on every wall, lamp post and flag pole. They're packed so tight they have to reserve street patrol times by the hour and schedule their next colossal confrontation with the gigantic tentacled blob Thrakkorzog and his army of gelatin zombies a week in advance.

Tick and Arthur encounter the Mighty Agrippa, Roman God of the Aqueduct, who invites them to the Comet Club, the exclusive superhero hangout. While Arthur is sent down to the sidekick's lounge, Tick meets superheroes like Skateboard Viking, Four-Legged Man, Fishboy, the Ant and Hand Grenade Man.

Tick asks what Hand Grenade Man's super powers are. "Super powers? Bah! Who needs 'em? I've got a hand grenade! ... You'd be surprised how much you can accomplish when people know you've got one."

Which brings us to Jimmy Lee Dykes, the man who killed a bus driver, kidnapped a boy and held the child for almost a week. Dykes was shot dead after the FBI's elite Hostage Rescue Team, a "counterterrorism tactical team," threw a flashbang into his bunker and briefly exchanged gunfire.

Dykes was a real Hand Grenade Man. Everyone knew he was going to explode some day. He pointed his gun at kids coming near his land. He patrolled his property at night with a long gun and a flashlight. He beat a neighbor's dog with pipe. He piled dirt in the road to create a speed bump, and when someone messed it up he started shooting at them. That precipitated a court appearance. And that's when Dykes pulled the pin.

Dykes apparently harbored anti-government, anti-police views. His neighbors found him to be increasingly paranoid and violent, frequently brandishing weapons. Before the incident Dykes gave a neighbor his manifesto, but authorities have yet to release it so we don't yet fully know what his deal was.

But the mild reaction of law enforcement to Dykes shooting at a woman and her child was proof of his paranoia. They simply scheduled a court date and left him at large. It makes you wonder: if Dykes had been black or Muslim would the police have been so accommodating?

Here was a man who was obviously a danger to himself and others, someone who had made terroristic threats, yet the authorities went out of their way to allow him to exercise his Second Amendment rights even after he'd abused them.

Jimmy Lee Dykes was the poster geezer for the NRA. He is the kind of guy we all think of when we conjure up the term gun nut: a grizzled, paranoid isolationist who's constantly ranting about the government and is on the verge of exploding.

Dykes is exactly the kind of guy that the NRA caters to and riles up with their apocalyptic visions of home invasions and arming themselves for the imminent collapse of society. They propagate the myth that an AR-15 is some kind of super power that will fend off drone strikes and Abrams tanks when the government attacks, or protect them from disease and starvation in the desolate landscape of Armageddon.

If it turns out that Dykes' manifesto is a rehash of NRA propaganda, how will they respond? Will they own up to their part in this act of domestic terrorism? Because the guy was a terrorist, no different than any Al Qaeda or Red Army terrorist. He was also crazy, like all terrorists and people who use violence against innocents to push their agendas.

Or will the Hand Grenade Men in the NRA blame his neighbors, the local police, liberals and society at large for threatening to take away his toys and driving him over the edge?

My money's on the latter.

No One Killed The Electric Car This Time

Here's some more good news that has flown under the radar.

A green secret: It was the year plug-in car sales accelerated

Plug-in vehicles like the Chevrolet Volt, Toyota Prius PHV, and all-electric Nissan Leaf are on pace for combined sales of about 50,000 by year-end – far ahead of what hybrid sales were at the same stage of market development – and a 280 percent jump in sales over 2011, according to data from Baum & Associates, an auto industry research firm. Next year will bring 33 models from a dozen companies.

When you consider how much of a pummeling the electric car takes every day, this is truly fantastic. This will have an impact on the climate, no doubt, and that's despite the notion that we are trading one form of polluting for another. Electric power is coming from more diverse sources than ever before these days so any less carbon emissions in the atmosphere is a net gain.

My Dream Realized

Remember how often I fantasize about people on the Right going off to form their own country? Well, Glenn Beck is now making that dream a reality!



Well, follks, what are your waiting fer? Just think of it...you could leave all of us commie fascist takers behind and have your own little paradise. Everything would work out perfectly. I just know it!

Relief is Spelled C-O-U-L-T-E-R

Universal background check means universal registration. Universal registration means universal confiscation, universal extermination. That’s how it goes in history.

Well, shit. I was a little concerned that we wouldn't get anywhere on refining our gun laws but now I know for certain that we will. Hell, we might even get an assault weapons ban if we see more stuff like this!

I'm beginning to see a pattern that has developed over the last four years...the Right says something loony tunes, America reacts with revulsion and....good things happen:)

Epistemic Closure Summary

I forgot to put this piece up by Bruce Bartlett last year but it's obviously still relevant. Bartlett used to work for Ronald Reagan as his chief economic adviser and has since sworn off of supply side economics as well as admitted how he wrong he was on many things. I wonder if this will ever be the case for some of my regulars here...

He makes several good points in this column, among them are these:

Until that moment I had not realized how closed the right-wing mind had become. Even assuming that my friends’ view of the Times’ philosophy was correct, which it most certainly was not, why would they not want to know what their enemy was thinking? This was my first exposure to what has been called “epistemic closure” among conservatives—living in their own bubble where nonsensical ideas circulate with no contradiction.

Contradiction is treason!

Among the interesting reactions to my book is that I was banned from Fox News. My publicist was told that orders had come down from on high that it was to receive no publicity whatsoever, not even attacks. Whoever gave that order was smart; attacks from the right would have sold books. Being ignored was poison for sales. I later learned that the order to ignore me extended throughout Rupert Murdoch’s empire.

That's because you were disobeying their will...oops, VILL!

The final line for me to cross in complete alienation from the right was my recognition that Obama is not a leftist. In fact, he’s barely a liberal—and only because the political spectrum has moved so far to the right that moderate Republicans from the past are now considered hardcore leftists by right-wing standards today. Viewed in historical context, I see Obama as actually being on the center-right.

Huh. Now who has also said that before?

So here we are, post-election 2012. All the stupidity and closed-mindedness that right-wingers have displayed over the last 10 years has come back to haunt them. It is now widely understood that the nation may be center-left after all, not center-right as conservatives thought. Overwhelming losses by Republicans to all the nation’s nonwhite voters have created a Democratic coalition that will govern the nation for the foreseeable future.

But they don't care, Bruce. As long as the win the argument and/or make money off of rubes.

At least a few conservatives now recognize that Republicans suffer for epistemic closure. They were genuinely shocked at Romney’s loss because they ignored every poll not produced by a right-wing pollster such as Rasmussen or approved by right-wing pundits such as the perpetually wrong Dick Morris. Living in the Fox News cocoon, most Republicans had no clue that they were losing or that their ideas were both stupid and politically unpopular.

They still don't have a clue as is evidenced by my comments section. Of course, none of this could be their fault, right!?

I am disinclined to think that Republicans are yet ready for a serious questioning of their philosophy or strategy. They comfort themselves with the fact that they held the House (due to gerrymandering) and think that just improving their get-out-the-vote system and throwing a few bones to the Latino community will fix their problem. There appears to be no recognition that their defects are far, far deeper and will require serious introspection and rethinking of how Republicans can win going forward. The alternative is permanent loss of the White House and probably the Senate as well, which means they can only temporarily block Democratic initiatives and never advance their own.

Yet they still believe...

Spelling Issues

I especially like the second photo and the woman behind the sign. Sort of reminds me of (ahem) something...:)

They Want A Mailing List

A nice summation of what happens when you allow hucksters to run your political party. As I have been saying, they don't want to win elections anymore. As Bill says below, if they are Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, or Bill Whittle, they just want a mailing list. Sadly, if they are your average voter, they just want to "win" arguments and flock all to willingly to these mailing lists.

Oh, and good Lord, was the montage of the same exact book being sold over and over again fucking hilarious! I wonder how much longer they will fall for it...

 

A Very Stale Conflict

The recent conflict over the nature of social studies curriculum is tired, old and very, very stale. Yes, we know that the liberals can't stand the fact that America has actually done a whole lot of wonderful things in  including the spread of free market economics around the world which has clearly raised prosperity in such remote corners that it's likely world hunger will be eliminated within 50 years. Or that our military has ensured this freedom across the globe and saved countless lives from a whole host of threats, both human and natural. And we know that conservatives are literally foaming at the mouth even at the mere hint of America being at fault for anything in its 200+ year history. Whenever anything bad happened (slavery, coup in Iran, Vietnam, Iraq II), it was no one's fault. Shitty things just happen sometimes and if you blame America, well, you're a fucking commie!

What both sides in this debate completely fail to realize is that they are having the wrong argument and are wasting an enormous amount of time. The discussion shouldn't be about content. It should be about rigor. The same level of attention that is applied to math and reading should be applied to social studies. That includes high stakes testing with severe repercussions for those districts who fail to achieve the basic standards set out by the state in history and civics.

I'd wager that none of these people has been in a classroom in the last decade because the simple fact is that young people don't give a shit about civics or history. Without the priority placed on it by the state, why the fuck should they care? Our education department, as well as others across the nation, is hammering it into them that math and reading are more important than any other subject. Certainly, they are important but when many of the kids I get into class don't know who the vice president is or how a bill is passed or that there are even three branches of government, that should be a strong indicator for change.

The first thing that needs to happen is that the conclusion of 9th grade should bring with it a basic civics and history exam to be taken by all students. By that time, they should have taken both a US History and a government class so they should have the knowledge. The data we could glean from such exams could be an excellent metric for the pedagogy of today's social studies teachers. It's long been my belief (and the data would likely bear this out) that social studies teachers skate by on doing the minimal amount of work. They don't have a fire under their arses that really needs to be there if we are actually going to get young people to have enduring understandings about history and civics. We have enough to compete with anyway with all the other social influences in kids' lives.

By the time they get to me, I see the results. They don't remember much of what they have learned and had instructors that spent a lot of time showing movies or going on field trips. I'm really sick and tired of people living the stereotype of the social studies teacher being just a slight jump up from the gym teacher. Hell, I'm tired of people living the gym teacher stereotype as well. I'd say that they have done a pretty poor job as well when you consider how rotund our nation's children have become although I know it's not entirely their fault.

So, let's forget this stupid debate about the content of social studies and what political view needs to be studied and focus on the fundamental goal: mastery of basic civics and history. We've gone far too long with young people not understanding the history of our government, how it functions, and the people that have been and are involved making decisions that affect all of our lives. Connections need to be made to their daily lives and the importance of what happens in government and in history must be illustrated in new and exciting ways for each and every student.

It's time for social studies to be taken much more seriously.

Now, Maybe?

FORMER SEAL, 'AMERICAN SNIPER' CHRIS KYLE KILLED AT TEXAS GUN RANGE

So, can we perhaps now refine our nation's gun laws so that mentally ill people (especially those with PTSD) don't have access to guns?

Dow Up, Fox Down, Hillary on the Mark!

Yesterday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at its highest level since May of 2008, topping out over that magic 14,000 mark at 14,009.79. Nasdaq climbed to its highest level since December of 2000. And the S&P 500 finished at a six month high after seeing gains of almost 7 percent this year.

Huh. I guess the president isn't destroying the economy after all:)

Meanwhile, while our economy continues to improve, the ratings at Fox News continue to plummet. Coincidence? I think not. You can only say so many things that are so completely false for so long, you know, before people say, "Hey, they don't know what the fuck they are talking about!" Those people being in that magic 25-54 demographic group. Apparently, viewers are going to Rachel Maddow and Piers Morgan (thanks, Alex Jones!) and away from Sean Hannity and Greta van Susteren.

I think Hillary Clinton summed it up best when she said, in her last interview:

There are some people in politics and in the press who can't be confused by the facts. They just will not live in an evidence-based world. And that's regrettable. It's regrettable for our political system and for the people who serve our government in very dangerous, difficult circumstances.

She was talking about the Benghazi attack but it obviously applies to pretty much everything the Right does these days. Don't like the facts? Make up your own! And then personally attack anyone who questions their love of larping.

Because that's just what they are doing!!

A Gift To GOP Freshmen From The Democrats

Trotter Testimony

Here's some video to go along with Nikto's post below. I love how she uses all too familiar framing techniques and Newspeak to redirect from completely disproving her own point.

False Courage from a Gun Barrel

In her testimony before Congress attorney Gayle Trotter said that the story of Sarah McKinley "proves" that women need AR-15 assault rifles. McKinley used a gun to fend off two attackers breaking into her home. Trotter lied by implication in her testimony: McKinley used a shotgun, not an assault rifle, which as one senator pointed out would continue to be completely legal under the proposed law.

Trotter then went on to say:

Young women are speaking out as to why AR-15 weapons are their weapon of choice. The guns are accurate. They have good handling. They’re light. They’re easy for women to hold.

And most importantly, their appearance. An assault weapon in the hands of a young woman defending her babies in her home becomes a defense weapon, and the peace of mind that a woman has as she’s facing three, four, five violent attackers, intruders in her home, with her children screaming in the background, the peace of mind that she has knowing that she has a scary-looking gun gives her more courage when she’s fighting hardened, violent criminals.

Liquor is often called courage in a bottle, and often as not just gets you killed. The courage that comes from a gun barrel is just as deceptive.

Trotter's moving story of a widow defending her home from crazed druggies quickly moves into outright fantasy. If a woman's home is truly under siege by a gang of five hardened, violent criminals, they've probably bought AR-15s themselves at gun shows or through straw buyers, because the NRA has made that so convenient for criminals. If they don't have the cash to buy guns, they can steal guns from houses posted "Protected by Smith & Wesson" while the owners are off at work.

Now think how hard it will be for that lone woman wielding an AR-15 with screaming kids clutching her knees to keep out five guys with AR-15s, or even 17-shot Glocks or pump-action shotguns. Like medieval armies storming a castle with siege towers, battering rams, catapults and trebuchettes, the five marauders won't all line up outside her front door and wait to be shot. They'll attack from multiple directions simultaneously, breaking down the front door and smashing in windows, while one surreptiously jimmies the lock on the back door and sneaks in behind her in all that racket.

The truth is, if you're alone and five guys really want to get into your typical house, they're going to get in. The only things that will keep them out is strong bars on the doors and windows and a call to 911.

The NRA keeps yapping about slow 911 response times and being able to defend ourselves if civil society breaks down. If the 911 response is slow, that's the problem we should fix. If there's danger of looting after a tornado, then we need to make sure that FEMA and the National Guard have enough funding to get boots on the ground yesterday. But around the country the right is cutting the state and local taxes — starving the beast — that police departments and first responders depend on, and they want to eliminate FEMA outright.

The right seems to be itching for society to collapse, pushing fantastical "what if" scenarios, building gated communities and bunkers and amassing massive gun hoards.

Instead we should strengthen our civil institutions, make sure that our first responders are well-funded, end the foolish war on drugs that creates those hardened criminals, improve education and eliminate the poverty that drives people into crime in the first place.

An Example of Why The Libertarian Fantasy is Just That

The recent tragedy at the Santa Maria nightclub in Brazil serves as a stark reminder of what would actually happen if the world were run by libertarians.

There was no fire alarm, no sprinklers, no fire escape. In violation of state safety codes, fire extinguishers were not spaced every 1,500 square feet, and there was only one exit.

So, regulations were lax or nonexistent. And I'm shocked, I tell you, shocked, that the owners of KISS didn't simply just follow them of their own accord. Packing an extra thousand people in over fire code is bad but the free market will sort all of that out, right?

Brazil has a democratic republic with the states, the municipalities and the federal districts sharing a balance of power. In this case, fire and health codes fall under the authority of the state level government (state, not federal? Hmm...:)). Clearly, they failed but it's also quite apparent that there is a need to do their fucking job in the first place.

Yet this is exactly the ideal set forth by the less government crowd. Regulations suck. People don't need a government telling them what they can or can't do with their private business. They can handle it on their own. Private enterprise can police itself. If only they were left well enough alone, things would turn out...

Well, like this did...

Well, I certainly didn't see this one coming!