A Real Head Scratcher

Fox News had a story on air recently in which they wondered why the beaches in our country are eroding. As Media Matters notes, that's a real head scratcher!

Forfeit These Services!

Samuel Warde has a nice variation on the anti-socialist pledge up over at Liberals Unite. Here are a few of my favorites...

Want to visit another country? Don’t bother unless you know a way around the border stop which is patrolled by the government and don’t forget you no longer can get a passport any more.

You need to worry about clean air or water once the commie EPA is shut down.

You no longer have to be bothered with paved roads, highways, interstate freeways or public bridges.

It's almost as if they don't understand how the real world works from the comfort of the basement of their parents home.

Coming Clean

I was quite heartened to see that the CIA has now admitted that it played a significant role in the coup in Iran in 1953. This event, more than any other, was the spark that lit the flame of hatred for the United States in Iran. Backing the Shah, who murdered his own citizens regularly and often on a mere whim, was a giant mistake.

Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq was the democratically elected leader and we had him overthrown simply because he nationalized Iran's oil. So what? It was their fucking country to do with whatever they desired. Iran wasn't a problem before the CIA, BP and MI-6 fucked everything up.

Fuck You

I actually had some sympathy for George Zimmerman throughout his whole ordeal and thought of him simply as a wannabe moron who should have never gotten out of the car. Most of my disgust over the shooting of Trayvon Martin lied not with him but with his mouth foaming supporters in the gun community who finally got to thump their chests and shout, "Hoo-RA!" as they turned Zimmerman into the victim standing his ground.

Yet after the recent revelation that Mr. Zimmerman visited Kal Tec, the gun manufacturer that made the gun he used to kill Martin, he can fuck right off. Any concern I have for his safety and future life as a result of the verdict is gone. He could have simply led a quiet life and tired to stay out of the spotlight. Yet if he is going to now be a gun celebrity and preen, he bears full responsibility for anything that happens to him.

Fuck you, douchebag.

The End Game

With the United States on the verge of bombing Syria after it has been discovered that the Assad government used chemical weapons against the rebels, I have to wonder...what is the end game in Syria?

No doubt the use of such weapons is thoroughly disgusting on just about every level but it shouldn't be news that President Assad is a despicable man. Equally as awful are the rebels who like to videotape people's hearts being cut out and eaten by resistance soldiers. These are the people we want to help out?

I suppose I understand the concept of a surgical strike the sends a message but it won't accomplish anything. The civil war there will continue and it's going to be a giant cluster fuck just as it is in Egypt with various groups vying violently for power. In the final analysis, there is very little we can to stabilize Syria let alone the region.

Retraction

The other day I posted this photo thinking that it was a real Michele Bachmann quote. It was actually from a Bachmann parody page so it isn't something she actually said. My mistake.

Speaking of photo mistakes, I'm still waiting for an admission of error from Kevin Baker and his merry band of American Taliban members on this photo.

I won't hold my breath.

Ripped Off!

So, this was discovered recently...

Scandal: 'Double Stuf' Oreos Don't Actually Contain Double the Stuff

After weighing 10 Double Stuf cookies both with and without their chocolate wafers, the class plugged the numbers into mathematical equations and came up with the horrifying truth: Double Stuf Oreos were only 1.86 times larger than regular Oreos.

Say it ain't so!

But kudos to an excellent instructional method:)

That's How We Roll...

Good Words

Republicans do have a debate problem. Debates often expose their candidates as outside the mainstream on issues like climate change and evolution and contraception and immigration and rape and safety net programs. The reason for that is that many Republican candidates are outside the mainstream on issues like climate change and evolution and contraception and immigration and rape and safety net programs. 

It looks like Republicans are trying to hide something. But the debates are not the party’s problem. The party is the party’s problem.

The above was taken from a Bill Schneider piece at Reuters and I couldn't agree with it more. The whole Reince Priebus meltdown over the Hillary Clinton movies and documentaries really illustrates just how worried the GOP is about their future prospects for president. After talking with many of my conservative friends, they don't seem too really care about the White House anyway.

Yet the message is clear: moderate or lose. And I actually think that's true even for the House in 2014. You have to have an alternate plan to what you are bitching about. A 12 year old boy temper tantrum is not a plan.

The One With The Happy Ending

It started off as an all too familiar event. A young white male with a history of mental health problems gets into a school and threatens to shoot it up. Convicted felon Michael Brandon Hill (who somehow managed to get a gun...how?) skirted past security at Discovery Learning Academy in Decateur, Georgia and held two staff hostage.

But one of the staff, school bookeeper Antoinette Tuff, talked him down and he surrendered to police. The story of how she did this is detailed in the above link. More importantly, however, is that she did this without a gun of her own in a gun free zone. This incident really drives home the point of how this is all about mental health and not guns. What happens to young white men that they get to this point? Why is it always the same profile, save a few outliers?

This is at the heart of the school shooting issue. We need to figure out the profile for these guys just like we would a serial killer or habitual thief. More intelligence means better crime prevention and (thank God) leaving the very unhelpful gun ass hats out of the equation.

We Are All Stars

Could this be the answer to the meaning of life and death?

Wow

Another Cult Member Exits Stage Left!

Clint Murphy has left The Cult, ladies and gentlemen. And it took a bout with testicular cancer to spur him into reflection. Of course, this comes after Newt Gingrich, who last week said that Republicans had "zero" ideas for a replacement to the Affordable Care Act.

“I will bet you, for most of you, you go home in the next two weeks when your members of Congress are home, and you look them in the eye and you say, ‘What is your positive replacement for Obamacare?’ They will have zero answer,” Gingrich told the Boston crowd, said a report from CNN. Gingrich said the party has a “very deep problem” with a culture that promotes negativity. “We are caught up right now in a culture, and you see it every single day, where as long as we are negative and as long as we are vicious and as long as we can tear down our opponent, we don’t have to learn anything. And so we don’t,” Gingrich said, according to video of the event from MSNBC.

Gee, Newt, I've been saying that for...oh...I don't know how many years now...

Mr. Murphy had much more to say. His Facebook post on Obamacare last week, addressed to his Republican friends, was something of a surprise:

“When you say you’re against it, you’re saying that you don’t want people like me to have health insurance.” Murphy would like to call himself a Republican, but has been too dismayed by his party’s cavalier attitude toward the health care debate. “We have people treating government like a Broadway play, like it’s some sort of entertainment,” he said. So call Murphy an independent.

Obamacare isn’t perfect, the former political spear-carrier said. “But to even improve it, to make something work, you’ve got to participate in the process. [Republicans] are not even participating in the process.”

They do a fine job of entertaining all too willing masses and a downright crappy job of participating in the process. Kind of like...oh, I don't know...a lazy adolescent who has problems with this parents?

Breaking News: Rafael ("Ted") Cruz Releases Birth Certificate

Remember all the hoo hah about President Obama's birth certificate, and that he couldn't be president because some nuts on the right insisted he was born in Kenya, even though every single iota of physical evidence, from birth certificates issued by the state of Hawaii to birth notices in the newspaper indicated that Obama was an American born in America?

Now Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican and Tea Party darling, has been forced to release his birth certificate. And the document not only proves that he was born in a foreign country, but also that his father was from Cuba (and, incidentally, he fought alongside Fidel Castro in the revolution)! Incredibly, Cruz also continues to hold dual citizenship in Canada and the United States. Where do his real loyalties lie? Is he secretly beholden to the queen of England?

Cruz's mother happens to be American, but that meant nothing to the millions of birthers out there who insisted that Obama couldn't be an American even if his mother was. As it turns out, Cruz is even less American than the president.

The other piece of important information that we learned from this birth certificate is that Cruz's real name is Rafael. So, all you birthers out there, listen up: you have derisively called Obama "Barry" for years. It is now your duty to harangue Cruz with your every breath, calling him "Rafi" and "Rafaelito" at every opportunity.

On a serious note, this does not disqualify Cruz from being president. But it's patently ridiculous that nitwits like Orly Taitz have kept the birth certificate brouhaha alive for years. The craziest thing about her is that she was -- I kid you not -- born in the Soviet Republic of Moldavia!

Which gives her absolutely zero standing for questioning just how "real" an American the president or Cruz or any other US citizen is.

Compromise: the Dirty Word

Mark's post about conservative attitudes contained the following:

"Compromise is the filthiest word in their language..."

I had been contemplating that idea recently. The word "compromise" has two main definitions:

1) settlement of differences by arbitration or by consent reached by mutual concessions

and

2) a concession to something derogatory or prejudicial (a compromise of principles)

I would hypothesize that moderates and liberals believe that the primary meaning is 1) and conservatives believe that the only meaning is 2).

I would further hypothesize that this reflects your underlying worldview. Liberals and moderates believe that through compromise that everyone can win. Conservatives seem to think that life is a zero-sum game and that they can win only if their enemies lose: there's no such thing as a reasonable accommodation, and anything less than total victory is betrayal of everything that is good and holy.

This way of thinking is flawed. Compromise is an essential part of life.

Without compromise it would be impossible for any business to be conducted: companies would be eternally at war with their employees, customers and suppliers. Marriage would be a living hell: husbands and wives would be constantly bickering about sex, money, TV, what's for dinner, etc. No children would ever reach adulthood: parents would strangle them out of frustration because they refuse to obey their every command. Disagreements among neighbors would quickly degenerate into armed mayhem and murder. Organized religion could not exist: no parishioner accepts verbatim everything that their priest or minister says. (Some would say this describes life in red states to a T.)

So why should the basic business of running our nation be conducted any different than running a company or enjoying a harmonious family life?

The underlying premise of this country is that we're all in this together. If we all work together we can make this a better place. But it seems that conservatives reject that very concept and want to divide the country up into factions that are constantly at odds.

The problem, as we've seen with conservatives constantly bickering among themselves over who's more conservative than who, is that no one will ever be ideologically pure enough. Conservative groups demanding purity will splinter into tinier and tinier factions, and will fight amongst themselves as much as they fight Democrats. Tea Party "primarying" of the more reasonable get-'er-done Republicans is direct evidence of this disintegration.

The more conservatives bicker, delay, sabotage and run out the clock until the 2014 election, the less likely swing voters are to cast ballots for the obstructionists and nut jobs. And given how narrowly the Republicans have gerrymandered themselves into control of the House of Representatives, that could spell oblivion for the Republican Party.