Take Your Operative and Shove It Up Your Prefatory

Gun humpers like to use this explanation of the second amendment to sound extra grammar smart. 

The second comma divides the amendment into two clauses: one “prefatory” and the other “operative.”

Invariably they say this in an online debate to make their opponent scared at their “intellect” regarding the English language. The problem is that they aren’t being truthful. Shocking, I know, that someone who has weird beliefs about guns should be so dishonest. 

Absolute clauses are indeed grammatically independent but that doesn’t mean that they are automatically unrelated. In fact, absolute clauses typically provide a causal or temporal context for the main clause. 

The founders, most of whom were classically educated, would have recognized this rhetorical device as the “ablative absolute” of Latin prose. To take an example from Horace likely to have been familiar to them: “Caesar, being in command of the earth, I fear neither civil war nor death by violence” (ego nec tumultum nec mori per vim metuam, tenente Caesare terras). The main clause flows logically from the absolute clause: “Because Caesar commands the earth, I fear neither civil war nor death by violence.” 

The second amendment written this way would read “Because a well-regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.” In other words, the amendment is really about protecting militias that were much needed to face the standing army of the British, a horrifying concept to the people of the time. 

Explain this to the next liar who has cult-like beliefs about guns

Our Society is Uncivilized

"A society that tolerates the murder of its children is not civilized."

---Paul Vecker

Hey Kevin Baker, Guard Duck and Other Traitors

Read this.

Stop fucking up our country with your nonsense. 

How Conservative Terrorists Attacked The Capitol

SUBMIT

If you are someone who pretends that racism isn't that bad...that the left is too "woke"...that people of color complain too much...that culture doesn't matter...that our horrible history with African Americans, Asians, Latin peoples, and other people of color should be denied or ignored... 

YOU ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM. AND WHY WHITE MALES WITH GUNS GET AWAY WITH "HAVING A BAD DAY." 

Your horseshit attitude about race isn't going to cut it anymore. You are aiding and abetting the enemies of equity. And the rest of us are going to force you to change your ways.

YOU. ARE. GOING. TO. SUBMIT. 

Religious Misogyny Motivated the Georgia Murders

When eight people, mostly Asian women, were murdered at massage parlors in Georgia, a huge argument ensued: were these race-based hate crimes, or the acts of a sex-crazed wacko?

The piece of trash that did this was turned in by his parents, who gave the cops his cellphone number so they could track him down. We'll call him "PoT" instead of his real name to avoid giving him the notoriety he likely craves.

PoT's Instagram account had the following tagline: “Pizza, guns, drums, music, family, and God. This pretty much sums up my life. It’s a pretty good life.”

If life was so good, what was PoT's problem? Why did he do this?

Authorities said Robert Aaron Long had confessed to the killings and had told investigators he had “a sexual addiction.” Long indicated he may have frequented the spas in the past, police said, and that they were “a temptation for him that he wanted to eliminate.”

In other words, PoT was a disgusting and weak animal, and "Guns and God" were the answer he chose to solve his own failings: kill the thing he desired and his temptation would go away.

We see this pattern over and over and over, in nearly all religions. In Saudi Arabia they make women cover themselves from head to toe to avoid inciting the passions of weak men. In Afghanistan the Taliban stopped girls going to school so they wouldn't tempt men. Ultraorthodox Jews in Brooklyn treat women like chattel, denying them a real education and turning them into baby machines that no man but their husbands can touch. Catholic priests worldwide crusade against birth control and abortion, denying women the most basic control over their own bodies. Southern Baptists disallow dancing and their pastors tell women that they have to look attractive because "God made men to be drawn to beautiful women," while sporting a gut that could dam the Mississippi River. And all religions have been covering up the rapes committed by their pastors, priests, rabbis and mullahs since time immemorial.

Religion gives animals like PoT license to murder. Here's how it goes. Lust is a sin. Temptation is how Satan takes us away from God. Satan is evil. You must conquer temptation. Throw in some guns and the answer is obvious. PoT was "proving" to God the strength of his faith, by destroying evil temptation at the source, killing these women.

How can I know that this was the motivation? There are literally millions of women out there to tempt him, and PoT knows that he can't kill them all. But he can pass God's "test" by killing the temptations he's met.

PoT had been in treatment for addiction, and clearly it failed. PoT's youth pastor said, “I don’t say this callously: I don’t know what’s happened in [PoT] to get to this point. What happened last night doesn’t seem in any way like the young man I knew.”

I can tell that pastor how PoT got to that point: religion screwed him up. By harping on sin and temptation and pretending that whatever force in the Universe that created the Andromeda galaxy actually cares how some bozo in rural Georgia gets his rocks off, his "faith" drove him to murder.

Religion does give legitimate comfort to some people. An old lady can die happy, thinking she'll be reunited with her long-dead husband. It can help some kids stay on the straight and narrow.

But then we saw how nearly the entire evangelical hierarchy endorsed a completely depraved and immoral man for president, despite his own bragging about how he sexually assaults women. And then they had the gall to compare him to King David (who was also a total scumbag, but one who ultimately repented). And then they sued state governments that wouldn't let them crowd their congregations into disease-filled churches so they could fill their collection plates during a pandemic. All the while claiming that they are "pro-life."

Organized religion has lost whatever moral authority it ever had. It's just another gang of greedy men grubbing for money and power.

End The Voting Rights Battle

I don't do this often but both sides are completely wrong in the voting rights debate. And Ross Douthat has explained why in his latest piece. 

The first study, from the Democracy and Polarization Lab at Stanford University, looks at the effects of no-excuse absentee voting on the 2020 elections — the kind of balloting that a lot of states expanded and that many Republican state legislators now want to roll back. Contrary to liberal expectations, easing the voting rules this way seemed to have no effect on turnout: “States newly implementing no-excuse absentee voting for 2020 did not see larger increases in turnout than states that did not.” Then contrary to Republican fears, the easement didn’t help Democrats at the G.O.P.’s expense: “No-excuse absentee did not substantially increase Democratic turnout relative to Republican turnout.” Overall the authors argue that what drove higher turnout in 2020 was simply “voter interest” in the elections, not the major voting rule change, which “mobilized relatively few voters and had at most a muted partisan effect.” 

The second study comes from a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Oregon, and it looks further back in time to assess the effects of Shelby County v. Holder, the Supreme Court revision of the Voting Rights Act that made it easier for states to impose voter ID laws and other restrictions. Using data from six federal elections, the author finds no post-Shelby divergence between white and African-American turnout in states affected by the ruling. Indeed, if anything, the jurisdictions saw African-American turnout rise relative to white turnout in the 2016 elections, suggesting that new obstacles to voting prompt swift mobilization in response.

That should all clear it up, right? 

Bwahahaahaha!!!

The Texas Disaster

For the last several years there's been a different kind of weather pattern: a terrible "polar vortex" that brings freezing temperatures down into places like Austin, Texas, where it got as low as 0 degrees, and warm toasty weather to Anchorage, Alaska, where it was 20 degrees warmer.

Every year there are articles that ask whether climate change is responsible for this or that particular freeze. And the answer from scientists is maddening to laymen: maybe not this one, but it's responsible for the increased frequency of such events.

The mechanism is pretty obvious: the jetstream, which usually keeps arctic air bottled up at the north pole, has been weakened by the warming atmosphere over the last several years. When a warm front breaks through the weakened jetstream, bringing balmy weather to Alaska, cold polar air is pushed south, often down into the lower 48.

Texas, a wholly owned subsidiary of the oil and gas industry, decided long ago that they didn't want to be part of the national power grid. So they have their own grid, which is almost completely unregulated. 

To keep prices low the power companies don't have any reserve capacity. They spend nothing on contingencies for extremely hot or extremely cold weather. So when it got down to 20, 10, 5 and 0 degrees last weekend all the natural gas pipelines froze. Power plants that use gas turbines went offline. Cooling water pipes froze, and coal and nuclear plants went offline. Ice formed on blades, so wind turbines went offline.

Now, we have gas turbines in Minnesota, where it was -20 below for days on end at the same Texas was 20 and 30 degrees warmer. They didn't freeze. We have nuclear power plants, and coal-fired power plants, and wind turbines, and they all kept working just fine. 

While Texas was suffering from blizzard-like conditions last Sunday Minnesota had very cold but clear weather. During the worst two days in Texas the solar panels on our house generated 145 kilowatt hours of electricity. Some of which we could have sent to Texas if they hadn't cut themselves off from the rest of the country, preventing people from freezing to death or dying of carbon monoxide poisoned trying to keep warm by running their cars.

See, that's the thing about renewable energy. It's not always windy or sunny everywhere. But it's always windy or sunny somewhere. And if you have an interconnected grid you can trade that power back and forth.

When Texas lost power its governor went on Fox News and blamed the outage on wind turbines, which generate maybe 10% of Texas' power. He didn't mention that the nuclear, coal and natural gas plants that generate the vast majority of power in Texas were also offline, because utilities skipped weatherizing their infrastructure, even though Texas went through a similar disaster in 2011.

When Texas lost power Ted Cruz went to Cancun, because he wanted to be a "good dad." Because, you know, there's nothing a senator can do to help. 

When Texas lost power New York representative and Republican bogeywoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez went to Houston, helped out at a food bank and organized an online relief drive that had already raised $4 million by Saturday. But she doesn't have kids who need to go to lie on the beach in Cancun in the middle of a pandemic, so she has all the free time in the world.

Yeah, AOC is just pulling a stunt, showing how Democrats actually care about people and then do something to help. But, geeze, Ted! I mean, Rafael. You could have pulled the same stunt. But you didn't! You went to Cancun, something an actual human being would know makes you look like a total douche bag.

When Texas lost power Joe Biden declared a major disaster, freeing up emergency funds. There was no sniping about Texas voting for the "former guy," or an attempt to extort some concession from its governor, or a rush visit to Houston to throw paper towels at people seeking warmth in a shelter.

Republicans constantly tell us that government is the problem, not the solution. Well, it's very clear that Republican governments are the problem. Republican governments are just shills for giant companies and billionaires, doing whatever the people with all the money want them to do. Or worse, they use the levers of government to line their own pockets. Like that former guy who charged the Secret Service millions of dollars to stay at his own hotels and resorts...

And somehow Republicans maintain power by selling the lie that they're the defenders of freedom. What was the freedom Texas Republicans sold to its citizens? The freedom to get ripped off by big companies:

SAN ANTONIO — As millions of Texans shivered in dark, cold homes over the past week while a winter storm devastated the state’s power grid and froze natural gas production, those who could still summon lights with the flick of a switch felt lucky.

Now, many of them are paying a severe price for it.

“My savings is gone,” said Scott Willoughby, a 63-year-old Army veteran who lives on Social Security payments in a Dallas suburb. He said he had nearly emptied his savings account so that he would be able to pay the $16,752 electric bill charged to his credit card — 70 times what he usually pays for all of his utilities combined. “There’s nothing I can do about it, but it’s broken me.”

Are We Ever Going to Learn?

About once a month, like clockwork, an accusation appears that dethrones yet another cultural hero. We found out that Minnesota nice Amy Klobuchar was a mean boss. Al Franken did sexist things on a USO tour. James Gunn made bad jokes a decade ago and got fired. Countless football players slug their girlfriends.

This time it's Joss Whedon, creator of several television shows that featured strong female leads:

Earlier this week, former “Buffy” and “Angel” co-star Charisma Carpenter released a statement claiming that Whedon had mistreated and eventually fired her from “Angel” after she gave birth in the early 2000s. She writes that Whedon “has created hostile and toxic work environments since his early career. I know because I experienced it firsthand. Repeatedly.” She says that Whedon called her “fat” in the early months of her pregnancy, despite her relatively low body weight, and that he scorned the importance of this major life event, even going as far to ask her if she was “going to keep it.” Carpenter reports now living with a chronic physical condition that she says was initially brought on by working with Whedon.

 

 The author of the Washington Post piece linked above is outraged by these revelations. She wrote:

 

Through my late teens and early 20s, I owned a T-shirt that read in big, chunky letters, “Joss Whedon Is My Master Now.” It was one of the first pieces of clothing I ever owned that signified not only my aesthetic tastes but also what I considered my intellectual identity. Above all else, it announced my affection for the man who had created “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” At the time, Whedon’s innovative cult franchise defined feminism and feminine clout for legions of young fans. It tackled everything from the intricacies of female power to the meaning of death itself, all the while pumping out metatextual one-liners. And Whedon — more than the stars of his shows or the characters they embodied — was the face of all that heart-wrenching, revelatory brilliance.

 

Whedon would probably characterize his interactions with Carpenter as typical workplace banter, meant in jest. At best it was thoughtless and careless. At worst at sabotaged a woman's self respect. But on a scale of 1 to 10 on the list of bad things bosses have done to employees, this ranks about a 2. If your ego is really that fragile you have no business working in Hollywood, or even the local McDonalds. That's life in the real world.

I'm not defending Whedon here. His comments were bad and stupid, and he shouldn't have made them.

What I'm interested in here is the reaction of the writer of the Post piece. She feels outraged and betrayed. She feels like a fool for buying that "Joss Whedon Is My Master Now" T-shirt.

And she should feel like a fool. This is the problem with elevating creators of art that we like to some higher plane. They're all just ordinary people. They will always disappoint you.

Why buy a T-shirt with Whedon's name on it? Isn't it the idea of Buffy the Vampire Slayer she admired, not the bald guy who invented her?

 

Joss Whedon is just a guy. He's not a brilliant mastermind, or guru, or keeper of the secrets of the universe. He just took a cultural meme -- damsel in distress -- and flipped it. Every time we heap inordinate praise on individuals who have done something we admire we are just setting ourselves up for disappointment. Because these people are just regular guys. They put their pants on one leg at a time. They still use the bathroom. They are impatient, they are petty, they are selfish, and they are very often single-minded in their pursuit of their art, career or performance on the field.

It's fine to celebrate the great TV series, the insightful novels, the legislative accomplishments, the beautiful songs, the fabulous plays on the field. 

 

But we make a colossal mistake when we lionize the people who do these things. In almost every single case these creators and performers did not make these accomplishments all by themselves. They had the help of writers, editors, art directors, a large staff, coaches, team mates, and parents. They did not build it all by themselves.

When we place people on pedestals we set them up for a fall. They start thinking they're really hot stuff and they're somehow better than other people. They start thinking they know more than they actually do, that they have the right to take whatever they want, from whoever they want, whenever they want. They mistakenly think they're experts in every field, not just what they're good at (I'm talking about you, Elon Musk.)

By elevating these people above the rest of us we give them license to act with impunity. In a very palpable way Joss Whedon's admirer's encouraged the very behavior that they now condemn.

I mean, seriously: Whedon goes to Comicon and sees hundreds of cute young women in "Joss Whedon Is My Master Now" T-shirts. You don't think that's going to affect the man's behavior?

In the same vein, what are these people thinking when they call Donald Trump "god emperor?" When Trump came down with Covid he wound up in the hospital for three days, yet somehow his followers thought he had a "god-like" constitution? I mean -- as Republicans constantly tell us -- most people who get Covid can hardly tell they've been sick, yet Trump required an extensive course of specialized medication and hospitalization. Trump is just another weak, fat, sickly old man.

We as a people have to stop idolizing individuals as somehow superhuman. They're all just people, even when they've created something we love. 

 

Yes, celebrate the wonderful creations. But never forget that the guys who created them are just putzes like you and me. We feed their egos at our own peril.

Dedicated To Right Wing Bloggers and Commenters Everywhere

This is who you are. Domestic terrorists. Authoritarian cultists. Psychotic criminals.

Your petty, adolescent games are finished. You can try to hide. You can even try to make up your own reality but it won't work. I've warned you for years this would be the result and you laughed and didn't listen. 

We will dominate you in every election going forward. You will have zero say in anything that happens in terms of the direction of this country.

You are completely fucked. And you know what that means?

Our country will finally be moving forward to greatness. 

Conspiracy Theorists

 

Sorry We Tried To Assassinate You!

 

The Mind of A Conservative (AKA A TEENAGER)

 

Dear Senate Republicans:

Suck it up, Republicans. Your guy lost. Deal with it.

Check that. He wasn't your guy. He was an elitist New York grifter, failed casino owner and con man who thinks he's better than everyone else, even though he's an ignorant dunderhead. He was a front man for the Russian mob who made a hostile takeover of the Republican party. You never liked him.

Trump's a loser. He's always been a loser. Even when he wins, he acts like a loser, whining about everything, lying about everything, even irrelevant nonsense like inauguration crowd size. 

So why do you want to drag out the unmitigated catastrophe of the Trump years? Why do want to risk him coming back in 2024? 

Senators, you must convict the bastard!

He got lucky and won in 2016 with the help of the Russians, and because everybody hates Hillary, even half the Democrats. James Comey hung her out to dry with his mishandling of the bogus email scandals, and the leaking by Rudy Giuliani's cronies in the New York FBI office of the equally bogus Weiner laptop scandal, just days before the election.

Every Republican knew Trump was a toxic serial rapist before the election, when he was caught on tape bragging about grabbing women by the pussy. He won the primary with grade-school tactics, insulting and spouting ridiculous lies about his Republican opponents, including some of your fellow senators. Remember Low-energy Jeb, Little Marco, and Trump's claim that Ted Cruz's dad shot JFK? 

Ted, how could you possibly support this weasel and carry his lying water for him? Have you no shame?

Trump continued his assault on allies in the Republican Party and his own employees throughout his term, trashing everyone from Jeff Sessions, to John Bolton, to Rex Tillerson, to John Kelly, to Bill Barr. Every time Trump screwed the pooch, he blamed someone else and threw them under the bus. He displayed zero loyalty to his allies. To you, dear senators.

And then, on January 6, he sent a lynch mob to the Capitol to kill Mike Pence. And risked your lives in the process.

Everyone knows Trump lost. Everyone knows why Trump lost. But they're too afraid of him, and the crazies that he's been egging on for the last five years, to admit it. Republican office holders are getting death threats from people in their own party simply for obeying the law and keeping their vow to uphold the Constitution.

Yeah, I know, you're afraid for yourselves and your families. Well, join the club. These nutjobs have been plotting to kill -- and actually killing -- Democrats, Jews, Muslims, Mexicans for the last five years. Literally dozens of Trump supporters, like Cesar Sayoc, have been jailed for terrorist threats and murder.

Why would any sane person want to keep Trump around? The longer he has a voice in politics, the longer he'll rile up these crazies and the more people they'll threaten and kill. Including other Republicans, because Trump and his people want to instill fear and incite a race war.

Trump is a malignant narcissistic psychopath, and by his lights, if he can't be president, no one can. He'll burn the country to the ground if you don't stop him.

This clown has destroyed America's standing as a world power. He drove our trade deficit and national debt to record highs. He's the first president in forever to leave office with more people unemployed than when he came in. He's given over our foreign policy to the Russians and Israel. He's alienated all our allies. He surrendered to Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin and Hafez Assad and the Taliban. He coddled murderous dictators like Saudia Arabia's MBS and Turkey's Erdogan. The Iranians are back to enriching weapons grade uranium.

Almost half a million Americans are dead because he botched the coronavirus response.

Trump is a total failure. He is the biggest loser at all the things that really matter.

And, face it: there's nothing to worry about Biden and the Democrats being in charge. When Democrats come into power after a Republican destroys the economy things improve -- as it did with Roosevelt after Hoover, Clinton after Bush I, and Obama after Bush II. Biden won't be dictated to by the squad and Bernie because most congressional Democrats are moderate. And Trump has been such a disaster that there's just not enough money for the squad's wish list.

Just admit it: Republicans are terrible at running the country. You don't want government to succeed. You only have an opposition party mindset, you're only happy when you're whining and sniping at the "establishment" -- the people who run the government -- even when those people are you. Not wanting to do the job makes you unfit to actually do the job.

Trump losing is the best thing to happen to this country since the Allies won WWII. Businesses crave stability and predictability, but all Trump did was sow chaos, discord and uncertainty. And it's the best thing to happen to you, senators: you don't have to worry about Trump stabbing you in the back at every turn, or issuing some insane tweet in the middle of the night, destroying everything you worked on for the last year and a half.

So, dump Trump's big fat rump. Vote to convict!

Trump Screws His Supporters 10 Times Harder. Again.

Donald Trump loves to brag to about how he doesn't just get even, he hits back at his enemies 10 times harder. But the people he hurts the most are his employees (Mick Mulvaney, Jeff Sessions, Bill Barr, etc.), his business partners, his investors, his political allies, his wives, and his most rabid political devotees.

After Trump incited a mob outside the White House they rioted inside the Capitol. Four people died, one shot by capitol police as she lunged over a barrier.

These people are now screwed. They are facing years in prison for criminal destruction of property, terrorizing members of congress and numerous other charges. And these idiots documented their crimes on social media!

We have to pause to note that these white rioters were treated with kid gloves. Over the summer Black Lives Matter protesters were met by SWAT teams and the military decked out in riot gear, but Trump rioters, who for weeks had openly plotted on social media to invade the capitol building, were met only by a small capitol police force.

What was the FBI doing for the last two months since the election? Aren't they supposed to be tracking threats, foreign and domestic?

These people's lives are now ruined. And where was Trump? After inciting them to riot, he went back to the White House to watch the carnage on television.

And what the hell are these people been fighting for? Why do they want four more years of this clown?

The Trump years have been an unprecedented disaster. Three to four thousand people are dying every day from Covid -- that's eight 9/11s a week!

The economy is mess because of his idiotic tariffs and totally botched response to the pandemic.

Our government and corporate computer systems have been hacked by the Russians. And Trump has yet to say one bad word about Putin.

Kim Jong Un has continued to build nuclear weapons after making Trump look like an idiot for saying that he fell in love with the North Korean dictator.

Iran is back to enriching weapons grade uranium after Trump withdrew from the international agreement that prevented them from doing so. Trump's assassination of a popular Iranian general only made Iran more determined to defy him, rather than getting them to back down. And the Russians openly help the Iranians.

Taliban forces are taking Russian bounties to kill American troops, continuing to attack government officials and kill innocent civilians while Trump's negotiators try to make a "peace deal" with these psychopathic murderers. Trump's exit from Afghanistan will make our withdrawal from Vietnam look like a victory parade.

Russian TV set scenes of Trump's capitol riot to dramatic music, graphically showing how out of control the United States is, and how dangerous democracy is.

Notice how Russia so prominently figures when we talk about Trump. They are, after all, responsible for putting him in the White House. He is undeniably their creature.

Trump loves to claim that the rest of the world is laughing at us. Well, he's right now. The Russians are laughing. The Chinese are laughing. The North Koreans are laughing. The Iranians are laughing. They all think Trump is a joke. He can't even get Dictator 101 right.

Trump is the biggest loser. And nothing is more pathetic than a loser who keeps whining after he's been beaten. Trump isn't a man, he's a childish caricature reminiscent of Trelane in The Squire of Gothos.

But Canada, Australia, Europe, Australia, Great Britain, Japan and the rest of the free world are shocked and saddened by how far the United States has fallen, becoming yet another banana republic where crazies run riot in the capitol building.

Given all this, I still cannot comprehend why anyone would support this absolute scumbag. It has always been clear from the beginning that he does nothing but lie and make false promises that he'll never deliver on. He doesn't give a damn about anyone other than himself. He flushes his allies, employees and supporters down the toilet like yesterday's Big Mac, blaming them for his innumerable failures.

They are the American Carnage Trump promised us.

Some day, we can only hope, Trump supporters will realize they have been played and royally screwed by this animal. He is and always has been the very thing they claim to hate: the cosseted insider who manipulates the system in his own favor, repeatedly screwing over the people who got him there in the first place.

And then instead of rioting in the capitol, perhaps they'll have a few protests at Mar a Lago, or Trump Tower, or his lovely DC hotel, or at his several golf courses.

I Rest My Case

For many years, I've asserted that the right are domestic terrorists, traitors to our nation. Here is the incontrovertible evidence. 

In a couple of weeks, the Democrats will have total control of the federal government. I hope they Gitmo every single one of these fuckwits. 

Defund the Police Is a Bogus Slogan: Let's Fire Bad Cops! Instead

A while back Barack Obama made many Democrats and liberal pundits angry by criticizing the Defund the police slogan employed by many activists after Minneapolis cops murdered George Floyd in cold blood.

Obama said:

“You lost a big audience the minute you say it, which makes it a lot less likely that you’re actually going to get the changes you want done,” Obama told Peter Hamby, who hosts Good Luck America, a Snapchat political show. “The key is deciding, do you want to actually get something done, or do you want to feel good among the people you already agree with?”

Obama is right: Democrats would have done better in House and Senate races if activists had come up with a better slogan, one that didn't require a long drawn-out explanation.

 

The problem with Defund the police is not that it's a snappy slogan, it's a totally stupid slogan. It doesn't really get at the root of the problem, which is arrogant racists who, under color of authority, assault and murder the citizens paying their salaries.

Clearly, someone has to respond when burglars, rapists, muggers, and wife-beaters commit crimes. These responders are called police. These responders have to be paid. 

 

When you say Defund the police you immediately have to explain that you don't mean that police departments will get zero dollars, you really mean that their various functions should be redistributed among other departments, there should be better citizen oversight, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

 

Defund the police as a slogan is therefore stupid, self-contradictory, meaningless and totally impractical from the get-go.

A good slogan is clear, concise and requires no explanation. A good slogan is one that no reasonable person can disagree with. Make America great again doesn't require explanation, and it's not all that disagreeable except through its connection to that loser Trump.

 

Black lives matter requires no explanation. Some disagree with it, thinking that it somehow elevates Blacks above others, and respond angrily with, All lives matter.

 

No justice, no peace, a slogan from an earlier era, is viewed by some as threatening, but it's completely in line with American traditions like the Boston Tea Party, and echoes the words of Martin Luther King Jr.

A better slogan would address the real problem with policing, which is police who aren't held accountable when they abuse their authority. Something along the lines of Fire bad cops, or the rhyming variant No justice, no peace, no racist police.

There's a lot of talk about dismantling the "systemic racism" of police departments, but these days there aren't many laws on the books that explicitly target Blacks, like the old segregation laws.

 

Th real problem is that laws are selectively enforced by officers who act with impunity, protected by corrupt police unions. They target Black and Hispanic kids for smoking weed, while letting white kids off the hook. They patrol "high crime areas" (i.e., Black neighborhoods), stopping Blacks for loitering, vagrancy, and minor traffic infractions like rolling stops, improper lane changes and and burnt-out taillights, while ignoring the same violations in white neighborhoods.

 

Take a couple of recent examples: Breanna Taylor, a Black woman, died when cops broke into her apartment and killed her. Meanwhile, the Nashville bomber's girlfriend told police he was making bombs in his RV, and when cops politely knocked on his door, they just gave up he didn't answer. Is there any doubt that they would have crashed in right then and there had he been Black or Muslim?

Cities pay millions upon millions of dollars each year to citizens whose rights have been violated by bad cops. And these bad cops stay on the job because the police department can't fire them: they have numerous civil service protections and union contracts that tie the hands of city officials.

All too frequently police unions are the problem, rather than police departments. One example is the Police Benevolent Association (PBA) in Englewood, NJ. It kicked out several Black cops after they supported the police chief who cracked down on racist cops who sleep on the job.

The president of the Minneapolis police union, Bob Kroll, illustrates how corrupt some police unions are:

In the wake of George Floyd’s killing by now-former Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) officer Derek Chauvin, few have been inclined to defend Chauvin or his colleagues who stood by and watched as he suffocated Floyd to death. Few, that is, except Bob Kroll.

In a letter to membership, Kroll — the president of the MPD’s police union — referred to protesters outraged by police brutality as a “terrorist movement” and defended the officers who killed Floyd and were subsequently fired, arguing they were “terminated without due process” and lamenting, “What is not being told is the violent criminal history of George Floyd.” (Floyd had a criminal record, but mostly for nonviolent drug and theft charges.)

 

Hey, Bob: it was actually George Floyd who was terminated without due process.

 

Scott Walker destroyed the public sector unions in Wisconsin, but not police unions. That's because Republicans, who constantly do everything they can to undercut the power of the working man by dismantling unions, have made an unholy alliance with the police. 

 

Republicans depend on the police to enforce the racial hierarchy -- that's the real "order" Republicans are referring to when they say "law and order."

So, to all you sloganeers out there: come up with a snappy way to say Eliminate Corrupt Police Unions!

The Religion of the Right

The conservative of 2020 has turned worship of ME into a bona fide religion. They don't get the concept of WE or what it means to be in a society where we have to depend on each other. They have tapped into their inner adolescent rage against authority and made any sort of group work into communism. 

They are the ultimate teenager who DOESN'T WANNA! And BLOWS EVERYTHING OUT OF PROPORTION WITH EXAGGERATION!! Working together as a society becomes slavery in totalitarianism. 

To get a clearer picture of this selfishness on steroids, read this. 

And this. 

This would be why the rest of the world looks at us and wonders what FREEDUMB is...

Do The Hard and Tedious Work

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the outrage crowd on social media and how they consistently are counterproductive to their goal of equity (gender, race, sexual orientation). And, of late, public health. They employ strategies that never work. Why? 

Because their goals are different from what actual woke people want and are willing to sacrifice for. That’s why I call them fake woke. Their core goal is similar to an actor putting on a play. They want to turn out a good performance to impress like-minded people on social media. 

The right chastises this as “virtue signaling” but I think it’s far worse. It’s demonstrably corrosive to the causes I’ve dedicated my life and career to. So, to the “actors” out there, turn your passion into the work you are avoiding that our country needs you to do. 

Become a teacher, run for office, organize a group to lobby and petition the government. It won’t be easy and it will be long and sometimes tedious. But it’s what works.

Election Fraud in Federal Court

Re: Kevin Baker's latest post about election fraud.

If you are someone like Kevin who believes the myth that Democrats stole the 2020 election, please kindly cite your evidence that you would be willing to use in federal court to support your assertion. Remember, you can get in very serious trouble lying in a federal court. It's not a little blog that allows you to spout irrational nonsense. It's where grown-ups do business. 

No evidence? Nothing? Bueller? 

Then you are lying merely because you are butthurt about your guy losing. There is nothing more to this election than this:

Trump was an incompetent buffoon who literally killed Americans and the people voted him out.  

Now, go read Leon Festinger's When Prophecy Fails and learn from your cognitive dissonance.