Category: Uncategorized (Page 26 of 53)

The armed belly crawlers among us can rest easy. Mouth breathing juries in two states have affirmed the legality of that age-old tradition of reacting to uppitiness with deadly force. Members of the lesser races or the lesser gender risk legal execution for refusing to accede to the demands of a manly white man.

To recap the heroic story of manly hero George Zimmerman:

A large man sees a small teenager suspiciously blacking up his neighborhood (truly, what is the point of living in a gated community if negroes suspicious people are allowed in?). After police refused to help Zimmerman deswarth the block (even going so far as to tell our law-abiding-standing-his-ground-tough-guy hero to leave the perpetrator of this flagrant melanin pollution alone), Zimmerman practically had no choice but to stalk the no doubt future criminal (I mean, look at him, hoodie, dark skin, and all) for a time and, when confronted, ventilate him with a manly gun.

As for the heroic story of manly attempted john Ezekiel Gilbert:

When a man hires an escort from Craigslist, it is assumed that the term “escort” is in quotes (as shown). That is to say, the legal avocation of paid escort is supposed to be a mere euphemism for the illegal occupation of prostitute. If, as in this story, that is not the case, it is clearly within a man’s rights to shoot the not-whore in the neck.

With a manly gun.

Update: I should also mention that, to date, every single defense of Zimmerman that I have heard contained one or more dogwhistle racist claims. Interestingly, something else I have heard from Zimmerman defenders is the Reefer Madness defense, implying that Trayvon Martin was “all hopped on the merry-jew-wannah,” and probably desperately violent as a result. Having attended college for over a week, and/or a single music concert not taking place at a grade school, I can say that violent pot aficionados are probably not very common. As well, I find it interesting that most of the “he has used marijuana, which implies he could break into a murderous rage at any moment” crowd have used marijuana in the past themselves. As I am not among the estimate 42% of American adults who have used marijuana, I will have to take their word for it that weed renders one prone to violent rampages.

I left late today to catch the local small-town fireworks. As I approached the area of interest, I became aware that many of this town’s inhabitants had the same idea. I retreated from the center of activity, parking in the first semi-deserted parking lot I could find. People sitting in the same parking lot with lawn chairs told me that this was probably about as good as I would do. As we began the trek in the general direction we thought we should be going, we could see the density of people and vehicles increasing. Not knowing really where the fireworks show would be, we just stopped at a conveniently open area to wait and see where the fireworks would be.

For some time, we witnessed the occasional fairly impressive pyrotechnic. My son repeatedly asked if that was the start. I told him he would know when it had started.

After a good 40 minutes of standing around in an otherwise unremarkable patch of ground, we saw a rocket go up that was clearly a part of the main event. I was amazed by how quickly that detonation was heard. It was close. Looking down, I saw that the launch location was probably less than 300 m from us. I could see each item from launch to detonation. After a number of items had gone off, I began notice debris falling on my person. Within minutes, my son was complaining about something in his eyes. Not only were we close, but we were as close as one could get without being chased off by security (which I would witness a few minutes later). Overall, it was a great show with a resounding ovation at its conclusion.

The fact that we were passing, on foot, the cars leaving the various parking lots along the way, meant that we had been lucky enough to stumble upon the ideal situation. I am very tired, though, and have to work tomorrow.

Today was the latest in a string of odd coincidences. Living in the desert during the third year of drought in a long string of droughts, we do not often encounter rain. I have three cars. In the last two weeks, I washed one car for the first time in at least a year. The second was taken in for routine service. The third was taken in for repair. After each newly cleaned vehicle was received, we had rain within hours. If I were the superstitious type, I might make something of this. Today, I finally started a small project I had been putting off for quite some time. I bought a quarter ton of concrete to pour a slab for the exterior unit of the heat pump system I purchased over two years ago. Given that we’ve had 3.6 inches of rain in the past 12 months, I find it grandly unfortunate that the day I chose , from among last 700 or more days, blessed us with rain.

I appreciate the rain. I only wish it weren’t so inconvenient.

Do you remember Lou Dobbs? He was the vile old boat anchor dragging down an already dangerously listing CNN. He once filled us in on how wetbacks those people (wink, nudge, etc.) were infecting fine upstanding white Americans with Biblical diseases:

“It’s interesting because the woman in our piece told us there were about 900 cases of leprosy for 40 years. There have been 7,000 in the past three years. Leprosy in this country.”

I don’t mean to pick on that particular over-the-hill white supremacist misogynist. It just seems that he’s a typical example of the breed.

Here we see Dobbs’ reaction to the report stating that women are the primary breadwinner in 40% of American households (“catastrophic” is one word he used) at being called out on his blatant misogyny in this interview with Megyn Kelly:

LD: We have marriages b.. breaking up, uh… shattering in this society and we know that reduces by at least a factor..
MK: Why are you attributing that to women in the workforce?
LD: Excuse me, I .. let me just finish what I’m saying if I may, O Dominant One. The fact is …
MK: Excuse me?

Dobbs was apparently quite perturbed at having been interrupted by the uppity little eye-candy getting in the way of a “real journalist” like himself. Certainly old Lou is not unusual in any way. In fact, he could be considered an archetype. One thing you may not in the below picture depicting the signing of the so-called “partial-birth abortion” ban in 2003:

From the Guardian article where I found this: “Note that, as NPR’s health correspondent Julie Rovner explains, the term “partial birth” is not a medical term, but a politicised one – coined by the National Right to Life Committee .”

With the exception of stillborn baby fetishist Rick Santorum and one other I wouldn’t waste the time identifying, they are all white men deep into their cranky old asshole years. That is, ultimately, where I was going with this. We know these people. We all know these people. Part of the problem may, indeed, be that we identify with them. We who are not cantankerous old coots know people we respect who perfectly fit this description. It is that shouty uncle we never talk to in public because he doesn’t seem to care that everyone can hear him ranting about “those goddamned niggers” in the parking lot or “that filthy whore” with multiple children who “needs to put a cork in it.” You would be terribly embarrassed to even acknowledge the old bastard at a public gathering. But what would you do if we cleaned him up, put him in a suit, and taught him to spew out a handful of carefully vetted talking points as the answer to any question? If recent evidence is any indication, we would elect him to the House.

Why?

You understand perfectly well why people are terrified that their children be alone in a room with him. Yet you vote for someone just like him. Any extended conversation with Uncle Phil will betray his conviction that all opinions not identical to his own are “goddamned hippie bullshit.” If you are of a certain range of ages, you will remember the series Cheers. I contend that the success of that show was largely due to the perfect depiction of this individual in the person of Cliff Clavin.

– I wonder if you know that the harp is a predecessor of the modern day guitar. Early minstrels were much larger people. In fact, they had hands the size of small dogs.

Again, we all know this person. We know him to speak with absolute certainty on any subject. We also know him to be completely full of shit.

One way the ridiculous cartoon villains running the Libertoonian wing of the Republican Party could gain some credibility might be to oppose blatant attacks by the current administration on the civil liberties of American citizens.

It has been said that when one scratches the surface of a Libertarian, one finds an Authoritarian. The Tea Bag response to the recently revealed extra-Constitutional activities of agencies that seem more and more Orwellian in nature seems to prove this true.

When the Bush Jr. Administration began its domestic espionage program, I assumed that the support of right wing loons (RWLs) was dependent upon having a Republican in the White House. Now we see that those who defecate in their collective pants at the approach of a swarthy person are equally willing to submit to a dehumanizing authoritarian state apparatus run by a Democratic Administration.

I suppose I had assumed that Teabaggers considered their paranoid racist imperatives more important than their Orwellian authoritarian imperatives. Now I know better.