For okjimm

Everything IS going to work out fine!

We're here for you, buddy. Never forget that. 

BENGHAZI! BENGHAZI! BEN-FUNDRAISING!

Would the button-popping proud patriotic Gee-Oh--Pee-ers  use a heart-breaking tragedy to fill their political coffers and demean the lives of the men who died in BENGHAZI!?


Would those flag-waving, Kenyan-President-hating Goopers stoop to gutter politics and use the deaths of four Americans to squeeze money out of their gullible base and prolong the investigation of what Charlie Pierce calls "a banquet of nothing burgers?"  Would they continue to Darrell Issalize this terrible misfortune and use it as a grubby tool to raise filthy lucre for the upcoming 2014 elections?  And is Trey Gowdy just another preening hemorrhoid who's emerged from the deep dark fissures of Teabaggistan?

Is it true that the very same people, who condemned the Obambi administration for being tyrannically callous and deceitful over what happened on September 11, 2012, in Libya, would callously and deceitfully exploit that tragedy?

The Gee--Oh--Pee-ers' only goal is to get out their fat cat donors' money bags  the factlings and find out what really happened that night.  Their motives are noble and pure. They seek only the truth--a truth which they've been trying to get their unbiased factlets to conform to for almost two years and which has cost American tax payers millions of minimum wage dollars.  We can be sure that they will report their fair and balanced flying monkey poop, (with absolutely no Hitlery Klintoon or Obummer bias, to the American people, and those factoids will have nothing whatsoever to do with how much cash the they can get the TeaPublicans to stuff into those pure white envelopes and send to the RNCC.

Oh what difference does it make! This is America, and we all love really good scandalesque diversions. 

John Boehner dodges on Benghazi fundraising


"Asked again if it is proper for the National Republican Congressional Committee to use this committee money, Boehner said, “Our focus is getting the truth for these four families and for the American people.”  

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), whom Boehner tapped to chair the committee, has already said it’s inappropriate to try to raise political money off the investigation. Visitors to the NRCC web site who clicked on a Benghazi-related post this week were then asked to donate money to “stop Democrats from controlling all of Washington.” 


Morning Joe Slams GOP For ‘Undermining the Credibility of Benghazi Committee’ with Fundraising

Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), the chairman of the House select committee on Benghazi, said Republicans should not fundraise off “the backs of four murdered Americans.” 


House Republican Candidate Fundraising Off Of Benghazi Investigation

$$$$$$$$$$ BENGHAZI! $$$$$$$$$$

How Dwarf Clairvoyants Unleashed the Zombie Apocalypse by (O)CT(O)PUS of The Swash Zone

In December 2008, weeks before our newly elected president took the oath of office, Rush Limbaugh said, ”I hope he fails.” These words gave the GOP their master plan to nullify a landslide election and kill off what little remained of democracy in America.  Destroy a newly elected president by saying ‘NO’ to everything.  Demonize him with ‘Birtherism” and color him the illegitimate Manchurian candidate from Kenya.  Portray him as having accomplished nothing in life with nothing to say and nothing to contribute.  Start with this predetermination:  Every thought, word, and deed you denounce and pronounce them devoid of any merit.  If you defame and discredit the president-elect in advance before his presidency even begins, then only one of two hypotheses must be true:

One:  You have secret access to his mind, know all there is to know, possess full foreknowledge of all possible future outcomes, and have a crystal ball that portends the destruction of a once great and powerful nation, the nadir of civilization, and the dreaded End Time.  You report your findings to the Guardians of Party Purity and Absurdity.

OR …

Two.  You just can’t get beyond the fact that president #44 is biracial – meaning he’s black.  Some will show open contempt by forwarding emails of racist cartoons.  Others will disguise their contempt under coded messages of snicker-n-wink: “He’s the President of Moochers and Takers,” mock the Makers and Job Creators with derision and scorn.  You will be fixated day and night on ways to block his legislative agenda for any reason you can muster with bluster and filibuster, or find ways to impeach him outright.  The Libtard-Socialist anti-Christ must be stopped, says every freedom-loving, God-fearing Christian whack-job fixated on Hellfire and Perdition.

Either way, you unleash the Eumenides of legislative gridlock and deadlock to make sure he fails (and thereby punish the 69 million voters who voted for him, plus the 60 million voters who didn’t). Collateral damage notwithstanding, all libtards and their ilk must be taught a lesson and turned from the Dark Side of the Farce, they vow with reckless abandon.

In due course, corporations morph into people, and money becomes the currency of free speech. You slash funds for education; aid and abet joblessness by declaring war on reproductive rights; let our national infrastructure crumble; allow polluters to poison our air and water; and shut down the government. In due course, all GOP Congress critters anoint themselves as authoritative experts in science - claiming to be even smarter than the best scientific minds in the known Universe.

Will we ever find respite from the Dwarf Clairvoyant Escapees of the insane asylum who unleashed this madness?  Hardly!  The small-minded mediums are still at large.

"Liberal Nazis don't want you to know this." by Capt. Fogg of The Swash Zone

Lots of things are happening in the world that Cable News disciples don't seem to notice or know about.  Lots of crazy stuff is swept under the racist team owner, missing airplane, sunken ferry rug every day.  It's a revelation.

I read today about another one of those wonderful preachers who seem to have a handle on our real problems -- the kind of stuff we need to read more of.  I'm talking about Brother Dean Samuel who showed up a a screening of  a film about 1998 Miss World Pageant winner and rape survivor Linor Abargil last month, wearing a T-shirt saying "You Whore."  It's her fault for being raped, he says, she should have stayed home.

He's right.  That neighbor across the street who leaves his garage door open is just inviting me to steal his Ferrari  and it's his own damned fault if I do. Don't you just love Christianity?  Do what thou wilt is the law - for men of course.  Hey, don't argue, God's a man, or two men and a bird, but don't ask.  The answer gets kind of weird.

And then there's that moral and righteous Newt Gingrich who got all Puritan on us when Bill Clinton got caught with his pants down, cheating on his wife while Newt was doing the same thing?  I'm glad I didn't get distracted by the Missing Plane and got to read how "Liberal Nazis" forced Condoleeza to cancel her commencement speech at Rutgers. He blamed an "elite Media" for this horror:  "an elite media that would have been screaming if right-wing groups had done this to a Somali woman and an African-American woman."  'This' meaning calling her to task for helping to falsify information about Iraq,  ignore information about al Qaeda and justify a war that killed hundreds of thousands, helped punish critics, destroyed a country that had nothing whatever to do with 9/11 and bankrupted our economy.   Thanks Newt, you're a real piece of Patriot.  Who else could conflate opposites and accuse others of your own sins with a straight face?

There's so much going on with those damned Liberal Nazis elsewhere we need to know about.  Take the outrage perpetrated on a California school district superintendent, Mohammad Z. Islam who wanted 8th graders to research the Holocaust to see it if ever happened or the Jews actually made the whole thing up for money.  Those Liberals didn't want us to know about this so we couldn't offer Mr. Islam our support for his freedom of speech!

If you only watched commercial, for-profit news (other than Fox) you'd probably never know that the people of Oklahoma have no blood on their hands for the grizzly execution that took 43 minutes to kill Clayton Lockett, bound to a table and zapped with a cattle prod so they could continue to pump agonizing chemicals into his groin. It's true - he didn't bleed.  Damn bleeding heart liberals anyway -- too busy telling us we're not a Christian Nation to help hold the guy down.

And again, are the Liberals trying to keep you from hearing Chief Justice Roy Moore of the Alabama Supreme Court tell us we need a new constitution to protect us from "gays and Ruth Bader-Ginsberg?"  The same judge who bravely asserted that "Buddha didn't create us so the first amendment only applies to Christians?"  Liberals don't want you to know the truth.  Not like Fox News who aren't afraid to tell you that people who want to take prayer out of state supported schools are like Hitler.

No all this stuff that makes me proud to be an American and I had to find it on the web because the liberals don't want us to know!

Capt. Fogg of the Swash Zone

BENGHAZI! BENGHAZI! BENGHAZI!

Ermergerd!  Remember how the House Republicans demanded a select committee be formed to look into all the false statements the Republican Bush administration made in the run-up to the Iraq debacle?

No, neither do I.

But...BENGHAZI!  


It's always a horse of a different color when the shoe is on the other foot.  Or something.  Especially when it involves polyticks:



WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush and his top aides publicly made 935 false statements about the security risk posed by Iraq in the two years following September 11, 2001, according to a study released Tuesday by two nonprofit journalism groups.

"In short, the Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003," reads an overview of the examination, conducted by the Center for Public Integrity and its affiliated group, the Fund for Independence in Journalism. 

 According to the study, Bush and seven top officials -- including Vice President Dick Cheney, former Secretary of State Colin Powell and then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice -- made 935 false statements about Iraq during those two years. 

 The study was based on a searchable database compiled of primary sources, such as official government transcripts and speeches, and secondary sources -- mainly quotes from major media organizations.

Darrell "Benghazi" Issa

"We’re going to establish a very different policy. One, that we have a president who will respect the Constitution, not try to convert it to some South African Constitution."  --Darrell Issa (Jerk-CA, 49th District)


Oh FFS! Darrell, Obummer is KENYAN, not South African! Get your stupid right!  


Oh...wait.

Sunday Science Blog

via Left Action:

"It's no surprise that Neil deGrasse Tyson has become one of today's most popular scientists, with his combination of brilliance, humor, and passion for knowledge making even the driest subjects come to life in a wonderfully engaging way. But what makes especially important is his willingness to boldly take on and debunk anti-scientific nonsense, even in controversial areas others would be afraid to touch. He has taken on those who claim the Earth is only a few thousand years old, refuting the claim by pointing out that it would necessitate ignoring the vast majority of the known universe (given the time it takes light to travel). He has taken on the anti-evolution crowd, and the climate-change skeptics as well, each time using the power of the scientific method to politely but firmly make his point. 

 Speaking out for the truth has led to a backlash against Tyson, with opponents demanding that his show, Cosmos, be cancelled. But he has continued to speak out for the truth. And in a time when anti-scientific nonsense is accepted as truth by a frighteningly high percentage of the population, Tyson deserves to be thanked for this."





INFIDEL753's LINK ROUND-UP

About the racist slurs tweeted after the Boston Bruins and Montreal Canadiens game...

It was disgraceful.  But every city has stupid, ignorant elements, and Boston is no exception.

The difference is that the Bruins' coach, president and players condemned the racist fans and what they tweeted, as did Boston's mayor Marty Walsh.


Huge kudos to Bruins' president Cam Neeley for doing the exact right thing: 

Bruins President Cam Neely issued a statement concerning the racist tweets Friday afternoon. 

 “The racist, classless views expressed by an ignorant group of individuals following Thursday’s game via digital media are in no way a reflection of anyone associated with the Bruins organization,” Neely said. 


And there's the difference.  Our city's mayor and the Boston Bruins leadership all swiftly distanced themselves from the jerks who sullied a great Boston rivalry between the Bruins and the Habs.  It's over, and the racist jerks and their sick stupidity were told they do not represent the majority of Boston fans.

Good going Broonz!




BOSTON (AP) — The Boston Bruins and Mayor Marty Walsh condemned racist slurs about P.K. Subban that hit social media after the Montreal defenseman scored in the second overtime of their playoff game Thursday night. Bruins President Cam Neely issued a statement Friday calling the tweets "racist" and "classless." He said they came from an "ignorant group of individuals" who do not reflect the organization. Walsh said in a statement that the tweets were "a disgrace. These racist comments are not reflective of Boston, and are not reflective of Bruins fans. I've said before that the best hockey in the world happens when the Bruins and Canadiens play each other, and there is no room for this kind of ignorance here."

 Subban, who is black, scored twice and the Canadiens won 4-3 to take a 1-0 lead in the best-of-seven Eastern Conference semifinals. Boston coach Claude Julien and several Bruins also condemned the tweets. "It's just poor judgment, poor taste, and we don't associate ourselves with people like that," Julien said Friday, "and people who think that way are not what we call our fans. They may think they are, but we certainly don't support that at all. It's a shame that this is still going around in this day and age."

 He noted that one of the Bruins players is Jarome Iginla, who is black. AOL Ad Subban's brother, Malcolm, is a goalie with the Bruins' minor league a affiliate in Providence, Rhode Island. "Let's be realistic here about this," Julien said about the tweets. "It's something we don't support." Left wing Milan Lucic, who plays on the same line as Iginla, said, "he's been treated with nothing but respect in Boston since he's been here." 

 Iginla joined the Bruins as a free agent after last season and shared the team lead with Patrice Bergeron with 30 goals. Begeron also criticized the tweets, saying, "there is no room for this in 2014."

Random Act of Culture

Opera Company of Philadelphia performs a flash random act of culture:









Check out the "Teaching Artists" of Opera Philadelphia. Scroll down to read about my nephew, Max Vasapoli.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

UPDATE BELOW


the militia goonies who came to the rescue of Cliven Bundy (you remember him, he's the conservative hero who likes to talk about "the Negro") are acting like our own little home-grown Gestapo:






"Concerns are growing about members of the militia surrounding rancher Cliven Bundy. 

 Democratic Rep. Steven Horsford, sent a letter to Clark County Sheriff Doug Gillespie about the safety of residents in the Bunkerville area. Horsford says his constituents have "expressed concern" over the presence of armed militia groups from out of state. 

 According to Horsford, his constituents say the militia have set up checkpoints where residents must prove they live in the area before they are allowed to pass and have set up a "persistent presence" along federal highways, and state and county roads. 

They also claim some have established an armed presence in the community. Horsford told the sheriff that the militia are making people feel unsafe.'


Cliven Bundy’s Militias Now Terrorizing Small Town With Armed Checkpoints 

Citizen militias or armed thugs? What are they protecting? Their right to act out their sick fantasies of starting a new civil war or their right to show America and the world what a fascistic mob looks like?


These are the sort of folks who bellow about their "FREEDOMS" being taken away by the evil government and the "blah" who lives in their White House. And here they are, the protectors of our freedoms, stopping American citizens from freely moving about their own town.  It's interesting, though, isn't it.  Give these armed yahoos the opportunity to "protect" a right, and see how quickly it turns into 1939.

Did I miss something or is Bunkerville the newest location for a Coen Brothers' film?

h/t Ducky's Here


UPDATE:

The Swash Zone's (O)CT(O)PUS left this comment on the thread below. It is relevant to this post , and I'm posting it here. Thank you, (O)CT(O)PUS for bring this to our attention: 

THIS STORY did not receive the media attention it deserved, and almost no mention within our respective blogging communities. I mention it here because this incident is becoming all too commonplace – with very dark and disturbing implications. Briefly: 

 “A gun control activist group called Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, or MDA for short, held a membership meeting at the Blue Mesa Grill in Dallas, Texas on Saturday. Not a protest or a public rally, just a meeting over some Tex-Mex and beverages. Harmless enough. A group of moms, activated by last year’s gun massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, gathered to discuss ways to boost membership and popular support for gun control legislation. 

 (Skip) 

 Oh, and did I mention there were only four MDA members in the meeting? Yes, four moms who were gathered at a luncheon were confronted by 40 gunmen brandishing AR-style assault rifles." 

 Here is an ANOTHER ACCOUNT of the same story: 

 “The sudden appearance of about 40 armed men outside a Dallas-area restaurant this weekend was the latest confrontation between an open-carry gun-rights group and a mothers group advocating gun control that was meeting inside. Chris Barton, the CFO of Blue Mesa Grill, said that the manager called 911 at 11:35 a.m., shortly after the armed group arrived. "When the manager called, he told them (the police dispatcher) what was going on," Barton said. "They said that if they are having a peaceful demonstration, they are within their legal rights." 

Now consider the actions of Oathkeepers and other lawless militias terrorizing a ranching community in Nevada. Same tactic, different controversy. 

 Is this the dystopian future of America wrought by new Open Carry laws? Any controversy in any village or town across the land settled by armed hoodlums and thugs? 

Democracy via bullying and intimidation, democracy by brinksmanship at the barrel of a gun, democracy via insurgency and insurrection? This not democracy but a form of neo-fascism wrought by extremists and sanctioned by the NRA. 

This is not the kind of future I want for my family and future generations.

It ends; it never ends.

It’s Tuesday, a day ending in “y,” so there must be another isolated incident of Republican racism to report. In this case, it’s a newsletter from the Winnebago County Republican Central Committee in President Obama’s home state of Illinois, which concludes by comparing the President with “the offspring of a donkey and a zebra, black and white legs, rest all donkey.” Why do these isolated incidents of racism tragically keep happening to Republicans?

The newsletter, by WCRCC Chairman Jim Thompson, lauds the recent Supreme Court decision gutting affirmative action, then concludes with this “amusing” observation:

Media update for the week: saw on the news this week the offspring of a donkey and a zebra, black and white legs, rest all donkey. Not sure why this is news: now if we can teach him to read a teleprompter, we could have two living creatures the media will fawn over that is part white part black and all a**!

Every time some Republican says something racist, the conservative response is to either deny that it is racist, admit it’s racist but maybe the guy has a point, or to call it an isolated incident while reminding the world that Harry Reid said “negro.” Or they somehow do all of those at once. In Mr. Thompson’s case, there’s also the fact that he’s just a local official, and not, say, a Republican presidential frontrunner, or a Republican vice-presidential nominee (take your pick). Whatever the rationale, it is crucially important that it not involve Republicans doing anything.

SOURCE

Go to The Swash Zone and read (O)CT(O)PUS, who did a much better job on reporting this latest racist derp. 

I have outrage fatigue, and I'm also tired of explaining what free speech means to abysmally clueless wingnuts.



And really, "It's Just All A Big Coincidence."

Guns and Culture, Madness and Mass Murder by (O)CT(O)PUS of The Swash Zone

By (O)CT(O)PUS

(Please note: This post is a revised and updated version of an earlier article.)

Columbine, VTech, Tucson, Aurora, Newtown, hate crimes against Sikhs and Jews.  Since 2006, there have been 232 rampage killings, an average of one incident and five fatalities every two weeks. All too commonplace, mass murder can strike any community at anytime without warning and claim any victim at random (source).

Every massacre elicits sensationalized news accounts as reporters, pundits, and competing stakeholders assault our senses with hype, false hypotheses, and self-serving narratives. Every massacre prompts a search for clues to explain the unexplainable and incomprehensible. Perpetrators rarely live to disclose their delusions or their motives in detail; more often they take their secrets to the grave.

Years ago, I was researching delusional thoughts for a paper on mental illness. Where do delusional thoughts come from? Are there patterns or archetypes? Should rampage killings be considered impulsive acts, copycat crimes, or manifestations of hitherto more complex phenomena as yet unidentified?

We find examples of delusional thinking across a range of mental illnesses - dissociation, bipolar disorder, pervasive developmental disability disorders, the personality disorders, and schizophrenia, as examples. Delusions are expressions of inner conflicts, drives, and memories that can take many forms: Actual persons or historical events, personifications of painful emotions or traumatic memories, revenge personae, violence in mass media, or voices in the head – all born of our culture and made manifest in shocking crimes.

My research reveals this: Delusional thoughts are as much a reflection of culture as a descent into madness.  For lack of a better expression, I call these “cultural artifacts” because they rise to the surface - not merely as dark impulses from the subconscious mind - but from the Spirtius Mundi of culture surrounding us.  Simply stated, culture shapes the way disturbed persons perceive and respond to their delusions.

If you accept this finding - this influence of culture on delusional thinking - then perhaps you might approach these murderous rampages from another perspective.

How does social stress correlate with violent crime? How do we quantify and measure privation, depersonalization, and desperation - the kinds of torments that find a path of least resistance in disturbed persons?  Recently, one of our readers commented:

Poverty does not cause crime; it breeds despair. Mental illness does not cause crime; it removes inhibitions and the ability to control dark impulses. Guns do not cause crime; they enable people who despair to attain, if only for a moment, a feeling of control, of superiority over others. That the feelings of control and superiority often result in the taking of other's property, dignity, safety and, far too often, their lives is not the result that they dreamed of. It is the stuff of nightmares.

The incidence of mental illness is constant across all population groups – as constant as background radiation in the Universe. The rate of violent crime in the mentally ill population is no different than the rate of violent crime in the general population. Yet, America has a far higher prevalence rate of violent crime, death by accidental shooting, and suicide by self-inflicted gunshot than any nation in the world (source). Why? The ubiquity of guns in America is a cultural artifact.

Doubtless, easy access to arms correlates with higher incidence rates of violent crime.  Our nation has 50% of all guns in circulation worldwide and 30 times the murder rate compared with other industrialized nations. Undeniably, gun culture is the vestigial relic of a frontier mentality deeply imbedded in the American mythos – yet another cultural artifact.

Are rampage killings the only form violence perpetrated on the American public?  Hardly! Which is worse:

·      A crazed gunman who kills 20 children at a clip?  Or merchants who sell junk food to children and consign them to lives of obesity and diabetes;

·      Or the subliminal influence of violence in games marketed to children and represented as entertainment;

·      Or manufacturers of automatic weapons that appeal, not to legitimate sports enthusiasts, but to adult children reared on action toys who project their self-image of manhood through the barrel of a gun;

·      Or reckless speculators who crash investment markets - leaving millions of people in financial ruin;

·      Or a corporate CEO who orders massive layoffs - casting entire families into panic and debt – who then rewards himself with a multi-million dollar bonus.

Crimes of violence against people committed in the name of easy money, fast money, and free enterprise: These too have become cultural artifacts.

How often have we heard people in the news dismiss an alleged transgression with this claim: “No laws were broken.” How often have we thought to ourselves: The word ‘legal’ is not necessarily synonymous with the word 'ethical.'  Legal acts - all too often considered immoral and reprehensible - have become cultural artifacts.

During my parenthood years, I tried to teach my children the relationship between responsibility and freedom. Parents reward good behavior with confidence and trust - and punish misconduct with more supervision and less independence. A reasonable proposition for raising children, I thought. Yet, ours has become a society that fails to practice this relationship. Every public controversy, and every perceived loss of freedom (whether imagined or real), represents a failure of responsibility.

What preoccupies our thoughts after the nightly news? We hear about chicanery and corruption, inequality and injustice, abuse of our public institutions, the lies and deceptions of persons who aspire to positions of power and authority over us; of legislative deadlock and gridlock, and a public abused by political hacks and henchmen. How often has the public interest been held hostage by special interest groups and their lobbyists who hold our elected officials in thrall?  The legalization of what we used to call ‘bribery’ and ‘graft’ have now become cultural artifacts.

Reductio ad absurdum. After a weeklong silence following the Sandy Hook massacre, Wayne LaPierre of the NRA responded with this prescription: Fight fire with more firepower; place armed guards in every school; arm the good guys to neutralize the bad guys.  More guns!  Turn America into an armed fortress with self-appointed militias and vigilantes in every city and town.

LaPierre offers not an imaginary dystopia but a real one – like a bad Mad Max movie – creeping into our lives. Is the ubiquity of guns an acceptable vision for our children and future generations? If you understand the pervasive impact of ‘cultural artifacts’ on people, then LaPierre’s prescription for fighting fire with more firepower is akin to pouring more gasoline on a raging inferno.

We may talk about the dangers of easy access to automatic weapons; about loopholes in our system of background checks and bullet holes in our mental health establishment; about competing ideas of gun ownership versus public safety. Perhaps these controversies, grave as they are, overlook more fundamental questions.

In exploring these relationships between madness and culture, and gun violence versus the prerequisite need of society to secure public safety, I am reminded of the moral dilemmas posed by Stanley Kubrick in his dark and disturbing film, A Clockwork Orange.

It is the story of Alex, a punk, serial rapist, and murderer sentenced to prison.  Given a choice between serving time versus gaining his freedom by taking the 'cure,' Alex opts for the operant conditioning cure that turns him into a ‘clockwork’ man – neutered of all violent impulses, a dehumanized shadow of his former self. Powerless against former victims and fellow punks who savagely beat and torment him, Alex notes with sarcasm: “I was cured alright!” In this ironic turn of the story, we are left asking ourselves: “But can society be cured of its violent undercurrents?”

We practice brinksmanship but not citizenship. We equate freedom with excess and excess with freedom. We facilitate overindulgence without moderation or self-restraint.   We covet freedom but spurn responsibility. With each passing year, we drive all standards of civility, community and accountability further into the wilderness. National conversations turn fractious and fragmented.  The high ideals of secular democracy no longer bind us together. Perhaps the madness in our midst reflects the accelerated grimace of a culture gone mad.

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.  How will more guns or less guns keep us safe when we have fostered a culture of ruthless greed, rampant corruption, and remorseless sociopathy? Perhaps these incidents of gun violence are signs and symptoms of a society in crisis.

The time has come to talk about our broken statues and battered books – these cultural artifacts that crash in the mind. Perhaps we should start a national conversation at the very beginning by reaffirming those values of a democratic republic whose mission and purpose is to secure “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” The price of civilization is never cheap. We demand the rights and privileges of full membership, but refuse to pay our dues.

Donald Sterling's Bigotry

Imagine if Donald Sterling's famous candid talk to his girlfriend sounded like this:



"It bothers me a lot that you want to broadcast that you’re associating with Christians," Sterling is heard saying. "Do you have to?" 

 I think the fact that you admire a Christian -- I've known them well, and they should be admired," Sterling replies. "And I'm just saying that it's too bad you can't admire Christians privately. And during your ENTIRE F**KING LIFE, your whole life, admire them -- bring them here, feed them, f**k them, I don't care. You can do anything. 

But don't put Christians on an Instagram for the world to see so they have to call me. And don't bring them to my games. OK?"



How would our friends on the right react to that if say, Donald Sterling was a left-winger saying the above?

Or this:


"It bothers me a lot that you want to broadcast that you’re associating with Jews," Sterling is heard saying. "Do you have to?" 

I think the fact that you admire Jews-- I've known them well, and they should be admired," Sterling replies. "And I'm just saying that it's too bad you can't admire Jews privately. And during your ENTIRE F**KING LIFE, your whole life, admire them -- bring them here, feed them, f**k them, I don't care. You can do anything. 

But don't put Jews on an Instagram for the world to see so they have to call me. And don't bring them to my games. OK?"



Or this:

"It bothers me a lot that you want to broadcast that you’re associating with Italians," Sterling is heard saying. "Do you have to?" 

I think the fact that you admire Italians -- I've known them well, and they should be admired," Sterling replies. "And I'm just saying that it's too bad you can't admire Italians privately. And during your ENTIRE F**KING LIFE, your whole life, admire them -- bring them here, feed them, f**k them, I don't care. You can do anything. 

But don't put Italians on an Instagram for the world to see so they have to call me. And don't bring them to my games. OK?"

I'm wondering why the rightwingers who are howling about how unfair it is that a man who said those things in private and that now those things are now publicly known should suffer the consequences, would those same people feel this is an injustice if Sterling said the same thing about Christians, Jews, or Italians?

So why are people so angry that Sterling was disciplined by the NBA for saying these things, that became public, about African-Americans?

Anyone?

Does Silver Think Sterling Tarnished the NBA?

So now we'll have to listen to another bigot's explanation on how horribly he was misquoted or misunderstood when he opened his maw and shared his deeply genuine feelings about "the Negro," "black people in photos," and remember this one:  "... hiring black waiters dressed to look like slaves at a wedding."

Do we see a trend here?  Oh, and let's not ignore the loud-mouthed agitators who rushed to the intertubes to breathlessly announce that Clippers' owner, Donald Sterling, contributed to Democratic politicians, so therefore, BENGHAZI!  Turns out Sterling's been a registered Republican since 1998. But who cares about facts when you can have your little "AHA!  SEE?!" moment.

Scratch the surface of our sunny idea of ourselves living in a country of amber waves of grain and purple mountain's majesty crowned with "good and brotherhood," and we are forced to acknowledge the dirty little secret that lies within too many of our countrymen's hypocritical and bigoted hearts.


"[NBA commissioner, Adam Silver] promised a quick investigation into Sterling's role in the audio and will address the situation Tuesday at 2 p.m. ET in New York. 

 Expect Silver to penalize Sterling as harshly as possible. Silver said the commissioner's office has a broad range of powers under the NBA's constitution and bylaws, which are not public. 

 'The commissioner is given broad powers to protect the best interests of the NBA, and those powers extend to both the players and the owners,' Tulane law professor and sports law expert Gabe Feldman said. 'The devil is in the details, and the details are in the confidential NBA constitution and bylaws. My understanding is that the owners have given the commissioner power to discipline.' 

 Silver will probably use the ubiquitous "conduct detrimental the league" clause, and a suspension and fine is a potential, if not likely, outcome. 

 'Any more severe discipline, including a forced sale or termination of the franchise, is limited to more extreme circumstances that don't apply here,' Feldman said."

Sterling

Silver

The Gun Supremacists

N.R.A.'s Wayne LaPierre:


"Freedom has never needed our defense more than now. Almost everywhere you look, something has gone wrong."

Yeah.  I think you're right there.  Something has gone wrong when Americans don't feel safe in malls, movie theaters, schools, community centers, churches, military bases, and their own homes.



 LaPierre:  "You feel it in your heart, you know it in your gut. Something has gone wrong. "

Yeah.  Horribly wrong.



LaPierre:  "The core values we believe in, the things we care about most, are changing. Eroding. Our right to speak."


Hey Wayne!  You're speaking and no one is stopping you or holding a, erm, GUN to your head for doing so.

LaPierre:  "Our right to gather."

Said LaPierre to a gathering of fellow paranoids.



 LaPierre:  "The freedom to work, and practice our religion, and raise and protect our families the way we see fit."

As they say on the intertubes, "WTF?"  Who's stopping you from doing your dirty work of promoting fear and paranoia?  Has any government agent stopped you from worshipping your god?  Which government agency has stepped into your home and told you how to raise your family?  And has Obama come into your home to take away your guns?  Tell us, Wayne.  Give us the evidence.


 LaPierre:  "Those aren't old values. They aren't new values. They are core freedoms, the core values that have always defined us as a nation. And we feel them -- we feel them -- slipping away."


The only thing you may feel "slipping away" is your mental acuity.   You, Wayne LaPierre, are full of bullpucky.  Your values haven't been taken from you or your paranoid friends.  That fear mongering you feed to your audience is all about getting gullible people to buy more guns.

An armed America is a safe America.  Right, Wayne?

Georgia parents shut down a children’s baseball game on Tuesday when an armed man began pacing the park saying, “Look, I got a gun and there's nothing you can do about it." 

Even though 22 people called 911, authorities could not arrest the man or ask him to leave the park because he had a permit. One 6-year-old asked his mother, "Mommy, did that man want to kill me?" 

E.J. Dionne, The Washington Post

 The creativity of the National Rifle Association and other organizations devoted to establishing conditions in which every man, woman and child in our nation will have to be armed is awe-inspiring. Where imagination is concerned, the best absurdist artists and writers have nothing on the NRA. 

Georgia thinks you should be able to take guns into government buildings that don’t have screening devices or security guards. Second Amendment enthusiasts tend not to like tax increases, but as the Associated Press reported, the city of Vienna, Ga., (pop. 3,841) would have to shell out about $60,000 a year to increase security at city buildings. “Do we raise taxes to provide the police protection or do we take the risk of potential injury to our public?” asked Mayor Pro Tem Beth English, who also is president of the Georgia Municipal Association. 

Too bad if this gun lobby subsidy comes out of the school budget. Oh yes, and while conservatives claim to hate the centralization of power, this law wipes out a series of local gun regulations. The gun supremacists just don’t trust those pesky local elected officials.

Internet Goodies

Blogger Infidel753 does a terrific job of rounding up what's hot and what's weird in a mixture of politics, science, religion, and everything else on the internet every Sunday.  It's always a treat, and I look forward each week to see what new stuff Infidel753 is serving up.

This site, among others, that Infidel753 linked to is great. Go there and enjoy everything the blog host offers, but only after seeing all the other goodies Infidel753 dug up for your enjoyment and astonishment. 


Oh, and here's one I found via Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish.  Enjoy:




 

"Romantic revisionism of this most ghastly enterprise cannot stand."

Charles Blow of the New York Times:




Sojourner Truth, in her “Ain’t I a Woman?” speech, delivered in 1851 at the Women’s Convention in Akron, Ohio, lamented: “I have borne 13 children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me!” 

The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History estimates that nearly two-thirds of slaves lived in nuclear households. However, those families could be broken up on a whim, and many slaves were bred like animals, were raped at will and could marry only if allowed. 

How could they have been “happier” to meet the lash, to feel the flaying of flesh, to have it heal in dreadful scars only to be ripped open again until one had, as Sethe, the main character in Toni Morrison’s “Beloved,” put it, a tree on one’s back? 

It was not only the lash but also the noose and being chased down and ripped apart by dogs, and all manner of terrors. When the human imagination sets itself on cruelty there are no limits to its designs. 

Americans have been trying to justify slavery since its inception, to make the most wrong of wrongs right, to no avail. Robert E. Lee wrote in 1856: “The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, physically and socially. The painful discipline they are undergoing is necessary for their further instruction as a race, and will prepare them, I hope, for better things.” 

Others used religion as a justification, quoting verses and patting themselves on the back for saving the souls of the so-called savage. But as Frederick Douglass pointed out, “The slave auctioneer’s bell and the churchgoing bell chime in with each other, and the bitter cries of the heartbroken slave are drowned in the religious shouts of his pious master.” Religion didn’t elevate enslavers; trying to justify slavery reduced religion. 

“Happier”? How, Mr. Bundy, could you even utter such absurdity? The very soil of this country cries out for us to never forget what happened here, for the irreducible record of the horrors of slavery to never be reduced. 

Romantic revisionism of this most ghastly enterprise cannot stand. It must be met, vigilantly and unequivocally, with the strongest rebuttal. Slaves dishonored in life must not have their memories disfigured by revisionist history. 

America committed this great sin, its original sin, and there will be no absolution by alteration. America must live with the memory of what its forefathers — even its founding fathers — did. It must sit with this history, the unvarnished truth of it, until it has reconciled with it.