Exposed: The Faces and Fake Names of the People Behind Planned Parenthood Attack Videos

From Democracy Now:

AMY GOODMAN: So these tapes, Sharona Coutts, David Daleiden is an associate of the discredited right-wing activist James O’Keefe, who targeted ACORN and was famously arrested for trying to wiretap Senator Mary Landrieu’s office when she was senator at the time, the senator from Louisiana. And this is from, I think, The Hill: "James O’Keefe was sentenced to three years of probation, 100 hours of community service [and a] $1,500 fine after he pleaded guilty ... to misdemeanor charges stemming from his involvement in [the break-in of Landrieu’s office. In January, O’Keefe and three others were arrested by federal authorities at Landrieu’s office on allegations of phone-tampering." Can you talk about these links? Is it guilt by association?

Click here to watch, read, or listen to the rest.

You know, political opposition is just fine. I may disagree, but we're Americans: we're going to work this out in the marketplace of ideas, and then at the ballot box. That's cool. That's who we are; we're Americans. But this flap with Planned Parenthood is something else, entirely.

The people who shot this doctored video, "The Center for Medical Progress," are Breitbart operatives, the same outfit who gave us the despicable James O'Keefe, whose faked "sting" videos took down ACORN with the outlandish suggestion that they were arranging a mortgage for a pimp and his prostitutes, whose faked "sting" videos resulted in the unjust firing of Shirley Sherrod from the USDA, and whose further attempts to put together fake "sting" videos trying to somehow "incriminate" Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu resulted in his imprisonment for trespassing. The bottom line here is that ANYTHING this crowd offers as a video "sting" is ALL LIES. That's what these people are. Liars. Scum.

I'm surprised, astonished, and shocked that anybody at all continues to take this shit seriously. I mean, even conservatives--in spite of the fact that conservatives believe a lot of things that simply aren't true, it seems to me that when something is so OBVIOUSLY FALSE, that they would condemn it. But no. We now have voices in Congress calling for the yanking of federal support for Planned Parenthood.

All this leaves me with the distinctly bad taste in my mouth of the sense that conservatives just want what they want, and they don't care if they have to lie and destroy people's lives and careers to get it.

Is that what you are, conservatives? Right and wrong don't matter; truth doesn't matter. All that matters is that you get what you want, regardless of the cost, in money, dignity, or morality. This is just some bad, bad, bad shit. You right-wingers need to denounce it IMMEDIATELY. Or you are immoral people.

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It's Songs with the Word "Summer" in the Title Week!

Over in the land of facebook, that is.  Here are a couple of standout selections for you here in the land of blogging.



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FRIDAY CAT BLOGGING

Sammy's belly (and Frankie's legs)

Be sure to check out Modulator's Friday Ark for more cat blogging pics!

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TEH GAY

Although I would argue that, even if being gay actually is a choice, it's just fine. People should have sexual freedom. People should have the freedom to form romantic relationships with whatever human beings they love. Period.

I mean, as if gayness-as-a-choice is some kind of moral "gotcha."

Excelsior!

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PRAYER

You know, I'm all for prayer as a meditative activity, or as a means to be connected to the Almighty, or as a way to send out good vibes to the world. But prayer as a sort of quid pro quo arrangement has always seemed a troublesome proposition to me.

'Nuff said.

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The 7 most dangerous myths about the fight for $15 minimum wage

From the Daily Dot:

What was once a fringe movement led largely by far left liberals has become a major media story and trending topic on Twitter: Workers, politicians, and even business owners are fighting for a higher minimum wage. In some areas, they’re even winning. The White House has recommended a federal minimum wage of $10.10, but cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle have raised the bar, passing legalization to raise the minimum wage to $15. (In most places, the transition will take place over the next five to seven years).

And despite these successes, myths about what increased wages mean for America’s economy and workers continue to prevail, making the rounds in Facebook memes and even real news reports. There’s so much misinformation on the subject that the Department of Labor even has a “mythbusting” page.

But these myths are just that: They’re myths. And there’s plenty of data to debunk them.

More here.

A buddy of mine posted the above linked essay on my facebook timeline.  Here's what I commented:

Remember how when we were in high school there actually seemed to be a national debate about economics regarding supply side versus demand side, Keynesian versus neoliberal?

All of that eventually faded out, though, and it seems like everybody in the ruling establishment settled, more or less, for embracing neoliberalism--I blame Clinton and the New Democrats, all that triangulation shit, for that. The Democrats ended up with a new found ability to get corporate money for their campaigns, but it really did a number on how Americans conceptualize economics.

I am very happy to see that, philosophically if not yet legislatively, the neoliberal supply-side grip on the nation's psyche seems to be loosening. Really, and I get this sense from reading Krugman and Stiglitz, a few others, that it's all very much a balance between the supply side and the demand side, which makes sense because both supply and demand are, needless to say, very important to a capitalist economic system.

But right now, we are hopelessly out of balance, living in sort of koyaanisqatsi of economics. I hope this trend away from supply side absolutism continues.

Excelsior!

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Really, it’s time to shut down the GOP

From Salon:

Republicans are finally noticing that Donald Trump is a political liability. In the wake of Trump’s attack on John McCain, GOP candidates found the courage to condemn his revolting shtick — a little late, of course, but good for them. The problem, though, is that they don’t quite understand that Trump isn’t an anomaly; he’s the latest product of a party that long ago abandoned any pretense of seriousness.

More here.

It is, in the twenty first century, incorrect to describe conservatism as a political philosophy. Rather, it is now an identity, one as deeply held as religion, or gender, or occupation, or nationality. It is an identity based on anger and resentment. Yes, this identity manifests in terms of political positions, but those are just the symptoms of what lies beneath: devastatingly painful rage, a sense of persecution, of us-against-the-world, a deep need to "take our country back."

I mean, look, all politics have an emotional element. Emotion, to some extent, guides all our thinking about the various political positions we might take. And you even see similar emotionally-driven tribal elements on the left. But only on the right have we seen this sort of thing take over.

The anger identity is so strong for them it trumps science and facts, as with global warming, evolution, and even crackpot theories about throwing money at the rich, Benghazi, or finding WMD in Iraq. It makes them take bizarre positions, such as rejecting their own market based health care reform plan simply because it was offered by Democrats. And so on.

There continue to be too many reality-based voices and leaders on the left to allow whatever tribal utopians we might have to dominate: the right's thinkers, in sharp contrast, cower in fear at their tribe's rank and file, and adjust their "thinking" accordingly.

Consequently, conservatism, as a philosophy, has devolved into angry vagueness. It is now a fear-based tribal identity, not a system of ideas connected by thoughts. It is incapable of articulating a clear and workable vision for America's future; it can only fume about what it hates. No way forward. Continual outraged stasis.

And the Republican Party is in utter chaos because of it.

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204 mass shootings in the United States so far in 2015, crowd-sourced tracker says

From the Houston Chronicle:

A mass shooting that killed three people Thursday at a movie theater in Louisiana is only the latest in a string of more than 200 such shootings this year, a website that tracks U.S. gun deaths says.

Forty U.S. states this year have seen mass shooting incidents "when four or more people are shot in an event, or related series of events, likely without a cooling off period," according to the crowd-sourced website Mass Shooting Tracker.

The total number of shootings in 2015 under that definition stands at 204, the website says.

More here.

If we're supposed to refrain from talking about politics for, what, a couple of weeks after any mass shooting, so as to respect survivors, the bereaved, etc., but the shootings are happening at a rate of around one per week, WHEN THE HELL ARE WE SUPPOSED TO TALK ABOUT THE POLITICS?!?

My guess is that the answer is "never."

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FRANK ZAPPA FRIDAY AND 70S POP MONDAY ON SATURDAY

Two of my facebook features exported to Real Art.




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FRIDAY CAT BLOGGING

Frankie, in silhouette.

Be sure to check out Modulator's Friday Ark for more cat blogging pics!

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LOCAL STATION GOES AFTER ALEC

From Media Matters for America:



One of the many ways American democracy has been rendered inoperative. If you want to see some shady backroom deals going on, this is it. Excellent television investigative journalism, the likes of which we rarely see these days.

Oh, and if you don't know ALEC, asshole corporate legislative cabal, click here.

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Armed civilians are guarding military recruiting centers

From the Houston Chronicle:

Armed civilians stood watch Wednesday outside an Army and Air Force recruiting office in McAllen and other recruiting storefronts around the nation, prompting the military to advise its service members working there to contact local police.

Civilians carrying weapons turned up outside military recruiting centers in at least four Texas cities over the past day or two, a reaction to last week’s shooting in Chattanooga, Tennessee that left four Marines and a sailor dead.

More here.

Yes, because apparently the attack in Chattanooga signals an oncoming wave of drug-addicted, mentally ill, American-born jihadis attacking military recruiting centers from coast to coast. And they all need protection provided by civilian patriots armed with the second amendment.

I love this country's can-do spirit.

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Check out this letter then-Governor Jeb Bush wrote to the swiftboaters in 2005

From Daily Kos:

Who could forget the vicious campaign Republicans waged against John Kerry for his service in Vietnam? Secretary of State John Kerry received not one, not two, but three Purple Hearts, a Silver Star and a Bronze Star during his combat time in Vietnam. Nevertheless, Republicans mocked and belittled his military service throughout the campaign. It was a key feature of the 2004 Republican National Convention, when delegates and supporters wore cutesy purple bandages in an effort to degrade the Purple Hearts Kerry was awarded.

More here.

What Trump said about McCain is totally lame, of course. Say what you want about his politics: the Senator from Arizona is DEFINITELY a war hero, and deserves our respect, if only for that. Of course, Secretary of State John Kerry is also a war hero, and, a little over a decade ago, when he was running for president as the Democratic nominee, THE ENTIRE REPUBLICAN PARTY went totally to town on his record of distinguished service.

So I call bullshit on all these crocodile tears being shed about how wrong it was for the Donald to go there.

Republicans don't really care about this shit. I mean, it could be freaking Sergeant York, Sergeant Rock, Sergeant Fury, Audie Murphy, whatever, and his war record would only count in his favor if he was a conservative. There's a lot of things regarding Trump about which Republicans can be honestly angry. Trashing John McCain is not one of them.

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'We Are In a Revolutionary Moment'

The fictional right-wing narrative:

Atheist, communist, hate-filled "liberals," a.k.a. "progressives," run the nation, ultimately seeking to disarm, imprison, even murder, God-fearing real Americans, and to destroy forever freedom and the American way, replacing our democratic republic with a dark conformist totalitarianism.

The reality, as articulated by Chris Hedges, courtesy of AlterNet, in the interview linked below:

If things unravel [in the U.S.], our backlash may very well be a right-wing backlash — a very frightening right-wing backlash. We who care about populist movements [on the left] are very weak, because in the name of anti-communism these movements have been destroyed; we are almost trying to rebuild them from scratch. We don’t even have the language to describe the class warfare that is being unleashed upon us by this tiny, rapacious, oligarchic elite. But we on the left are very disorganized, unfocused, and without resources.

More here.

That is, there's hardly a left at all in this country, and those who call themselves "liberal," at this point, are neck deep in the corporate dirty work they do almost every day. But there is a right wing in this country. They're wealthy, influential, powerful, and very, very angry.

Things are looking dark and grim as our nation continues its long, slow collapse.

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CAITLYN JENNER

From Salon:

Ben Shapiro tries — and spectacularly fails — to humiliate 
trans woman Zoey Tur: “What are your genetics, sir?” 

Thursday night’s episode of “Dr. Drew on Call” featured Breitbart Editor-at-Large Ben Shaprio and “Inside Edition” reporter Zoey Tur discussing whether Caitlyn Jenner deserved the Arthur Ashe Courage Award — and as anyone familiar with Shapiro’s thoughts about the transgender community has already guessed, the discussion started poorly and steadily deteriorated like a burning plane on a slow descent into a field of puppies.

Host Drew Pinsky asked Shapiro if he believed Jenner deserved the award. “For what?” Shapiro shot back.

More here.

You know, I don't think Caitlyn Jenner's story is, like, the greatest thing ever or anything along those lines. But she does represent a significant step forward in the ongoing struggle for transgendered Americans to be received into the nation's cultural mainstream. Her public existence as a woman is definitely noteworthy, and to be respected and honored.

The thing I don't get is how it pisses off so many people. I mean, why all the juxtaposing of Jenner pictures with soldier pictures and text reading "this is real courage" yadda-yadda? It's weird.

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FRANK ZAPPA FRIDAY AND 70S POP MONDAY ON SATURDAY

Two of my facebook features exported to Real Art.




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FRIDAY CAT BLOGGING

Frankie

Be sure to check out Modulator's Friday Ark for more cat blogging pics!

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EVERY MAN FOR HIMSELF!

I shared this on facebook a couple of days ago:

The discussion thread for it was mostly pretty good.  But sometimes this happens:

John If you pay wage only increased 10 percent since 1978, you should probably get a better job. Maybe welfare only increased by 10 percent.

Ronald Yes, John, every man for himself is exactly what we need. "Get a better job." Dude, that only works when there are better jobs. And, for most Americans, there aren't. Thus, your comment is gibberish, having nothing to do with anything at all. You rightys need to stop talking in gibberish and get with the discussion.

John Well it is every man for himself. I don't want to work to support you. If you believe there are not better jobs then try harder Ron. The only gibberish is the poor me rhetoric wanting a Utopian society where everyone is equal and has the same amount. It doesn't exist. The world is what you make if it.

Ronald I don't know how to talk to someone who is obviously in utter denial of the reality all around him. I'm doing fine. This isn't about me. This is about our nation, which I love. That means loving the people in it, which you apparently do not. And you're pulling out the word "utopia," I see. Whatever. You conservatives ALWAYS start using that word whenever you've got nothing to say. More gibberish.

Anyway, I don't think you love this country. I don't think you understand the phrase "promote the general welfare" from the Constitution's preamble, which makes your entire understanding of this country suspect.

Also, I don't expect you to follow all my posts, but I've been very much on the record as believing that the economy exists to serve the people. Not the other way around. So if business can't provide the goods, WE SHOULD FORCE THEM TO DO SO. Otherwise, they're parasites.

Excelsior!

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Houston GOP activist Steven Hotze: 'Kids will be encouraged to practice sodomy in kindergarten'

From the Houston Chronicle:

Dr. Steven Hotze, president of Conservative Republicans of Texas and Houston talk radio host, articulated that thought yesterday in Dallas while speaking at a kick-off for a new anti-gay marriage organization, the Texas Observer reported. He was joining conservative allies in founding "Real Marriage: One Man/One Woman for Life," a group he said will campaign against the cultural influence of "homo-fascists" in Texas and beyond.

More here.

You know, I read trash like this and I really wonder if anyone can possibly be this stupid.

I mean, c'mon: "They want to intimidate individuals, churches, schools and families to celebrate those that participate in anal sex." It's not about people who love each other getting married? This is all about celebrating anal sex?

Think about that for a moment.

This piece of walking talking human trash reduces the institution of marriage to nothing more than a sex act. I might as well say that so-called "traditional" marriage is about celebrating vaginal sex. You know, the fundamentalists want to intimidate individuals, churches, schools, and families to celebrate those that participate in vaginal sex.

Kids will be encouraged to practice vaginal sex in kindergarten.

Right. It's obvious bullshit when you turn it around--I mean, it's obvious in any case, but the depths of its offensiveness become a bit more clear when you apply the same calculation to straight marriages. While sex is, indeed, an important component of marriage, it continues to be JUST ONE COMPONENT among many, as if that even needs to be stated. But apparently it does.

It really is hard to tell if this guy's stupid or simply a big asshole, but there is one thing of which I'm certain: a guy who's such big asshole has absolutely no business ranting and raving about how horrible anal sex is. After all, when an asshole has sex, that's the only kind of sex it can be.

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PRIDE

A couple of weeks late, but still a good thought:

The same thinking also applies to black pride, Latino pride, the women's movement, black history, etc. That is, it's about solidarity and survival in the face of oppression. Consequently, the men's movement, white pride, all these things celebrating people who already hold most of the power in society, aren't much more than rhetorically dog-piling on the oppression.

Hard to explain all that to resentful white men, though. I mean, you know, they're resentful.

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The Laziness Dogma

New Krugman:

You see this laziness dogma everywhere on the right. It was the hidden background to Mitt Romney’s infamous 47 percent remark. It underlay the furious attacks on unemployment benefits at a time of mass unemployment and on food stamps when they provided a vital lifeline for tens of millions of Americans. It drives claims that many, if not most, workers receiving disability payments are malingerers — “Over half of the people on disability are either anxious or their back hurts,” says Senator Rand Paul.

It all adds up to a vision of the world in which the biggest problem facing America is that we’re too nice to fellow citizens facing hardship. And the appeal of this vision to conservatives is obvious: it gives them another reason to do what they want to do anyway, namely slash aid to the less fortunate while cutting taxes on the rich.

More here.

Here's the deal. American workers aren't lazy. American workers want to work. So American capitalism needs either to pay workers more, such that people can afford rent, bills, health care, and college tuition for their kids, OR the capitalist class needs to get used paying much higher taxes to be used for more social services in order to make up for the fact that they refuse to pay workers what they're worth. Probably a combination of both.

But that's what's going to happen. And it can happen easily, with input and cooperation from the capitalist class, or it can happen painfully, with the capitalist class kicking and screaming all the way. My money's on the latter.

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ALL MEN ARE PIGS

(Directly from facebook last Friday:)

This is why abortion is just about the only women's issue I'll talk about on facebook. It seems far safer territory. But really, if I completely misinterpreted this person's intent, I wish she had simply explained that to me, instead of reinforcing my preexisting notion. Better to just keep my mouth shut. Even if I feel like I've been unjustly called a pig.

ORIGINAL POST, FROM A FORMER FACEBOOK FRIEND (FFF):

I kind of love this song. It's a conversation between a radical feminist and a fake feminist man who's saying that all men are pigs and pretending to be a feminist just to get into her pants, because he's DIFFERENT from the other guys. "All men are pigs--all men but me!" So familiar. Great tune, as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ob5KzB_EOqc

COMMENTS:

You like this.

Ronald Rule number one: never argue feminism with a hardcore feminist. You can argue with women who reject the feminist label, even though they mostly support feminist principles; you can argue with other men. But never argue about the topic with a hardcore feminist, even if you think you've got a point. Just agree with her. Everyone will be much better off.

On the other hand, when one starts saying that all people are like this or that, one runs into trouble. Having said that, this is a pretty good song.

Also, who the hell tries to get into a feminist's pants by insisting he's enlightened? What a douche.

FFF It happens a lot. I don't know what you think I am? But I consider myself a hardcore feminist, so I'm not sure what to think of your disparaging words.

Ronald I'll try not to argue with you about feminism, then.

Ronald And I don't mean to disparage, but that's my experience.

Adding: I don't know anything about you at all.

FFF I wasn't even arguing. Sigh. This is the problem--people say, "You can't argue with feminists!" and then when we understandably take umbrage at a sweeping generalization like that, as I would at ANY sweeping generalization of that kind, you say, "You see! I'm right!" UAGHAGJHSDGA. It's just annoying, because I'd prefer to have a REAL conversation, and not boil things down to generalizations like that. I'm an individual, not part of a collective hive mind of "All Feminists".

Ronald FFF, you just posted a song calling me a pig.

FFF *facedesk* did you even read my description of the song? You completely missed the point. The perspective is from a guy trying to get into a feminist's pants. Not a woman saying it. It seems like you didn't even listen to it.

Ronald The song is titled "All Men are Pigs." Is there something I'm missing?

Ronald "Having said that, this is a pretty good song."

FFF I don't know how you aren't getting this. The title refers to what the guy is saying in order to try and fuck the feminist girl, trying to say he's different from other guys, "not typical", and "better" in some vague way.

FFF It's not a sentiment I agree with, it's a satire song I find amusing.

Ronald "I don't know how you aren't getting this."

I feel like I'm being patronized now.

FFF I can't even. I'm seriously trying my best right now, but you are clearly not even trying. Goodbye, banning you from this post.

UPDATE: So when I re-posted the exchange on my own page, after blocking forever the dim-witted and evil FFF, I took a little shit from some self-identified feminist friends for my saying that I refuse to argue with hardcore feminists.  I explained that I consider myself to be a feminist, too, but that my experience, as a man, dictates that I should NEVER argue about feminism with radical feminists, rather than simply feminists, because it has so often ended up very badly, very quickly.

This latest incident simply galvanizes my thinking on this.  I mean, I didn't even really try to argue about feminism with a hardcore feminist.  I just figured if it's all about satire, well, then, this guy broke rule number one.  But it turns out it's not even satire!  This song, when you look a bit more closely at the lyrics, is CLEARLY asserting that all men are pigs.  It's not a douche character saying this; it's the fucking song.

So FFF not only was a big fucking asshole to me, but was also completely wrong in her assertion that it's some kind of parody or something.  I should have just told her to fuck off immediately.  At any rate, this shit really rattles me.  As one of my feminist friends pointed out, it's probably not so much the radicals, per se, as it is the assholes, people using rhetorical cover to mask their, what, hate?  I don't know.

But it's yet another lesson that there are simply some people I will never be able to reach.  And that's a drag.

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FRANK ZAPPA FRIDAY AND 70S POP MONDAY ON SATURDAY

Two of my facebook features exported to Real Art.




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FRIDAY CAT BLOGGING: YET ANOTHER CANINE EDITION!

Lola

Be sure to check out Modulator's Friday Ark for more cat blogging pics!

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Homophobes now showing they don’t like gay people with ‘US flag’ Facebook pictures

From Pink News:

Homophobes on Facebook are protesting against a trend of ‘rainbow’ Facebook pictures – by superimposing the American flag over their face.

A bit more here.

So the stars and stripes means homophobia now. Strange times, strange times. But not really. This brings back a lot of bad memories from the months between 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq.

Immediately after the terrorist attacks that toppled the World Trade Center and destroyed part of the Pentagon, there was, I'm sure you'll recall, what seemed a rather spontaneous eruption of national solidarity, manifest by what seemed an infinite display of the American flag. Everywhere. And it made a great deal of sense. In the wake of a national tragedy, Americans wanted to show that they love their country, no matter what, and that we're all in this together. At first, I thought it was cool; it reminded me of all the star spangled mania surrounding the bicentennial when I was a kid.

But it didn't take long for things to take a turn for the sinister. Very quickly, it seemed to me, Old Glory became synonymous with war, with revenge, and with hatred directed at Muslims. Not freedom. Not Democracy. Not industriousness. Not diversity. It made me sad. I mean, honestly, deeply sad. "This isn't who we are, who we're supposed to be," I thought, "What's happened to my flag?" How could we have become so jingoistic and bent on destruction so quickly?

Later, as our fortunes floundered in Iraq, the flag fest stalled out. All for the best, I suppose, but it left a really bad taste in my mouth. What do you do when a symbol you love is appropriated successfully by evil assholes? I never figured out the answer to that.

Fortunately, this right-wing response to the gay marriage decision is, in all probability, not going to catch on. After all, the majority of Americans support the decision. So this flag-as-gay-hate phenomenon is doomed to be not much more than a last gasp maneuver from a shrinking segment of the population choking on their own bile.

Still, though, it pisses me off. Don't fuck with my America.

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Comedy’s Sweet Weapon: The Cream Pie

From the New York Times:

So it is with unrestrained glee that we share the news of the recovery of a long-missing portion of the greatest pie-throwing fight ever recorded, far superior to the pastry melee of “In the Sweet Pie and Pie,” a 1941 Three Stooges short, or the baked-goods battle in “The Great Race,” a 1965 comedy with Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon.

That, of course, would be the epic custard conflagration in “The Battle of the Century,” a 1927 Laurel and Hardy short that dispensed with 3,000 pies, thrown not with abandon but with slow-burn precision, heightening the comedic effect.

More here.

Back when I was in grad school at LSU, I made an offhand remark to our rather brilliant acting teacher, the late, great John Dennis, that the rubber chicken is the funniest of all objects. Almost immediately, he shot me down, rolling his eyes, as he often did at my various flights of fancy. You see, the rubber chicken is perceived by many as the most cliched of comedic gags.

Fortunately, he had just assigned short solo commedia dell'arte performances to us, and I had my opportunity to prove him wrong. There's no need to go into all the details of what I came up with, but it did involve more than one sex act with the chicken, as well as the spectacle of my character getting stuck inside the chicken during one of those said sex acts.

Anyway, my classmates were in stitches, and I had proven myself right. The rubber chicken is the funniest of all objects.

Lesson: some of the most cliched jokes and gags can still be over-the-top hilarious in the right hands. Indeed, farts are still funny. Falling down continues to be one of the funniest things a human being can do. And a pie in the face continues to have great comedic potential, for those with the power to harness it.

That's why I have GOT to see this no doubt soon-to-be restored Laurel and Hardy short from 1927 that features a THREE THOUSAND PIE pie fight. A sort of pie Armageddon, as Stan Laurel once referred to it. I'm betting it will be one of the funniest things I've ever seen. How can it not?

I can't wait.

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Paula Deen Deletes Tweet of Son Bobby Deen in Brownface

From the Us via the Houston Chronicle:

Oh no. Two years after Paula Deen’s career imploded after she admitted to using racial slurs toward African-Americans, the famed chef has committed another tone-deaf faux pas, posting then deleting a photo of her son Bobby Deen sporting brownface.

More here.

So, what was it, a couple of years ago? I took a lot of shit from people for posting about how lame and racist Paula Deen is. I mean, I got a lot of support, too, but there was definitely a large contingent of commenters who either didn't get it or refused to get it.

Maybe now that the Confederate battle flags are coming down, we can revisit this a bit.

My point was never about her usage of the n-word thirty years ago. Sure, that was lame, but uttering one word one time three decades ago doesn't indict a person forever. But that seems to have been the white conservative understanding of what the scandal was about: liberals taking down the beloved TV chef because she said the wrong word a very long time ago. And it seemed IMPOSSIBLE to talk to them about anything else.

That is, the REAL problem with Paula Deen was her glorification of the Old South, something that isn't thirty years ago, but two years ago, manifest as her plans to host what I was calling a "Sambo wedding" for her son, complete with an all black waitstaff, dressed like the Cream of Wheat black guy. Because the Old South was "beautiful."

I suppose I could have just as easily called it an "Uncle Tom wedding," or a "minstrel show wedding," whatever. The point is that in 2012 or 13, Paula Deen was, and almost certainly still is, a lover of the Confederacy and Jim Crow, romanticizing away all the brutality and racism, leaving behind only the Gone with the Wind fantasy, complete with happy and stupid black people waiting hand and foot on superior white people.

That was ALWAYS the problem with Paula Deen's celebrity status. Her glorification of racism using decades old white cultural codes. The n-word was only the tip of the iceberg on this, a symptom, not the disease. Back when the story broke, I tried to explain why that's so extraordinarily problematic. I mean, when you erase the sins of the Old South, to a great extent, you're trying to erase racism today. And when I say "erase," I mean sweep under the rug.

I sincerely hope, now that the American mainstream appears ready to accept that the Confederate battle flag does NOT represent innocent "heritage," or whatever bullshit is used to justify displaying it, that people are ready to accept that the Paula Deens of this world, all the romanticizers of the bloody and sick Old South, are pushing racism.

I mean, she really is pushing racism.

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HERE'S THE DEAL ON ECONOMICS

Okay, here's the deal on economics in a really simplified way.

If the economy doesn't provide enough jobs for the vast majority of the working-age population, jobs that not only allow people to survive, but also to live decently, then it is a failed economy. I don't care how well you think GDP is expanding. I don't care how many millionaires and billionaires the economy is pumping out. Wall Street exuberance is irrelevant. None of that shit matters.

All that matters is how well the economy serves the people. If it doesn't do this, it's time to go back to the drawing board and figure it out.

All discussion regarding economics should be in these terms. Or it's a joke discussion, not to be taken seriously, like, you know, the discussion we always have about economics.

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Colorado’s Effort Against Teenage Pregnancies Is a Startling Success

From the New York Times:

Over the past six years, Colorado has conducted one of the largest ever real-life experiments with long-acting birth control. If teenagers and poor women were offered free intrauterine devices and implants that prevent pregnancy for years, state officials asked, would those women choose them?

They did in a big way, and the results were startling. The birthrate for teenagers across the state plunged by 40 percent from 2009 to 2013, while their rate of abortions fell by 42 percent, according to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. There was a similar decline in births for another group particularly vulnerable to unplanned pregnancies: unmarried women under 25 who have not finished high school.

More here.

So, if you follow my posts, you may have read me arguing that the majority of the pro-life movement, the "rape and incest exception" people, don't really care about "life" because they're completely cool with "killing a baby" when they approve of the sexual behavior of the "mother." That is, they're not "pro-life"; rather, they just want to punish the sluts by way of forced childbirth.

But this hate for the sluts disguised as care for the "unborn" manifests itself in other ways. Case in point: this amazing success with reducing both unwanted pregnancies and abortions in Colorado.

For decades now, pro-choicers have made the observation that if the pro-life movement is truly serious about abortion, then they would support the government going balls-to-the-walls on birth control, for teenagers, for everyone, which would definitely reduce the abortion rate because it would also reduce the rate of unwanted pregnancies. But, also for decades, the pro-life movement has staunchly opposed doing this kind of thing because, get this, it would "encourage" people, especially teens, to have sex.

Not that anyone needs any encouragement to have sex.

But that's pretty much the picture. When pro-lifers are confronted with a sure-fire method of "saving the unborn," a method which doesn't run up against the Constitution, and which is completely uncontroversial outside pro-life circles, they reject it. Because they are far more concerned with punishing sluts than they are with "life." Indeed, I think it's safe to say that "life" has absolutely nothing to do with pro-lifers. It's all about icky yucky nasty slut-sex.

Indeed, this appears to be the final fate of the program in Colorado. It's been funded by a private grant which has now run out. The Republican dominated state legislature voted against renewing the program with tax dollars, in spite of its amazing success. I mean, how can you punish the sluts if you don't force them to give birth?

I just cannot take these people seriously anymore.

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HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY!

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Indiana Woman's Facebook Video Meltdown Rant Over Marriage Goes Viral

From the New Civil Rights Movement:

While apparently cleaning her home on Friday, Becky Wegner Rommel took a break to share with her Facebook friends a few thoughts about the Supreme Court's ruling on marriage. She recorded and posted this four-and-a-half minute video during which she seems to be having a meltdown over the decision.

"This is a really sad day for me," Rommel says. "Our government decided that everything that God created his church to be — as man as woman — Adam and Eve — five justices decided that God was wrong!"

And that's when it goes downhill.

More here, with exciting video!

Funniest thing I've seen in months. The only thing missing is spontaneous speaking-in-tongues when her passion is at its fullest, as with Robert Tilton back in the day. Nonetheless, this is right up there with Jimmy Swaggart's apology for doing it with white trash prostitutes. A milestone in the history of American unhinged fundamentalist freakouts. Brilliant stuff. Absolutely brilliant.

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LIBERTARIAN DORKS

This was floating around on facebook a few weeks back:

I don't think this is what a "right to healthcare" means. It's more like a right to vote. The state hires people to run polling facilities, to count the votes, to manage the entire operation. No one is conscripted or enslaved. Instead, it's a service, paid for with tax dollars, provided to the public free of charge.

Pretty simple, really, not rocket science.

Rand went to college. It's more than a bit weird that he doesn't understand this. I mean, you can argue about whether this is a good way to spend tax dollars. But to assert that it's the same thing as slavery isn't simply absurd, but rather downright insulting, to pretty much everybody's intelligence, to make such an assertion and expect it to be taken seriously.

I mean, does anybody, libertarian or otherwise, really believe this shit? C'mon.

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Today’s GOP is the party of Jefferson Davis, not of Lincoln

From the Washington Post opinion section:

Fueled by the mega-donations of the mega-rich, today’s Republican Party is not just far from being the party of Lincoln: It’s really the party of Jefferson Davis. It suppresses black voting; it opposes federal efforts to mitigate poverty; it objects to federal investment in infrastructure and education just as the antebellum South opposed internal improvements and rejected public education; it scorns compromise. It is nearly all white. It is the lineal descendant of Lee’s army, and the descendants of Grant’s have yet to subdue it.

More here.

When liberals call the GOP "The Confederate Party," it is simply assumed by conservatives to be slamming them for perceived racism. But it's actually a more nuanced and sophisticated argument than that, and also, on the facts, approaching the status of undeniable.

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WE'RE ALL RACIST...but that doesn't get us off the hook

We're ALL racist, in that we have ALL been socially conditioned within a culture that has white supremacy all over it.

Some people, like the group at the McKinney pool starting the entire ruckus, are overt racists, people who say things like "black f'ers, go back to section 8 housing." Others always jump to defend whites and blame blacks every time the opportunity presents itself. Still others, such as myself, feel racist impulses coming up, but are aware that such poison long ago affected their souls, and try to adjust and maintain their consciously chosen anti-racist position on the fly.

All of us. You, me, Hillary Clinton, all of us. Even black people have this vile shit stuck in their heads influencing their thoughts and actions, like black cops pulling over black drivers for "driving while black," or five year old black girls in studies saying that pictures of white girls are prettier than pictures of black girls.

Better get used to that, everybody. I think society is only now starting to wake up to the fact that racism isn't simply a switch within an individual you can turn on and off.

This is a far more insidious and complicated problem than most of us have ever considered.

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HERE COMES MAN ON DOG!!!

Now that the gays have been freed, we can finally answer an interesting social question.

Former Pennsylvania Senator and perennial Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum has asserted for many years that if we end up with gay marriage, it will necessarily lead to "man on dog." Now, while I believe that the human race is infinitely weird, and that, in the grand scheme, humans will eventually do everything that can possibly be conceived, which means that the world has very likely had a little "man on dog" here and there for centuries, it is HIGHLY UNLIKELY that legalizing gay marriage will cause any bestiality at all.

Of course, I'm not the only one who thinks that. Indeed, Santorum's bizarre ideas about teh gay are what led to his name being appropriated by many Americans to mean, well, something other than him. So a lot of people think that the self-proclaimed "family values" guy is just insultingly wrong about this. I mean, you know, he IS wrong about this.

But now we'll see for sure. If Santorum is right, we will very soon see a broadly based political movement to legalize and socially mainstream "man on dog."

I can't wait to finally know the truth about this!

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OBAMACARE: THE REPUBLICANS LITERALLY WANT TO KILL ME

Yesterday, after having my Obamacare for some months, I finally got around to going to the doctor for the first time in over a decade. Turns out I have high blood pressure, high enough to get me on meds for it right away.

Okay, cool, glad we caught that.

But I just can't help but reflect today, now that the ACA has survived yet another Supreme Court challenge, about what this all means to me personally. If I didn't have health insurance, I wouldn't have gone to the doctor. If I hadn't gone to the doctor, we wouldn't have caught my high blood pressure. Not catching my high blood pressure means that I would have done nothing about it. Not doing anything about it means that my chances of dying increase dramatically.

It's very likely that Obamacare has saved my life. Or, to put it another way, the Republicans want to kill me. Seriously, the Republicans, who opposed the ACA every step of the way, and continue to try to destroy it with every imaginable scheme, LITERALLY WANT TO KILL ME. They want to kill me, and millions of others like me in similar economic situations.

I continue to have big problems with Obamacare. What we really need is some good, old fashioned socialized health care, a system that isn't a massive corporate giveaway to Big Insurance and Big Pharma. I mean, it's a lot of crony capitalism, and I hate it.

But it is saving lives. And one of those lives is mine. So fuck you, Republicans, for wanting to kill me. You can go on all day about how bad you think "socialism" is for the country, even though the ACA doesn't even come close to socialism. But the only alternative you offer is MY DEATH.

So fuck you. I will never, ever, ever, ever support any political point of view advocating my own death. Fuck you all.

I'm glad this made it through the SCOTUS so overwhelmingly. It means I get to live for a few more years.

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SOUTHERN "HERITAGE"

So what is Southern "heritage," anyway?

I'm not saying there's not such a thing. I'm just wondering what it means, exactly, when Confederate battle flag supporters say it's not about elevating the values of the Confederacy, but rather displaying their Southern "heritage." So just what is that?

I mean, we all talk about this as though we have something specific in mind, but I don't know that we're all on the same page with it. Is this kind of "heritage" about, what, loving our mammas? Is it about country music and pickup trucks? Is it about fried chicken and shotguns? Is it about saying "no, sir" and "yes, sir"? Is it about loving Jesus? Is it about supporting the military and loving your country?

Really, though, if displaying the Confederate battle flag is about loving America, I can think of another flag that's probably more suited to the task. But I digress. I'm very curious about what people think Southern "heritage" means when stripped of its historically traitorous, racist, oppressive, and barbaric aspects. I mean, you know, the blues, gospel, and jazz are Southern, too, but I don't think Confederate battle flag supporters are talking about that with the word "heritage."

But maybe they are, which makes me think of another question: why must Confederate battle flag supporters choose a symbol for Southern "heritage" which immediately excludes virtually all black Southerners? Wouldn't another, more inclusive symbol be better?

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DENAZIFICATION FOR THE CONFEDERACY

At the end of the Civil War we should have done the same thing to the racist icons and ideas of the Confederacy that we did to the Nazis at the end of WWII. How did we botch that so badly? At any rate, the tide may finally be turning. Maybe. But how many more black lives need to be snuffed out before we finish the job?



'Nuff said.

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Charleston Shooting Reignites Debate About Confederate Flag

From the New York Times:

The conflict over the banner of the Confederacy has been raging for decades between those who feel it is a symbol of free speech, and others who see it as a symbol of white supremacy. But with a photo emerging of Dylann Roof, the 21-year-old suspect in the Charleston church shootings, posing in front of a car with Confederate plates, the debate has been reignited on social media and beyond about whether the flag should be displayed, and whether politicians should continue to defend the flag as a symbol of Southern heritage.

More here.

The arguments in support of the Confederate battle flag are all pretty bad.

As far as I've ever been able to tell, they go something like this. No, it's not racist. It's about heritage and Southern pride. And that's about it. I mean, if you want, you can also throw in related arguments that the Civil War wasn't about slavery, but, of course, that's pretty stupid because the Civil War was ENTIRELY about slavery.

Now contrast those "arguments," for what they are, with the arguments against it. The battle flag was flown by a treasonous army defending a traitorous regime which was both economically and philosophically based on the ownership and oppression of human beings, and can mean nothing except what its designers and users originally intended it to mean. The flag was never "rehabilitated," never conceptually purged of its poisonous and vile significance. It means slavery. It means hate. It means inhumanity and barbarity. It means treason. It is anti-American.

In short, here's the clash. Opposers: the flag represents cruelty and hate, which is undeniable historical fact. Supporters: no, it doesn't. Slam dunk. Supporters lose, and they lose big, really big.

In fact, this is pretty much how a lot of arguments on race go in this country. People scream for justice. This is met by a collective white shoulder-shrugging followed by patronizing lectures and head-in-sand burying. Lather, rinse, repeat.

The power of white denial in this country is nothing short of amazing.

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DENYING RACISM IS RACISM

Since the awful shooting in SC, something beyond astonishing has been happening among the conservative mouths talking about it. A lot of them have gone out of their way, bent over backwards, to deny what it was, an act of heinous, racist terrorism.

From Rick Santorum, Fox News, and others' ludicrous attempt to situate the attack as part of the false "persecuted American Christians" narrative, to Jeb Bush saying, "I don’t know what was on the mind or the heart of the man who committed these atrocious crimes," to Rick Perry calling it an "accident" and focusing on mental health, to the Wall Street Journal's claim that racism no longer exists, and on and on and on, we are seeing a deluge of conservatives falling over themselves to deny what is totally and completely obvious. A horrific white supremacist piece of shit, a neo-Confederate far right reactionary conservative, committed a racist, absolute atrocity.

I mean, it's SO obvious that all these conservative rhetorical distracters appear to be totally insane. It looks, at a casual glance, like something very weird, indeed, is going on. That so many prominent conservatives would so quickly take to the airwaves to proclaim unflinchingly that up is down, left is right, white is black, would appear to need an explanation.

Except that this isn't weird at all, and it doesn't need an explanation. We know EXACTLY what's going on.

This is business as usual for conservatives. This is how they think. This is coming from the same impulse that makes Trayvon Martin a thug. This is the same impulse that makes conservatives condemn rioting while supporting the kind of policing that kills unarmed black people--and inspires rioting. This is the same impulse that blames black people for the poverty in which they live. And on and on and on.

From Hullabaloo:

All these acts of terrorism against black churches are coincidental. The mass incarceration of black people is coincidental, The killing of unarmed black teenagers is coincidental. There is no racism. It just so happens that black people are born criminals, act suspiciously and are, for some reason, often the targets of crazy people who aren't motivated by the racism they see around them in the form of symbols like the confederate flag or the vile racist rhetoric that comes from right wing extremists in every form of media.

More here.

They're so used to doing this shit, denying racism while trashing black people and supporting racist institutional behavior, that they've lost the ability to see how the anti-racist majority in this country will react to their bullshit. Sure, they do everything they can to confuse the discussion, change subjects, use "witnesses" who are obviously lying, raise their voices, pound on their chests, and that often works pretty well. But they can't confuse the massacre in Charleston with anything, no matter how hard they try. They can't deny the horrible awful racism this time. But still they try. So their racism is laid bare for all to see.

Denying racism IS racism. We will never move forward as a nation with this right-wing albatross around our necks. Time to end this bullshit forever.

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JUNETEENTH

From the New York Times opinion section:

The jubilation following Granger’s announcement in Galveston moved across Texas, quickly reaching the state’s 250,000 enslaved people. A year later, a spontaneous holiday called Juneteenth — formed from the words June and nineteenth — began to be celebrated by the newly freed people of Galveston and other parts of Texas. In 1867, Austin, the state capital, saw its first Juneteenth celebration under the direction of the Freedmen’s Bureau, the federal agency created to provide relief to people displaced by the Civil War.

More here.

I've been saying this for some years, myself. Juneteenth ought to be celebrated by ALL Americans. After all, this country instantly became a better place, about a thousand times more civilized, the day slavery ended. This is a no-brainer. Ending slavery is as important to this country as gaining independence from England is.

That this day of emancipation is not celebrated by all of us says a great deal about our truly f'd up attitudes on race: it's the most obvious evidence that white Americans just don't want to think about our bloodstained barbaric past, and its ongoing legacy today. Just sweep it all under the rug and it will all work out. That's the white American way, and it's obviously not working out so well these days.

I say try celebrating Juneteenth, instead. Think about what it means. Contemplate freedom for yourself, and for others. That's much more American, I think, than living in denial. Happy Juneteenth!

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THE CHURCH SHOOTING IN SC WAS RIGHT-WING TERRORISM

From Wonkette, courtesy of Hullabaloo:

Fox News’s The Five had a little memory problem Monday, accusing the Department of Homeland Security of completely imagining that rightwing extremists pose any threat to U.S. Americans, because as we all know, the only real terrorists are the Islamic ones. Most of the panel dismissed the DHS’s recent report on the threat from “Sovereign Citizens” and other far-right groups as a pathetic attempt to avoid offending Muslims by pretending that anyone else does terrorism in U.S. America.

More here.

The shootings in Charleston are, it goes without saying, totally horrible. I'm not going to talk much about that, myself--lots of other people have that well covered, it seems. But I do think it's extraordinary important that we contextualize this event: it is, as one of my favorite bloggers, Digby over at Hullabaloo, notes, yet another example of right-wing extremist terrorism.

Yes, RIGHT-WING TERRORISM.

Yeah, yeah, I know that even talking about this is considered to be in very poor taste by conservatives, especially since the release of that Department of Justice report a few years ago about the very real dangers coming from right-wing terrorism. But whatever. I talk about global warming, poverty, labor, racism, and evolution, too, conversational topics which conservatives also find distasteful.

But that's what it is. That's what shooting up a black church is. Right-wing terrorism. And, according to the linked Wonkette blog post, it's been happening at the rate of about two or three attacks a year for the last half decade. So it's a very real problem, a deadly problem, and it belongs to conservatives. I mean, I suppose it's not so surprising that the American tribal group making guns, war, and capital punishment some of its central most ideas are going to have tribesmen who really, really, really take that seriously.

But that's basically what the deal is. If you're a domestic terrorist in the US, it's HIGHLY LIKELY that your politics are very conservative, I mean, FAR more likely than you being an Islamic terrorist.

And don't give me that eco-terrorist crap. The left hasn't engaged in any of this murderous shit since Patty Hearst. American terrorism is right-wing terrorism. And that's that.

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Southern Baptist head vows never to perform same-sex unions

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

The president of the nation's largest Protestant denomination on Tuesday vowed never to officiate at a same-sex union, and the Southern Baptist Convention called on the U.S. Supreme Court not to declare a constitutional right to same-sex marriage.

Pastor Ronnie Floyd was speaking to delegates at the convention's annual meeting in Columbus, Ohio. But he said his message was also for the U.S. Supreme Court — which is expected to rule within days on same-sex marriage — and for all of America.

Floyd said he has compassion for people whom he described as struggling with same-sex attraction, but he said it would be wrong to remain silent on the issue.

More here.

Ah, just give them time, I think. 

Flash back to the 1970s: Southern Baptist ministers would never, ever, ever officiate a wedding where the bride, or groom, or both, had been divorced.  That's probably still the SBC's official position.  But I also know that there are Southern Baptist ministers these days who will, in fact, re-marry people.

I mean, for that matter, the Southern Baptists eventually got around to apologizing for the theological stance that long served as their reason for existence, the belief God is cool with slavery.  I mean, it took well over a century for them to do it, but they finally did it.

All they need is for the overall culture to overwhelmingly embrace the idea they hate right now.  And they'll follow.  It might take a long time, but, mark my words, there will come a day when Southern Baptist ministers perform gay weddings.

It's going to happen.

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THE "BLACK THUG"

The "black thug" is a mass media construction, and it is one of which everyone is aware. We see the concept relentlessly promoted in popular music, on television, and in movies. We see it pushed on news programming, local and national. We see it pushed in the fashion industry, giving street cred to corporate products. The "black thug" is EVERYWHERE regardless of whether there are any actual black people there or not. It looms powerfully in the nation's consciousness.

It's why there are sentencing disparities between crack and powder cocaine, which are the exact same substance, with the only difference being the color of the people who use it. The "black thug" makes white people nervous in black neighborhoods. Hell, the "black thug" makes some black people nervous in black neighborhoods!

But he doesn't really exist.

I mean, yeah, there are black criminals, just as there are white criminals. But black criminals are represented by a powerful and omnipresent cultural icon; there is no corollary for whites. We're all in on this. We all buy into the image of the "black thug" to greater and lesser extents.

It's probably the main reason so many white people have bought this "black mob" nonsense in McKinney. Racism is not a switch one can just flip on and off. It ends up being wired into our brains in extraordinarily problematic ways.

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Rachel Dolezal Tried Really Hard to Be Black—But Why?

From AlterNet:

By now, you may have heard about Rachel Dolezal, the civil rights activist out of Spokane, Wash., who is generating intense media scrutiny after her parents claimed she has been passing as a black woman for years.

Dolezal, who is currently president of the Spokane chapter of the NAACP, avoided questions about her ethnicity when contacted by the Spokesman-Review Thursday.

“That question is not as easy as it seems,” she told the newspaper. “There’s a lot of complexities … and I don’t know that everyone would understand that.”

During an interview with a local television reporter, Dolezal walked away after he asked about her ethnicity. Today, she told Sky News that she identifies as black, yet rejects the term African American.
More here.

My own personal rule is that white people should never do blackface. Under any circumstances. But then this story, in its gross spectacle, is more like Andy Kaufman's take on minstrelsy as extended performance art. It's bizarre and disturbing in about forty or fifty different ways.

I feel much safer discussing Miley Cyrus and twerking.

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YOU'RE NOT THE MAN

It's not the individual white man, okay? It's a power structure, complete with its own domination of the American cultural mainstream, which is run almost completely by white men. The vast majority of American white men are not part of this power structure, and are, in fact, oppressed by it, too, in terms of economic issues.

The really awful thing is that so many white men, who are also oppressed, tend to think of themselves as being part of that oppressive power structure, when they're not, and consequently vote as though they were in the one percent.

That is, you might be a white man, but you're not "the man," and you should never, ever, interpret any political attacks on white men as being at you, an individual. They are aimed instead at the small group of white men riding herd on that power structure.

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Party host: Racist white people started McKinney melee before calling police on black kids

From Raw Story:

Neighbors are defending police who chased black teenagers at gunpoint and tackled a girl wearing a bikini after breaking up a party at a community pool over the weekend in McKinney, Texas.

But one homeowner and her daughter say those neighbors confronted some teens when they went outside and began taunting them and their guests with racial slurs before starting a fight.
More here.

There was no mob. 

The only fight was the one started by the racist whites who ended up calling the cops.  The vast majority of the teens attending the party lived in the neighborhood and had passes to be there--apparently, the fence-jumping gate crashers were a tiny, tiny minority.  The single arrest made resulted in the charges being dropped.  One of the 911 callers, who was in the company of the racists who started the fight, has a conviction for animal torture on his record, you know, the kind of stuff serial killers have on their records.

The McKinney swimming pool debacle is exactly what it appears to be to all honest observers: a white freakout, provoked by actual overt white racists, about too many black people being at the bourgeois pool.

If you believe anything else about this event, you have been duped, probably once again, by the white supremacist attitudes deeply embedded in American culture which make most white people blame black people first, always, all the time, regardless of the facts.

Stop being idiots and get on the right side of history.  You're doing the Devil's work, whether you think so or not.

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Who Gets to Go to the Pool?

From the New York Times opinion section:

IN a 1948 speech to fellow Dixiecrats, Strom Thurmond famously declared that the entire United States Army couldn’t force white Southerners to allow black people “into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our homes, and into our churches.”

I’m always struck by his invocation of swimming pools as a battleground for racial segregation, although perhaps I shouldn’t be. After all, some of the most potent symbols of Jim Crow involve water, from segregated drinking fountains and toilets to swimming pools and beaches.

In a YouTube video of a pool party that took place in McKinney, Tex., on Friday, a white police officer appears to shove, handcuff and pull a gun on a group of black teenagers. He grabs a black girl by her hair and drags her to the ground. He puts a knee on her back as she screams. According to the McKinney Police Department, officers responded to calls of a “disturbance” involving multiple juveniles “who do not live in the area or have permission to be there.”

More here.

"Oh my god! There are waaaay too many black people in our bourgeois pool! Call the police, get these black people out of here!"

That's what McKinney is really all about. I mean, the gun-waving cop is only the worst aspect. What's truly disgusting is how white supremacist attitudes like this persist a decade and a half into the twenty first century. The more I think about it, the angrier I become.

This harkens back to old school Jim Crow racism. Segregated pools, as observed by the linked NYT essay, were a major flashpoint during the desegregation period, and using local law enforcement to make it so was just as big of a tradition. Now I know this pool wasn't segregated in the way it might have been sixty years ago. As everybody knows, however, de facto segregation continues, but with other ostensible justifications like zoning and geography. This is why we still have black and white schools. This is why we still have black and white swimming pools.

They call Jim Crow "slavery by another name." Since those days the white power structure has responded with racial segregation by another name. The massive police response to teenagers breaking a few pool rules, some horseplay, some gate crashing, was ALL ABOUT continuing that segregation by another name. The new Jim Crow looks a lot like the old Jim Crow.

Just a bunch of white people freaking out about too many black people. I'm sick of it.

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These troubled times call for potty mouths.

A facebook friend scolded me a bit for yesterday's post wherein I used, as she said, my "potty mouth."  I responded that these times call for potty mouths.  Then I thought it was so funny that I posted as a standalone status the title of this post I'm making right now here on Real Art.  That inspired another friend to ask me why I use dirty words sometimes.

So I told him.

Words are entirely arbitrary in that they're ultimately just sounds to which culture, various cultures really, have assigned meaning, which makes a dirty word in one language gibberish in another. That is, they're just words, man, having as much or as little weight as the individual assigns them.

Having said that, though, I have to observe that so-called "dirty words" ONLY have the weight they do because of the way that some people try to police or condemn them. So for that, I thank you. Your problem with dirty words makes them all the more effective and meaningful in the mainstream. I really probably wouldn't ever use any dirty words if nobody had a problem with them. So really, thanks. I need you for this to work.

But a briefer answer to your question is that I use dirty words very specifically. I never put them on facebook without having thought about it first. And I use them to show that I'm very serious about what I'm saying, serious in a visceral and instinctive way.

I just couldn't imagine living my life without them. They are important tools in my overall lexicon.

'Nuff said.

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Texas Police Officer On Administrative Leave After Pulling Weapon On Teens During Pool Party

From BuzzFeed:

However, video later emerged of one officer aggressively handcuffing and detaining teens who described themselves as bystanders, before wrestling a girl in a bathing suit to the ground and drawing his weapon on others who came to her aid.

More here, with video.

Black people put up with this shit EVERY FREAKING DAY. And a whole lot of white people, perhaps a majority, always think that black people have it coming. Fortunately, no one died in this instance, but it is certain that the usual white suspects will explain to any and everybody, until they're blue in the face, that these black kids had it coming.

"Oh, well, you know, that fourteen year old girl probably smoked marijuana" or "they weren't from that neighborhood, so they had no right to be there in the first place." As if black people can't go to pools in white neighborhoods, like that's a good thing. Or "they were wearing gangster clothes" or "when I was a teenager, I always let cops do whatever they wanted and always acted in a very respectful way."

Yeah. Whatever. When you're treated like this your entire life, when your parents were treated this way, and their parents before, and your children, and their children, it's not likely you're going to want to always be "respectful" to law enforcement, who seem to exist to do nothing but harass you. But like I said, whatever. Disrespect isn't a crime. Disrespect doesn't warrant being thrown to the ground or having a gun pointed at you.

This is the flip side of Ferguson, of Baltimore, of New York, and thousands and thousands of other stories about cops killing black people. There's not always a killing. But this sort of shit always precedes the killing.

I'm sick of it. And I'm sick of white people self-righteously defending it. We will never be a just nation until we put an end to it all.

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Bill Maher pummels right-wing Republicans for their phony Christian persecution complex

From Raw Story:

Sharing an assortment of stills of conservative Republicans complaining that Christianity is under attack, Maher said that credit for all of the attacks on Christianity should go to himself.

“This idea that everybody on the left is plotting against Christianity and wants to wipe out religion is offensive. — to me,” he exclaimed. “I’m the only media figure with a show, week in and week out, that says that. I’ll be damned if the credit goes to the left when I’m doing all the heavy lifting.”

Click here for the video.

Maher really nails it here. I'm not his biggest fan, but when he's on, he's definitely on, and he's definitely on in this clip.

The "persecution of Christians" in this country is nothing but a line of false propaganda used by fundamentalist leaders and right-wing demagogues to outrage and galvanize conservatives against the non-existent anti-Christian liberal oppressor. It is a complete lie, and if you believe it, you're a fool.

No, really. I'm a big liberal, and some of my best friends are Christians.

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FRANK ZAPPA FRIDAY AND 70S POP MONDAY ON SATURDAY

Two of my facebook features exported to Real Art.




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FRIDAY CAT BLOGGING

Frankie

Be sure to check out Modulator's Friday Ark for more cat blogging pics!

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Scott Walker Shocker: Rape Pregnancies Only an Issue in 'Initial Months'

From AlterNet:

Turns out the Wisconsin gov, presidential aspirant is able to channel the consciousness of a rape or incest survivor. He knows, because he just does, that rape and incest survivors are only concerned about having an abortion  "in the initial months" of pregnancy, television station WKOW reported. After that, they're apparently overjoyed.

Walker was explaining why he is willing to sign a 20-week abortion ban without exceptions for rape or incest.

More here.

Walker doesn't know a damned thing about being raped, and his callous attitudes about it make him clearly a total misogynistic scum bag. There is a special place in Hell for him.

But you've got to give him credit for his consistency.

If I understand correctly, among pro-lifers the majority position is to ban all abortions except for cases of rape or incest. Well, isn't that nice of them? They assert that abortion is murder, which is why it should be banned, but they're just fine with murder if the pregnant woman behaved in what they consider to be a sexually virtuous way.

That's why I don't take most of the pro-life movement seriously. That's why I think they don't give a rat's ass about "murder." No, what deeply concerns them is sluts. It's all about the sluts. Sluts, sluts, sluts. They're so into sticking it to the sluts that they're just fine with abortion for women who aren't sluts. I mean, screw the "murdered babies." That's not the problem. The problem is women having sex of which the "pro-life" movement doesn't approve.

Otherwise, they'd take Walker's position. No abortion, no exceptions. Because a fetus is a "baby," a real live "human being." Regardless of the pregnant woman's sexual behavior.

Of course, I don't buy any of that shit at all, myself. Abortion isn't murder. And the only real issue about this is who gets to decide what happens inside one's own body, the government or the individual.

I take scum bags like Walker, however, more seriously. At least, his position is consistent with his stated view. I mean, he really is a total piece of woman-hating shit. But he's putting his money where his "pro-life" mouth is.

Unlike most of the rest of his movement, who are totally full of it.

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Capitalism, like fire, is useful, but also extraordinarily dangerous.

Yesterday's post about the importance of business regulation, in which I compared capitalism to fire, meaning that the two have both creative and destructive aspects, brought out a couple of conservatives to hassle me when I cross-posted on facebook.  Missing the point entirely, they went to town on my fire comparison, bending over backwards to find situations making it just fine to let fire do its destructive thing, in order to show that sometimes regulations are bad.

They just went on and on, each scenario becoming increasingly ridiculous.  I kept telling them that, in the end, with firefighters' "controlled burns," or whatever, somebody, somewhere, was making sure fire wasn't destroying everything in its path.  But they refused to let go.

I finally had to address their bullshit more directly:

You're talking as though America is not currently in an era when an enormous percentage of the political class is straight up hostile to all business regulation. This is the context in which I offer my metaphor, a context where it is widespread "good sense" to deregulate as much as possible, and when not possible, to do some regulatory capture, staffing agencies with people friendly to the industries these agencies are supposed to regulate.

I get your point. You want to make sure that I understand some regulations don't do what they're supposed to do and have needless bad effects. But I already agree with that. I've agreed the whole time. I've even said so on this comment thread.

Right now, however, I think pushing the notion that we need regulation, and that a lot of regulation actually helps rather than hinders the economy, is far more urgent than telling everybody what we already know, that some regulation is bad.

I mean, after all, conservatives have spent the last four decades citing examples of regulation-gone-wrong to falsely "prove" that all regulation is bad. We've got a big huge conceptual mess to clean up here as far as how the public understands regulation. 

'Nuff said.

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25 Images of Markets "Regulating Themselves"

From Daily Kos:

When economists talk about how a market "regulates itself," what they mean is that markets reach an equilibrium between supply and demand.

This says nothing about whether or not this equilibrium will be a good thing for society. It simply states that if consumers choose what to buy and producers choose what to sell and how to produce it, the market settles on a product distribution and prices.

Lately, many people I know have argued that "free markets" mean something more. They see markets as ethically right or ethically moral, meaning pursuit of profit always somehow leads to a greater good.

Unfortunately, morality isn't built into markets.

More here.

Capitalism, like fire, is useful, but also extraordinarily dangerous.

When we work with fire, we understand that only fools do not take safety precautions. I mean, we don't want to burn down the whole forest, after all. Same thing with capitalism. Only fools, which, in this case, means "libertarians," believe we should not take safety precautions, which, in this case, means "regulations." Frighteningly, these libertarian fools have the dominant voice in national affairs.

Which, in this case, means that the whole forest is burning down.

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Why Did We Ever Make the Duggars Famous in the First Place?

From Cosmopolitan.  Yes, I'm posting from Cosmo now.

We are a society so schizophrenic about sex that we use images of half-naked girls barely out of their teens to sell everything from Internet service to hamburgers while we also spend millions on abstinence-only sex education. We have one of the highest unintended pregnancy rates in the developed world but fight legal battles over whether bosses should be able to decide what forms of birth control their employees can access. We live in a country where 1 in 5 women will be raped and where we also have politicians who see fit to publicly philosophize over what makes a rape "legitimate."

More here.

That, in a nutshell, explains why American attitudes about sex are downright insane. Essentially, our public discourse on sex is bipolar. I mean, literally bipolar. We have on one end of the spectrum the religious fundamentalists who offer sexual morality designed for paranoid and primitive Bronze Age people barely surviving the harsh desert environment in which they wandered endlessly. Needless to say, such situationally specific "morality" is, at the very least, harmful in the current era. On the other end of the spectrum are the amoral capitalist exploiters who would sell their own grandmothers into sexual slavery if they could get away with it and if it was profitable enough. For them, anything goes, any humiliating oppressive depiction, no matter how divorced from the real world, no matter how many kids see it online, or everywhere, really, as de facto sex education, as de facto education on what it means to be a man or woman.

In between, there is nothing. I mean, okay sure, there is in fact quite a good discourse on sexuality out there, one looking at sex realistically, where the aim is to empower individuals in a healthy and uplifting way. But it is a discourse which is totally marginalized. A discourse you have to find on your own. It is NOT part of the public discourse on sexuality. Consequently, the public discourse we have is utterly dominated by people who really ought just to shut their fucking mouths.

The Duggars, with or without the child molestation scandal, are a part of this. It's good that their show has been cancelled. One less voice for sexual insanity is a good thing.

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