Someone mentioned the other day that my posts have been less profane than usual, so here’s something to make up for it. Open thread.
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by $8 blue check mistermix| 76 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
Someone mentioned the other day that my posts have been less profane than usual, so here’s something to make up for it. Open thread.
Comments are closed.
redshirt
I left a flaming bag of poo on Satan’s porch. He laughed.
Linda Featheringill
I think it’s a sign of progress that we’re having this discussion [fight?] about gun control. I’m sure the result won’t be perfect but at least it’s going in the right direction.
Progress is very nice.
Southern Beale
Tennessee won’t be seceding. Awww.
The Other Bob
Hate to come back to the gun thing, but have to ask – does anyone here think the President’s proposal was too weak?
Feudalism Now!
This is profane? Our standards have fallen. Must be a new year.
I am glad we are talking about gun regulation, addressing our embarrassing dismissal of mental health and ignoring the RW Economic Apocalypse party. It smells like victory. I think treating the opposition like tantrum ing children is the appropriate choice.
mistermix
@Feudalism Now!: “Fuck me in the ass because I love Jesus” (the song in the video) isn’t profane enough for you? I guess I need to up my game.
redshirt
Believe it or not, but the craziness continues to escalate on the Wingnut portion of the Internet. Hard to believe, but the outright calls for Civil War 2 have become common, as have direct/indirect threats on the President.
Can crazy be burned out of a population without massive loss of life? Let’s find out!
Feudalism Now!
@The Other Bob: It is not exactly sweeping, but anything broader would have been soapbox central. There should be a national buyback program, a stimulus program to refocus domestic arms companies to move away from assault weapon manufacture to more civilian use weaponry or even moving to different manufacture altogether. The loophole closure is the big deal. If we can close gun show loopholes and owner to owner black market life I’ll be better.
Yutsano
@Southern Beale: Ahh those crazy Southern folk. You have to admit one thing though: it never gets boring down around your way.
Feudalism Now!
@mistermix: Father Seamus used to have me sing that in the sacristy during acolyte training. The song is a canticle to modified abstinence education. Virginity is preserved by her devotion to the Almighty.
PeakVT
Here’s a big infographic on caffeine to get your morning started.
Yutsano
@redshirt: The real issue is they realise they’re not the majority anymore. And power does not let go of itself quietly. So they’re trying to gain some kind of control back while also denying they’ve pretty much already lost.
@PeakVT: Coffee makes teh Seattle go round. You really have to come up here to realise just how true that is.
Southern Beale
Did a Google Street View car in Botswana run over a donkey?
Hope the little guy is OK
Ash Can
@The Other Bob: I would have liked to have seen the prez outlaw military-grade weaponry and extended-fire magazines outright beginning at noon yesterday, allocate eleventy bazillion dollars to a mandatory buy-back program for all such items in civilian hands, restore funds to the CDC to monitor the effects of gun violence and to make it a priority, mandate the institution of any and all databases necessary to do background checks on any and all gun purchases and to have those databases up and running by the weekend, mandate liability insurance, safe-storage requirements, and X number of hours of training for all gun owners, require gun permits to be renewed every three years, announce a partnership-initiative between the EPA and legitimate hunters’ organizations to sustain and improve natural habitats for wildlife, and toss in a comprehensive IRS audit of the NRA at the end, just for the sheer hell of it. I’d also like an annual salary of three million dollars for posting bullshit on someone else’s blog, a cottage in Door County, a villa on the French Riviera, and unlimited free air travel for my whole family and me for the rest of our lives.
No prob, right?
Ash Can
My comment at approx. 14 is in moderation. I’d ask why, but fuck it, I don’t even care anymore what kind of shit is programmed into FYWP.
EDIT BY SOONERGRUNT: Forget about it, Jake. It’s Word Press.
Ash Can
Test…
(Apologies to mm et al. if this comment does nothing more than crowd the spam filter, but I’m curious to see if this goes into mod too.)
ETA: OK, that’s just weird. My comments seem to be going randomly into moderation. Or maybe I just can’t take a hint…
Linda Featheringill
@The Other Bob:
Yes. But he’s probably trying to find something possible.
I always knew that Obama was not as radical as I was. And he still isn’t. But that’s the way it is.
Comrade Jake
I don’t want to dredge up the can of worms that was the whole Aaron Swartz debate here, but folks here might be interested in Orin Kerr’s take on the prosecution’s discretion.
There are a couple of key take home messages, IMO. 1) In Kerr’s estimation, Aaron did break the law and some criminal prosecution was appropriate. 2) As for the tactics employed by the government, he had this to say:
Raven
@Ash Can: Ah, nothing like a Door County fish boil in Sister Bay! Here I am fishing there in about 1977!
Violet
This might be relevant when talking about Chris Christie’s political amibitions:
I know Christie isn’t running for CEO, but put him on the primary debate stage with a bunch of thinner, fitter candidates, I his weight could definitely be a problem. Any shortness of breath or sweating or other issues and people will be talking about “can he handle the pressure of the job.”
the Conster
@redshirt:
I think it’s good to have it all exposed – the nutjobs are at first scary, but it turns out once you get a good look at them, they’re just a bunch of scared pathetic losers in the midst of a booger flinging tantrum. They need to be re-assigned to the fringe where they belong so the majority of people who use common sense can move on, and that’s the dynamic where in the midst of right now.
Soonergrunt
@Ash Can: As I said when I released your comment at 14, and edited and released your comment at 15, “forget about it Jake. It’s Word Press.”
Raven
Looks like all the hostages in Algeria died in an airstrike.
Soonergrunt
@the Conster: While that’s true for the vast majority of them, that shouldn’t prevent us from poking at them like a sadistic child with a turtle on its back. Because its fun, you know. That said, it’s also a good way to see which ones of them might turn whining into action.
BruinKid
Saw Garfunkel & Oates in concert last year, it was AWESOME! Sarah Silverman and Natasha Leggero were special guests that night as well.
Anyway, y’all need to watch Jon Stewart commit actual journalism by showing how the NRA (via GOP Congressmen) has basically prevented the ATF from actually enforcing the gun laws we already have. It’s not so much funny as sickening to see. And then you realize you’re seeing it done by a comedian, and not on an actual news channel, and you get an even sicker feeling in your stomach.
PeakVT
@Yutsano: Sadly, I’ve had to give up caffeine from both coffee and soda recently.
Soonergrunt
@Raven: by whom?
Raven
I know, let’s use the handy BJ link to Pat Lang and see what he thinks! Too tired? Here’s a couple:
“I can understand that gun ownership means nothing to you but in fact this is still a federal republic and the wishes of people outside the urban islands still matter. Insults about the NRA will just grow the number of members.”
“Over and above the rather shallow emotionalism of BHO and Wilmington Joe, I think the reaction in the WH is largely about the mid-term election. “
Raven
@Soonergrunt: Algerian rescue force. Lot’s of contradictory reports.
redshirt
@the Conster: No doubt. That said, these crazies only get exposed to a small percentage of the population – folks like you and me. The MSM does their best to shield this side of the Wingnuts from the vast majority of the country with an umbrella named “BOTH SIDES DO IT”.
It allows folks like my Mom, anecdotal, who watches the nightly news and that’s it, to think the Republicans are reasonable, fiscal minded, and decent people. When I try to tell her how crazy they are, she looks at me like I’m crazy – and I have to admit, what comes out of my mouth sounds like it could come from some paranoid Wingnut, just opposite.
the Conster
@Soonergrunt:
Obama’s election has been really helpful in exposing everyone’s psychological nature – he’s been a national Rohrschach test of mental stability, and none more so than on insecure white males. I consider him a poultice, and what’s being drawn out is foul and ugly. I worry about inauguration security, to be perfectly honest, given its symbolism on MLK day and all. I’m not religious, but I’ll be praying.
Raven
Dozens of hostages ‘killed’ in Algeria
The Other Bob
@Ash Can:
“…No prob, right?”
OR
Something inbetween what you said and he proposed.
Roger Moore
@Feudalism Now!:
Why do I imagine that the gun companies will respond with a suggestion of increasing exports?
Ash Can
@Ash Can: Thanks, SG.
Ash Can
@Raven: Great pic! Green Bay sunsets are lovely.
Roger Moore
@Ash Can:
I nominate this as a new rotating tag line.
raven
@Ash Can: Yea, it was a long time ago. I don’t think Door County is like that anymore.
Villago Delenda Est
@The Other Bob:
It doesn’t include the public execution, by firing squad, of the NRA board of directors.
So it’s lame, right there.
Villago Delenda Est
@redshirt:
I don’t think we’re going to have a choice. The crazy needs to be burned out, and I’d prefer the non-violent way. Because the crazy is out of control at this point. I mean, Wayne LaPierre has admitted he’s crazy.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@The Other Bob: Hate to come back to the gun thing, but have to ask – does anyone here think the President’s proposal was too weak?
Is that why Al Franken won’t commit to supporting it?
Villago Delenda Est
@Raven:
The situation is very bad there, and it’s only made worse by the fact that the area is remote, the reports on both sides are shaky, at best, and the entire situation in Northern Mali is just insane. Typical religious assholes demanding that they have the right to persecute anyone not of their particular creed or they’re being oppressed.
Elizabelle
@Roger Moore:
Seconded. FYWP.
Elizabelle
George Packer has a terrific New Yorker essay out: Southern Discomfort.
Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2013/01/21/130121taco_talk_packer#ixzz2IFSLRb9R
Although beware, warns Geo. Packer.
You see both the insularity (epistemic closure, anyone?) and smugness out daily, on internet discussions.
kindness
Speaking of Jon Stewart’s revealing the hypocrisy of Kansas Rep Tiahrt…the Flying Spaghetti Monster may very well throw some equalizing karma your way. And I for one feel it can’t come too soon. I’m not gonna do it. But I won’t shed a tear when it does happen.
Forum Transmitted Disease
@Ash Can: If only Obama would use the bully pulpit.
Roger Moore
@Elizabelle:
Of course the South is only actually solid if you stick to counting white people. If you include African Americans, it’s actually a battleground that has the potential to reverse course. We’ve seen this in Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida. The Far West is much closer to solid red than the Deep South is.
JCT
Actually, I’m beginning to have fun watching some of these wingnuts lose what is left of their minds.
The Rubio/Paul screaming over these “unconstitutional” executive orders is bordering on camp. So Marco, when you’re President will you promise to be the first one to pledge to sign none? And the use of “nullification” by that self-certified numbskull Rand Paul is a beaut.
What continues to amaze me (OK, at this point who knows why I’m amazed by anything they do or say) is how everything is now dialed up to 11. Sort of like a kid screaming that his sister crowned him with a tire iron when all she really did was pinch him…..
Vanya
Man, American Christians are ignorant of theology. Ass fucking is called sodomy, and it’s a major sin. Releasing your sacred semen anywhere it can’t make more little children is committing Onan’s sin – masturbation, fellatio, anal sex, it doesn’t matter. The girl in this scenario may be staying pure, but her boyfriend is still going to hell.
redshirt
@JCT: The Repukes have a “Spinal Tap” problem by now. When they need that extra push over the cliff, where do they go? 11, that’s right – it’s one louder. Except they’ve been screaming at Eleventy for years now.
Do amps come with 12’s and 13’s?
danimal
@Vanya: Was Onan’s sin the act of spilling his seed, or of directly disobeying a divine command? Theologians disagree on this. So there’s still hope for the boyfriend.
Hoodie
@Elizabelle: Sorry, but Packer is full of crap. What’s getting isolated are rural areas in the south, but those are dying economically. A lot urban areas in the south, even in Texas, are pretty blue, largely because of greater proportions of minorities, but also because they’re in the same economic/cultural orbit as non-southern cities. In southern states like GA and NC, the cities increasingly dominate the economy as agriculture loses its clout and small town manufacturing declines. Unemployment is awful outside the cities of NC, for example. So characterizations of a “solid south” are inaccurate. Here in NC, it’s really close to 50/50, but dems are concentrated in cities and republicans gerrymandered the shit out of everything after the 2010 wave, so the leg and congressional delegations are skewed. The new republican governor probably got elected more easily than he might have because of scandals in the state dem party, a late dropout by the dem governor, and because he is perceived as a moderate from his days as mayor of Charlotte. He’s started out by kowtowing to the wingnuts, we’ll see how that works out.
Roger Moore
@Vanya:
Every point of theology you’re discussing is disputed by some Christians. There are plenty of Christians who would say:
1) The sin of Sodom and Gomorrah that made God so mad was never spelled out in detail. The only thing that was explicitly described (demanding to rape the angels God sent to visit Lot and investigate the city) was as much a problem of mistreatment of guests as of homosexuality. The Bible says it’s wrong to have sex with a woman during her period, but it never prohibits heterosexual anal sex*.
2) Onan’s sin was greed, not coitus interruptus. It was his duty impregnate his dead older brother Er’s widow, Tamar, to provide a postmortem heir. He refused to do so to ensure that he would inherit Er’s property (i.e. greed), and the sexual stuff was just a means to that end.
*FWIW, the passage in Leviticus that’s used to claim homosexuality is wrong is specifically about male sex; it’s totally silent about lesbianism.
Tonal Crow
Q: Are the President’s kids more important than yours?
A: Hell yes. If the President’s kids are taken hostage, America’s government is taken hostage. If you don’t understand that, you have the mental illness of severe retardation, which makes you ineligible to own a gun. Any further questions?
Another Halocene Human
Can’t figure out if I like The Abandon or not. Don’t get me wrong–I really like the characters. But some of the story seems to be a cross between Blair Witch Project and one of those sistahs movies where everyone has a dark secret.
I also like the setting. Super pretty.
I think this guy raised money to do another episode? Because I have to know what happens to AA guy. And Jeff.
ericblair
@Hoodie:
Agreed. The battle that’s playing out nationally is playing out in the South as well, just back a couple of decades or shifted to the right, I dunno. You can listen to a guy from the sticks in Georgia talk about Atlanta sometime. The major growing cities have a large core of transplants and more cosmopolitan residents who would be just as comfortable in Chicago or LA.
The red West is another matter. They’re turning into rotten boroughs, with low populations but significant representation in the Senate, so that any decent size interest group with some cash can buy two Senators and a Congresscritter for cheap, and use the Senators to block anything they don’t like.
Another Halocene Human
@PeakVT: It’s appropriately featured on Wired.com.
@Comrade Jake: Well, yeah, that’s a good point, but when he died based on his statements he seemed scared about going into prison, not worn out by prosecution. To protect certain companies, the crimes he committed have been given extremely excessive sentences.
The outsized sentences for ‘hacking’ started in the 1980s and have been extended to downloading.
Now, rape somebody, and see how many years you get. Say, rape them by pretending to be their boyfriend. California says that’s not even a crime*. Just like Swarz’s computer was pretending to be an MIT boffin.
*-note: to be fair, California is making it a crime as we speak
danielx
@The Other Bob:
I suspect Obama followed his usual tactic of asking right off the bat for as much as he thought he could possibly get. He should have asked for more, but this is probably as much as he thinks he can get – it will be negotiated down. Gun folks think any more laws of any kind are evidence of the further advance of Communism and/or Satan, and Congresspeople under the sway of the NRA have made sure that funding to enforce the laws already on the books is inadequate.
Tonal Crow
@redshirt:
So you mean that some people are making terrorist threats? How ’bout the FBI takes some time off from persecuting students who download scientific papers and hangs out on the winger boards to monitor threats instead?
JCT
@redshirt:
Well, if they don’t I am sure it is a LIEberal plot to keep them from blowing out their eardrums because they want the govt to run everything, etc, etc
Another Halocene Human
@Raven: Lol: fuck you, urban people, we’re going to sit on our hands while illegal guns flood cities and some neighborhoods end up with homicide rates that rival San Salvador.
Another Halocene Human
@Roger Moore: Seconded, FWIW.
Raven
@Another Halocene Human: Yes and we can support Lang right here on own blogroll!
Jay C
Re Algerian hostage crisis: still a lack of reliable news out right now (12:30p ET), but a couple of points are now clear:
1. The attackers/hostage-takers are apparently the local Al-Qaeda franchise: led by Algerian jihadi Mokhtar Belmokhtar (not unknown, there, I gather)
2. Some sort of attack against the hostage-takers has already gone down: some folks (on both sides) have been killed: no names, or breakdowns are yet available.
3. Some hostages have either been released or escaped; no names or nationalities are yet available.
Most news reportage (Al-Jaz, BBC) still say nothing substantive is known, the area is remote and out-of-touch, and that everyone appears to be letting Algerian forces handle the situation.
Another Halocene Human
@Raven: It seems like the ‘remember the past’ fetishists have won that one. I mean, yeah. I feel ya. There are lurkers who never read comments (it’s twoo) and take blogroll links as an endorsement. So, yeah.
Jay C
@Jay C:
BTW, what do we think the over/under is on some wingnut jumping on the Algerian hostage mess to:
1. Blame Obama for it.
2. Charge that Obama is “mishandling” the situation.
3. Claim that Obama is going to exploit the situation for political gain.
4. Claim Obama is behind the whole thing to distract attention from his domestic “gun-grabbing”.
5. Claiming the Algerian raid confirms the need for MOAR GUNZ everywhere, all the time.
redshirt
@Jay C: 100%?
These fools are still bemoaning the greatest coverup in history – BENGHAZI! Any bad news internationally is of course Obama’s fault.
Another Halocene Human
@Roger Moore: The passage about Onan of course has a literal meaning, which was Onan cheating his brother’s widow’s children out of their rightful inheritance, according to religious law.
The other interpretation is credited to “Doctor” Aquinas. The medieval scholar was writing at a time when mystical and metaphorical meanings to Biblical passages were sought. (For example, Song of Songs was interpreted to represent the relationship between Christ and the Church, and had additional hidden meanings as well.) Since the church was pretty sex-negative at the time, and Aquinas was a right git, you have this wonderful essay about how it’s better for a man to rape a woman than “spill the seed” (masturbate), and uses the story about Onan as justification.
Nice.
Jebediah
@Ash Can:
i will deliver all of these items and more to you posthaste. I will need only your social security number and bank routing number to facilitate transfer of funds to you and transfer of property deeds to to your ownership. There is only still the matter of receiving from you customs fees and etc.
Another Halocene Human
@Vanya: The American evangelical movement doesn’t really accept Aquinas as an authority. Some of them do accept St. Augustine, but he was centuries earlier and no where near as bugfuck crazy at the medieval “doctors”. While there are Protestant sects that are substantially similar to Catholics in rites and beliefs (aside from that transubstantiation nonsense), the independent American churches have a very different belief system.
Plus, the notion of the demi-vierge is known in Catholic countries too. When (heterosexual) sex is culturally encouraged while pregnancy is social death, you’re going to have young people looking for… alternatives.
Another Halocene Human
@Elizabelle: The wingnuts come from the West as well. There are even some in pockets of the North. One could go into more detail about settlement patterns, but anyway, they aren’t geographically concentrated in just one place. With the internet, it’s easier than ever for these nuts to keep up with the latest CT and bugfuckery. Never mind their nationally syndicated radio shows, cable channel, books, and iternant preachers.
Having lived in the South as long as I have, I totally disagree with Packer’s characterization. He’s the one who’s out of touch.
handsmile
@Jay C:
Re Algerian hostage situation
Link to the Guardian’s “MiddleEastLive” blog on the subject (one of the best features of all its “Live” blogs is the aggregation of many different news sources):
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/middle-east-live/2013/jan/17/algerian-islamists-hostages-standoff-live
Among the opening parargraphs from Al-Jazeera’s latest update:
“Thirty-four hostages and 15 kidnappers have been killed in southern Algeria, according to the group holding the hostages.
The spokesman for the Masked Brigade, which had claimed responsibility for the abductions on Wednesday, told Mauritanian ANI news agency that the deaths were a result of an Algerian government helicopter attack on a convoy transporting hostages and kidnappers.
The official Algerian APS news agency, citing local sources, said an unspecified number of people were killed in the military rescue attempt”.
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2013/01/201311713160194432.html
ETA: Al-Jazeera report largely similar to what Raven posted above several hours ago, I now see.
johnny aquitard
@Another Halocene Human:
Yup, and then they’ll say with a shit-eating grin “See! Toldja more gun laws won’t work!”
Roger Moore
@Another Halocene Human:
The only fly in the ointment is that urban homicide rates have been declining fairly rapidly over the past couple of decades even as guns have been flooding into the cities. If anything, it’s the exurban and rural areas that have been suffering from too many guns. That’s not to say that the decline in violent crime will continue indefinitely, but if the goal has been to kill off the urban population in a wave of gun violence, it’s been a miserable failure so far.
pseudonymous in nc
@Hoodie:
But that’s sort of the point: if it’s possible to carve out veto-proof GOP majorities in state legislatures and skew Congressional delegations — because the US is constitutionally structured in ways that deprive cities of proportionate political power — then the south will remain governed from and by Bumfuck, no matter what.
pseudonymous in nc
@Raven: The “urban islands” happen to be where all the people live. Pat Lang wants a fucking dictatorship of the rural, not a federal republic.