Credit: Tom Tomorrow, This Modern World.
Credit: Jen Sorensen, Slowpoke Comics.
Credit: Clay Bennett, Chattanooga Times Free Press.
BTW, Octopus will be away until Tuesday, Nov 16. Who is minding the beach?
Friday, November 12, 2010
Thus Spake Shimkus
Now, this atheist has been accused of having it in for Christians, but since I staunchly maintain I've never met one, I must deny it. What makes me the angriest, and it does make me angry, is not some abstract faith in an ineffable power, but the scriptural inerrancy epidemic spreading like a dangerous plague. It's not a Christian thing, it's a dementia thing and as far as Bible as the inerrant word of God cult goes, it's a stupid thing. All religions and much political thought is susceptible to the disease.
There isn't any God but the ones we make up, nor does he do anything we don't do for him, but if our definition includes honesty or coherence or lack of self-contradiction or even a 21st century child's knowledge of cosmology, he didn't write the books of Moses, the Gospels, the various different versions of Isiah found at Qumran or any of the rest of it, culled and selected and edited and redacted by generations of people from a wider library of books. For lack of space I simply can't cover all the territory, but for it to have been written by an all-knowing, it must describe an alternate universe, not this one.
But I digress. My point was that Jews like Representative John Shimkus (R-IL) have been turned into truth eating zombies far more dangerous than B movie producers ever imagined. It's not a Christian thing. He thinks that we shouldn't worry about climate change because God won't allow any dire consequences. It's not that I think we're likely to all be drowned and not about how accurate I think current projections might or might not be, it's that people of this ilk get people killed. Electing Shimkus is like hiring a blind chauffeur who drives by faith. He's like a general who tells his troops the other guys are firing blanks. Don't mind those bullets, our religion will protect you, said Jack Wilson and not one bullet was stopped and how many Indians died? If you're not dumb enough to think that's right, you're too smart to support Shimkus in seeking chairmanship of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
No, Shimkus believes in his version of his selected book and not in any other. If I could ask him why, he'd either have to do his own Ghost Dance or give me evidence for it's power to predict what will or won't happen with the weather, crustal movements, the evolution of microbes the outcome of battles and the flight paths of asteroids - and he can't. There's no test of reality it can pass. There's no way to show it more accurate than the Popol Vuh or the Quir'an or Bullfinch's Mythology, Aesop's Fables or a random number generator. Therefore the choice is his and it's a choice not based on evidence. What he calls God's voice is Shimkus' voice and thus spake Shimkus and Shimkus alone.
I'm always amused by people who call my logic arrogant. As people who tell you what God will or will not do and does or does not like, the title really belongs with beli
evers, not with skeptics since we're not claiming anything special. The burden of proof to show that since there are an infinite number of words from an infinite possibility of gods, it's just your personal celestial ventriloquism at work? I don't have to, I'm not making assertions. The burden is on the believer. They proclaim endlessly about God's will as clearly set forth but when the predictions don't work, or contradict themselves, when life and death are random and there's no order or justice - well then they say we can't understand. Which is it?
It's your choice what to believe and your conclusions are no more divine than mine, although your knowledge may be superior and your reasoning better: it's still only you and me. God hates fags? Well no he doesn't, but I'm speaking of the true god Zog and I should know since I invented him and can invent as many more as I like all equally above question. Zog knows all about physics and mathematics and history and in fact everything I know, he knows -- and that's surely more than yours does. Zog says magic doesn't work, prayers fall on deaf ears, no danger will be averted lest you take measures and I know it's true because I believe and my belief can't be shown to be more or less well founded by any means I know of.
There isn't any God but the ones we make up, nor does he do anything we don't do for him, but if our definition includes honesty or coherence or lack of self-contradiction or even a 21st century child's knowledge of cosmology, he didn't write the books of Moses, the Gospels, the various different versions of Isiah found at Qumran or any of the rest of it, culled and selected and edited and redacted by generations of people from a wider library of books. For lack of space I simply can't cover all the territory, but for it to have been written by an all-knowing, it must describe an alternate universe, not this one.
But I digress. My point was that Jews like Representative John Shimkus (R-IL) have been turned into truth eating zombies far more dangerous than B movie producers ever imagined. It's not a Christian thing. He thinks that we shouldn't worry about climate change because God won't allow any dire consequences. It's not that I think we're likely to all be drowned and not about how accurate I think current projections might or might not be, it's that people of this ilk get people killed. Electing Shimkus is like hiring a blind chauffeur who drives by faith. He's like a general who tells his troops the other guys are firing blanks. Don't mind those bullets, our religion will protect you, said Jack Wilson and not one bullet was stopped and how many Indians died? If you're not dumb enough to think that's right, you're too smart to support Shimkus in seeking chairmanship of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
No, Shimkus believes in his version of his selected book and not in any other. If I could ask him why, he'd either have to do his own Ghost Dance or give me evidence for it's power to predict what will or won't happen with the weather, crustal movements, the evolution of microbes the outcome of battles and the flight paths of asteroids - and he can't. There's no test of reality it can pass. There's no way to show it more accurate than the Popol Vuh or the Quir'an or Bullfinch's Mythology, Aesop's Fables or a random number generator. Therefore the choice is his and it's a choice not based on evidence. What he calls God's voice is Shimkus' voice and thus spake Shimkus and Shimkus alone.
I'm always amused by people who call my logic arrogant. As people who tell you what God will or will not do and does or does not like, the title really belongs with beli
evers, not with skeptics since we're not claiming anything special. The burden of proof to show that since there are an infinite number of words from an infinite possibility of gods, it's just your personal celestial ventriloquism at work? I don't have to, I'm not making assertions. The burden is on the believer. They proclaim endlessly about God's will as clearly set forth but when the predictions don't work, or contradict themselves, when life and death are random and there's no order or justice - well then they say we can't understand. Which is it?It's your choice what to believe and your conclusions are no more divine than mine, although your knowledge may be superior and your reasoning better: it's still only you and me. God hates fags? Well no he doesn't, but I'm speaking of the true god Zog and I should know since I invented him and can invent as many more as I like all equally above question. Zog knows all about physics and mathematics and history and in fact everything I know, he knows -- and that's surely more than yours does. Zog says magic doesn't work, prayers fall on deaf ears, no danger will be averted lest you take measures and I know it's true because I believe and my belief can't be shown to be more or less well founded by any means I know of.
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Veterans Week, Part II: Adam's Table
Our handsome young waiter, with the fast-talking, Yankee ways, was unexpected in this most Southern of southern towns. And much too much for a couple of fagged out seniors. Mr. Razzle-dazzle, high energy, hard sell. I hate that even when I'm at my best. He was Adam and he would be HELPING US OUT! He moved like Tony Manero headed onto the dance floor on Saturday night. I wondered if he was hopped up on something or just manic.
Of course, we should know that the bottle was a better deal than the glass and the premium wines were so far superior to the cheap ones that he hated to even discuss them with us. We could do this or that or some other unintelligible thing...But, hey, it was obvious that the choice was hard. He'd make it easy for me; let's start with White or Red! I quietly and wryly told him we'd start with the crappy Blackstone Pinot Grigio, for me only, thanks...and clamped my mouth in a way that spelled STFU, Adam.
And he did, briefly. He brought the wine and tea and water with barely a beat in his step and left us alone for a few minutes. We hardly noticed how much time had passed, because we were past tired and into punchy. I think we jointly analyzed America's entire problem, and from a unique perspective--which I can no longer remember, but it was sublime.
And then Adam was back, empty-handed. He squatted and rested his elbows on the edge of our table in a way that said, "Now that we've become so close...," and informed us that he 'd screwed up with our order, had failed to push some button or something and our food would be up as soon as humanly possible and he was abjectly sorry. And, somehow, he mentioned a son. And that lots of regular "guests" asked for him when they came in. He offered us free salads and slipped away.
DH was waxing a tad sarcastic by this time, mugging to me, comically annoyed and impatient, blood sugar bottoming out. I was laughing at him, promising that I would personally ask for Adam each and every time we returned to his restaurant and we WOULD return, since it was right next to our motel. And the food came. It was surprisingly good. We felt much better. And Adam refilled DH's tea glass after each sip.
When we were ready for our check and feeling so much more human, thank you, and the place was clearing out for the night, Adam settled in for some serious talk. He asked where we were from, heard our standard answer, "We're from the Air Force, originally." Adam said he'd once had no respect for the Air Force, buncha pampered wusses, but he'd changed his mind. And then the story that Adam had been waiting all day to tell--the story that, we sensed, so often inserted itself into his days--came tumbling out.
Adam wasn't used to Tennessee. He was an Ohio boy and was only here for a few months to take care of his mother. The girls in the South were hell-bent on getting married from Date Number One and it was freaking him out. He'd taken the wait job just until the end of the month, and then he had to head back home. He had a young son, but was never married. He'd been in Afghanistan and, after 9-11, in Iraq as part of the 10th Mountain Division.
His group was IED'd in Fallujah and combat disabled, having lost at least two-thirds of their number. They were under ambush attack and he was hit twice, one in the chest that his body armor stopped and one upward from his armpit through the shoulder. He found himself trying for the first time to call in an air attack. He asked an A-10 Warthog to drop ordinance within 300 yards of his position, a range the Warthog questioned. When he got agreement and the Mark-82 was dropped, the concussion blew him backwards. The Warthog circled back to use its Gatling gun to pick off the one machine-gun mounted Toyota pick-up that almost got away. Warthog pilots saved his life.
We shook his hand and thanked him for his service. We honor the warriors despite condemning the war. And we'll be asking for Adam's table.
Why Repealing DADT Is the Better Choice
Don't Ask Don't Tell (DADT) is still law. I think that it's bad law; however, I also think that President Obama has logical reasons for wanting Congress to repeal DADT rather than allowing a court ordered injunction to halt application of DADT or using an Executive Order to end DADT. Here's why.
It's dangerous territory for the president to attempt to repeal duly passed legislation via exercising his executive power. There is a tendency to make comparisons to Truman's use of an Executive Order to end segregation in the military. It's an invalid comparison. Truman didn't have to contravene existing federal law in order to desegregate the armed forces. Jim Crow segregation laws were a hodgepodge of state laws. It also should be noted that it was five years after Truman issued his executive order before the armed forces were more than 90% integrated.
A good friend feels that Obama needs to play hardball to earn the respect of Congress, either by directing the Justice Department not to appeal the court decision or by issuing an Executive Order to end DADT. I disagree. Obama won't earn their respect, they'll just use his actions as a ground for the ever growing rumblings about impeachment. It doesn't matter that they can't oust him; it didn't stop them when it came to Clinton. Impeachment is a time consuming process and detracts from time that the president needs to spend on important matters such as the economy.
Another risk is that if DADT is repealed by a court order rather that a change in law, it could succumb to the same fate as Brown v.the Topeka Board of Education. In the 1990s, white parents began bringing lawsuits against school systems arguing that the 1954 Brown decision had exceeded the authority of the courts. Specifically they opposed the use of race as a factor in pupil assignment to achieve integration. These cases were filed and won in federal courts. In 2007, the big kahuna of these cases was heard before the U.S. Supreme Court when two cases were combined, Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education and Parents Involved in Community Schools (PICS) v. Seattle School District. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the school systems in Seattle, WA and in Louisville, KY had violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment by their use of a student's race in deciding whom to admit to particular public schools.
The decision has resulted in public school systems across the country being barred from using race as a factor in student assignments. Some systems have realized that they can still achieve racial integration if they use socioeconomic class in pupil assignments. However, the new trend is the one playing out in my local school system. The newest board members want to abandon the use of socioeconomic class and make assignments to neighborhood schools, the same term used in the 1960s as not so subtle language for maintaining segregated schools. The result has been a resegregation of schools not just in the south but particularly in major cities in the Midwest and Northeast. According to a 2009 report by Professor Gary Orfield, "...40 % of Latinos and 39 % of blacks now attend intensely segregated schools, in which 90 to 100 percent of students are non-White. The typical Black or Latino student attends a school where nearly 60% of the students are low-income, creating a doubly-damaging race and poverty divide that is worsening the isolation felt by these minority communities."
What courts render, they can undo. It took nearly 50 years to undo Brown, I think that it won't take nearly as long to reverse a decision from the courts to repeal DADT. Especially as the current decision is from a federal district court, not the Supreme Court.
Let's say Obama successfully issues an executive order ending DADT. Let's assume that he wins in 2012. DADT will remain repealed. In 2016, he can't run again. Say a Republican wins the presidency, a conservative right winger who ran on a program of promising to reinstate DADT. He/She could follow Obama's precedent and do it using an executive order. He or she wouldn't be making new law; the law was never repealed. Or a party with standing could file a federal lawsuit that DADT was unconstitutional--perhaps some members of the military who believe that DADT demeans morale. SCOTUS agrees to hear the case and holds that the use of an executive order to repeal DADT was a violation of the authority of the executive office because it stepped in prior to there being a chance for Congress to hear and vote on whether to repeal DADT.
All of this is supposition but it's plausible supposition. If I've thought of this, you can bet Obama, who is a true constitutional scholar and a lot more knowledgeable lawyer than I am, has considered this and that he and his staff have been discussing all the angles.
I'd like to see DADT repealed by Congress. However, it's like in the horror movies when some nitwit knocks out the monster and doesn't make certain that it's really dead. If DADT isn't killed outright it will rise again and bite us in the butt.
So what can we do? The bill repealing DADT has already been passed by the House; it's being held up in the senate. Contact the Senators who are sitting on the fence and the leading democrats in the senate. The Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN) recommends that we contact the following Senators via email, snail mail, or telephone calls and tell them that you support repealing DADT. Harry Reid (D-NV), Carl Levin (D-MI), Susan Collins (R-ME), Olympia Snowe (R-ME), Mark Pryor (D-AR), Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), Richard Lugar (R-IN), Judd Gregg (R-NH), Scott Brown (R-MA), George Voinovich (R-OH), Kit Bond (R-MO), Joe Mancin (D-WV), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Mark Kirk (R-IL).
There are multiple sites that you can use to get email, snail mail addresses, and phone numbers for your senators. My favorite is
http://www.contactingthecongress.org/.
Other sites are:
http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
and http://www.senate.gov/
It's dangerous territory for the president to attempt to repeal duly passed legislation via exercising his executive power. There is a tendency to make comparisons to Truman's use of an Executive Order to end segregation in the military. It's an invalid comparison. Truman didn't have to contravene existing federal law in order to desegregate the armed forces. Jim Crow segregation laws were a hodgepodge of state laws. It also should be noted that it was five years after Truman issued his executive order before the armed forces were more than 90% integrated.
A good friend feels that Obama needs to play hardball to earn the respect of Congress, either by directing the Justice Department not to appeal the court decision or by issuing an Executive Order to end DADT. I disagree. Obama won't earn their respect, they'll just use his actions as a ground for the ever growing rumblings about impeachment. It doesn't matter that they can't oust him; it didn't stop them when it came to Clinton. Impeachment is a time consuming process and detracts from time that the president needs to spend on important matters such as the economy.
Another risk is that if DADT is repealed by a court order rather that a change in law, it could succumb to the same fate as Brown v.the Topeka Board of Education. In the 1990s, white parents began bringing lawsuits against school systems arguing that the 1954 Brown decision had exceeded the authority of the courts. Specifically they opposed the use of race as a factor in pupil assignment to achieve integration. These cases were filed and won in federal courts. In 2007, the big kahuna of these cases was heard before the U.S. Supreme Court when two cases were combined, Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education and Parents Involved in Community Schools (PICS) v. Seattle School District. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the school systems in Seattle, WA and in Louisville, KY had violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment by their use of a student's race in deciding whom to admit to particular public schools.
The decision has resulted in public school systems across the country being barred from using race as a factor in student assignments. Some systems have realized that they can still achieve racial integration if they use socioeconomic class in pupil assignments. However, the new trend is the one playing out in my local school system. The newest board members want to abandon the use of socioeconomic class and make assignments to neighborhood schools, the same term used in the 1960s as not so subtle language for maintaining segregated schools. The result has been a resegregation of schools not just in the south but particularly in major cities in the Midwest and Northeast. According to a 2009 report by Professor Gary Orfield, "...40 % of Latinos and 39 % of blacks now attend intensely segregated schools, in which 90 to 100 percent of students are non-White. The typical Black or Latino student attends a school where nearly 60% of the students are low-income, creating a doubly-damaging race and poverty divide that is worsening the isolation felt by these minority communities."
What courts render, they can undo. It took nearly 50 years to undo Brown, I think that it won't take nearly as long to reverse a decision from the courts to repeal DADT. Especially as the current decision is from a federal district court, not the Supreme Court.
Let's say Obama successfully issues an executive order ending DADT. Let's assume that he wins in 2012. DADT will remain repealed. In 2016, he can't run again. Say a Republican wins the presidency, a conservative right winger who ran on a program of promising to reinstate DADT. He/She could follow Obama's precedent and do it using an executive order. He or she wouldn't be making new law; the law was never repealed. Or a party with standing could file a federal lawsuit that DADT was unconstitutional--perhaps some members of the military who believe that DADT demeans morale. SCOTUS agrees to hear the case and holds that the use of an executive order to repeal DADT was a violation of the authority of the executive office because it stepped in prior to there being a chance for Congress to hear and vote on whether to repeal DADT.
All of this is supposition but it's plausible supposition. If I've thought of this, you can bet Obama, who is a true constitutional scholar and a lot more knowledgeable lawyer than I am, has considered this and that he and his staff have been discussing all the angles.
I'd like to see DADT repealed by Congress. However, it's like in the horror movies when some nitwit knocks out the monster and doesn't make certain that it's really dead. If DADT isn't killed outright it will rise again and bite us in the butt.
So what can we do? The bill repealing DADT has already been passed by the House; it's being held up in the senate. Contact the Senators who are sitting on the fence and the leading democrats in the senate. The Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN) recommends that we contact the following Senators via email, snail mail, or telephone calls and tell them that you support repealing DADT. Harry Reid (D-NV), Carl Levin (D-MI), Susan Collins (R-ME), Olympia Snowe (R-ME), Mark Pryor (D-AR), Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), Richard Lugar (R-IN), Judd Gregg (R-NH), Scott Brown (R-MA), George Voinovich (R-OH), Kit Bond (R-MO), Joe Mancin (D-WV), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Mark Kirk (R-IL).
There are multiple sites that you can use to get email, snail mail addresses, and phone numbers for your senators. My favorite is
http://www.contactingthecongress.org/.
Other sites are:
http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
and http://www.senate.gov/
For Our Veterans (and not only)
Sergeant Chuck Luther was wounded by mortar fire, then held in a closet for over a month until he signed papers saying he suffered from "personality disorder."
For three years The Nation has been reporting on military doctors' fraudulent use of personality disorder to discharge wounded soldiers. PD is a severe mental illness that emerges during childhood and is listed in military regulations as a pre-existing condition, not a result of combat. Thus those who are discharged with PD are denied a lifetime of disability benefits, which the military is required to provide to soldiers wounded during service. Soldiers discharged with PD are also denied long-term medical care. And they have to give back a slice of their re-enlistment bonus. That amount is often larger than the soldier's final paycheck. As a result, on the day of their discharge, many injured vets learn that they owe the Army several thousand dollars.
According to figures from the Pentagon and a Harvard University study, the military is saving billions by discharging soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan with personality disorder.
More from Joshua Kors.
PalinWatch: Baked Alaska
Somebody's got to do it, distasteful as it may be -- and what's she up to now? Same old thing. Presented with the facts, she said "thanks, but no thanks."
We all remember when the song was that Obama was the most liberal legislator - ever and it's fun to remember it and more fun to listen to people try to reconcile that idiocy with the likelihood that he will imitate Bush in giving the 1% who own it all another tax break like the one instrumental in causing the First Great Depression and the more recent BushDepression Recession. Obama is as liberal as Corporate America allows him to be, and that's to the right of Reagan.
But wait, there's more. Sarah's now slinging the one where Obama is the most pro-abortion president to occupy the White House and slinging it with the same, soggy, snickering spite and scorn for reality. "Obamacare" of course will fund abortions, said she yesterday at a half-full old Texas Vaudeville house, even though it won't, any more than there are death panels trying to kill your grandmother or that the President's trade mission to the far east is using up half the Navy and will cost billions. Behold the power of rumor over a willing audience.
But bullshit in motion tends to stay in motion despite any friction caused by the truth and maybe it's that strange "dark energy" but these days it seems actually to expand at an increasing rate.
Exceedingly hard? Understated humor is so refreshing these days.
We all remember when the song was that Obama was the most liberal legislator - ever and it's fun to remember it and more fun to listen to people try to reconcile that idiocy with the likelihood that he will imitate Bush in giving the 1% who own it all another tax break like the one instrumental in causing the First Great Depression and the more recent Bush
But wait, there's more. Sarah's now slinging the one where Obama is the most pro-abortion president to occupy the White House and slinging it with the same, soggy, snickering spite and scorn for reality. "Obamacare" of course will fund abortions, said she yesterday at a half-full old Texas Vaudeville house, even though it won't, any more than there are death panels trying to kill your grandmother or that the President's trade mission to the far east is using up half the Navy and will cost billions. Behold the power of rumor over a willing audience.
But bullshit in motion tends to stay in motion despite any friction caused by the truth and maybe it's that strange "dark energy" but these days it seems actually to expand at an increasing rate.
"People do not process information in a neutral way. Their preconceptions affect their reactions. Biased assimilation refers to the fact that people assimilate new information in a biased fashion; those who have accepted false rumors do not easily give up their beliefs, especially when they have a strong emotional commitment to those beliefs. It can be exceedingly hard to dislodge what people think, even by presenting them with the facts."Cass Sunstein, "On Rumors"
Exceedingly hard? Understated humor is so refreshing these days.
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
MEET YOUR NEW SENATORS
Senator-Elect Rand Paul (R-KY)
Senator-Elect Marco Rubio (R-FL)
Senator-Elect John Boozman (R-AR)
Senator-Elect Pat Toomey (R-PA)
Senator-Elect Rob Portman (R-OH)
Senator-Elect Ron Johnson (R-WI)
Senator-Elect Dan Coats (R-IN)
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
So, just when do we end the insanity?
OK, so you think my last post was petty, or over the top and just plain silly? You think the country hasn't lost any connection with reality and we haven't turned into gap toothed, tattooed and camouflage clad Chatty Kathy dolls who squawk the same old tinny phrases when anything at all pulls the string? You think that objective, fact based and reasoned perceptions aren't more rare than raisins in some off brand breakfast cereal?
CNN.com is running a story today about a countrywide Federal crackdown on sex traffic in underage girls. This Federal initiative began in 2003, but according to the kind of people who post comments, child prostitution is Barack Obama's fault. And not just that - Obama likes people to abuse young girls. You see, some of the culprits were from Somalia where most people are Black and nominally Muslim. Obama's father was from Kenya which is on the same continent as Somalia. Therefore Obama is a Muslim and a child molester who wants to protect child molesters.
I realize it's fashionable amongst liberals who aren't scientists to say that IQ means nothing, but it certainly does. If yours is above room temperature, you'll question the presence of "therefore" anywhere in that statement. You won't see it as the fair and balanced "other side" of the story.
The inability to see that this string of pronouncements doesn't even superficially resemble a logical or factual progression seems more than prima facie evidence of congenital and irredeemable idiocy. I'm sorry to sound all Democrat here, but there's something wrong in making it hard for a brain surgeon to get a green card while allowing massive political power to people who only resemble human beings in that they walk on two legs - and rising to power by riding their wave of idiotic anger.
CNN.com is running a story today about a countrywide Federal crackdown on sex traffic in underage girls. This Federal initiative began in 2003, but according to the kind of people who post comments, child prostitution is Barack Obama's fault. And not just that - Obama likes people to abuse young girls. You see, some of the culprits were from Somalia where most people are Black and nominally Muslim. Obama's father was from Kenya which is on the same continent as Somalia. Therefore Obama is a Muslim and a child molester who wants to protect child molesters.
I realize it's fashionable amongst liberals who aren't scientists to say that IQ means nothing, but it certainly does. If yours is above room temperature, you'll question the presence of "therefore" anywhere in that statement. You won't see it as the fair and balanced "other side" of the story.
The inability to see that this string of pronouncements doesn't even superficially resemble a logical or factual progression seems more than prima facie evidence of congenital and irredeemable idiocy. I'm sorry to sound all Democrat here, but there's something wrong in making it hard for a brain surgeon to get a green card while allowing massive political power to people who only resemble human beings in that they walk on two legs - and rising to power by riding their wave of idiotic anger.
John1865
Pickin' on Paul or Kentucky Windage
Face it, it's become traditional for Republicans to declare that a Democratic election winner is a failure before he takes office, and in Obama's case, even before he was elected. Reality is no longer a prerequisite, if indeed, it ever was.
So why shouldn't I take this opportunity to declare that Rand Paul is a failure as the Senator from Kentucky and why not start off with a nasty, childish nickname like Runt Paul, to reflect his father's superior claim, in my opinion, to be respected for his views. Oh, come on, it's an American tradition and I'm not even claiming he was born in Nepal -- nee-Paul, get it? Of course we don't know for sure, do we? He's ignored my request for a birth certificate. By the way, isn't is suspicious that he want to an expensive, elitist Ophthalmology school? Who paid for it and why can't he produce board certification? Where is Orly Taitz when you need a nutjob attorney?
And look, I've even got a plausible story. Remember how cutting earmarks was the important part of reducing the cost of government both in Runt's rhetoric and that of the GOP in general? Well, that was then and now that we've put away the Punch and Judy puppets, he's now just fine with earmarks as long as they are earmarked for Kentucky. But of course he's still not going to let Washington - or reality - change him as he explained to the Wall Street Journal. I mean he still hasn't let the end of segregation change him. He still thinks it's a violation of property rights - kinda like freeing the slaves.
Of course the federal porkbarrel is not all that large when held up against the Supertanker of Federal spending, even though that spending as a percentage of the GNP isn't quite as huge as it appears when spoken of in dollars, but that sort of relativity sounds socialist or at least overly obscure to the public and we don't need to go into it. Besides, and to his credit, Runt accepts that we're going to have to look at the Massive Military Budget too. Good for him! but maybe that's just aLiberal Conservative ploy and if Kentucky is chosen to build some trillion dollar superbomber to win the cold war that ended before he started to wear a hairpiece, things will be different, so let's just assume, in the fine American tradition, that he's already gone back on his word - on all his words, actually. I mean, he might, so he already did. All's fair, right? If Obama raised taxes by lowering them, Rand Paul has already increased military spending - or maybe cut it. It doesn't really matter. It's all really about whose side you are on anyway so let's not get picky.
So did you hear that Rand Paul wants to make our country weak and is soft on Terrorism?
So why shouldn't I take this opportunity to declare that Rand Paul is a failure as the Senator from Kentucky and why not start off with a nasty, childish nickname like Runt Paul, to reflect his father's superior claim, in my opinion, to be respected for his views. Oh, come on, it's an American tradition and I'm not even claiming he was born in Nepal -- nee-Paul, get it? Of course we don't know for sure, do we? He's ignored my request for a birth certificate. By the way, isn't is suspicious that he want to an expensive, elitist Ophthalmology school? Who paid for it and why can't he produce board certification? Where is Orly Taitz when you need a nutjob attorney?
And look, I've even got a plausible story. Remember how cutting earmarks was the important part of reducing the cost of government both in Runt's rhetoric and that of the GOP in general? Well, that was then and now that we've put away the Punch and Judy puppets, he's now just fine with earmarks as long as they are earmarked for Kentucky. But of course he's still not going to let Washington - or reality - change him as he explained to the Wall Street Journal. I mean he still hasn't let the end of segregation change him. He still thinks it's a violation of property rights - kinda like freeing the slaves.
Of course the federal porkbarrel is not all that large when held up against the Supertanker of Federal spending, even though that spending as a percentage of the GNP isn't quite as huge as it appears when spoken of in dollars, but that sort of relativity sounds socialist or at least overly obscure to the public and we don't need to go into it. Besides, and to his credit, Runt accepts that we're going to have to look at the Massive Military Budget too. Good for him! but maybe that's just a
So did you hear that Rand Paul wants to make our country weak and is soft on Terrorism?
Veterans Week, Part I: The Sunken Road and The Angel of Marye's Heights
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| Headstone, Civil War Veteran, Fredericksburg, VA |
One story comes from Fredericksburg, VA, which we visited last week, and the other from near Franklin, TN. (I'll be visiting Franklin this week and will tell that story in a second post).
Fredericksburg, VA: A perfect little college town, walkable and so packed with Revolutionary and Civil War history and livable charm that I was pricing housing...again. We made some beautiful shots of the charm, but Fredericksburg is a town with a job and that's what I want to convey: it works to preserve America's stories so that we may be informed by them, so that we may not repeat them. The story of The Battle of The Sunken Road haunts me.
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