Sadly, No!

Thomas Friedman shoots his mouth off again.

Deal or No Deal?

This time he’s talking about the TPP and the refugee crisis in the Mediterranean.

Here’s a prediction: NATO will eventually establish “no-sail zones” — safe areas for refugees and no-go zones for people-smugglers — along the Libyan coast.

How? Is there really a difference between refugees and “people smugglers?” Do “people smugglers” have some kind of obvious identifying characteristic that will differentiate them to the 20 year old Coast Guard or Navy sailor from a NATO country whose going to have to do the sorting? Does he really think the point of a Navy is to serve as a floating fence to stop immigration?

Here’s another goldmine:

With rising disorder in the Middle East and Africa — and with China and Russia trying to tug the world their way — there has never been a more important time for the coalition of free-market democracies and democratizing states that are the core of the World of Order to come together and establish the best rules for global integration for the 21st century, including appropriate trade, labor and environmental standards. These agreements would both strengthen and more closely integrate the market-based, rule-of-law-based democratic and democratizing nations that form the backbone of the World of Order.

1. ‘Rising disorder in the Middle East’ compared to when? Is there proof that the middle east is more disordered than it was in some unspecified period of time in the past? And more importantly for a Democracy concerned with the proliferation of freedom, were those ‘ordered’ times more of less free than today? Because if we’re prioritizing order over freedom, we’re supporting tyranny. And this time we don’t even have a cold war to excuse it.

2 ‘And with Russia and China trying to tug the world their way’ As opposed to when? At which point in the last century was Russia (and the old Soviet Union) not active in the international community trying to extend it’s community of trading partners, and it’s military sphere of influence? Since 1970 or so China has acted in the same fashion, so why now is it a threat, and what is it a threat to? American (and western) hegemony? How has that worked out for the rest of the world for the last century? Might the history of the last century of western trade, military and economic hegemony inspire South American, African and Asian countries to explore alternatives to western domination?

3 “there has never been a more important time for the coalition of free-market democracies and democratizing states that are the core of the World of Order to come together and establish the best rules for global integration for the 21st century, including appropriate trade, labor and environmental standards.” So why do the rich western nation get to set global standards in these areas? Is it because we’re rich and we’ve set international standards without the input of poorer countries for a century? Might all of the actual nations affected by these unspecified rules not want and deserve a chance to define the rules?

4 “These agreements would both strengthen and more closely integrate the market-based, rule-of-law-based democratic and democratizing nations that form the backbone of the World of Order” Remind me again what’s so hot about the current world order when it can’t even rein in carbon dioxide exhaust?

Has Thomas Friedman ever even heard of confirmation bias? Has he ever imagined it might explain those voices in his head? I understand that even 25 years later, he misses the polarized world of the cold war, and he misses the vast number of things excused by the fight against communism. I get that for generations, starting with the baby boom, American superiority in military might and economic prosperity was a given. But it wasn’t always the case, it won’t always be the case, and setting up any kind of “world order” that doesn’t acknowledge those facts, is setting up a “world order” that will collapse when the US can’t maintain and extend it’s 70 year old military spending spree.

So here’s an idea, Tom. Set up a trade pact that gives labor and environmental issues the same or greater weight than unfettered trade. Throw out the proposed mediation that lets companies sue countries for labor and environmental regulations that could cut into their profit margins. When visiting other countries, talk to labor activists, economists that didn’t graduate from the university of Chicago, and environmental activists, talk to climate researchers and indigenous people. And FFS, stop talking to people in the hospitality and tourism industries as if they possess economic wisdom hidden from ivory tower intellectuals.

Hello Lovlies, my Friends, my Romans, My fellow members of the community called earth, let me know that I love you all.

Yesterday, I joined the “half century club” and of took off on my fifty-first trip ’round the sun, and had a most excellent party…

A britta well, is something that just passed the transom, and recorded for posterity…But I digress…

I was hanging out on a porch with an old friend on Thursday, ambivalent about the celebration of the five-O, when I asked her if she might be interested in hosting a party. The look on her face indicated that it was a fait accompli.

Her husband needed a couple of spokes replaced and his wheel trued, and I needed the money, so while that operation was underway and the issue decided, I return with the wheel in question and discover that not only a facebook event had been established, but that she was in the “x” section of her contacts. I trust her judgement completely…

In any event, on less than 48 hours notice, the perfect mix of friends, old and new, was assembled, and completely unexpected loot, was collected. I seem to be blessed and somewhat popular, and while this always seems to surprise, I guess it should not.

An old flame who currently resides in the northwest and happened to be in the state, made the hour and a half trip, and it was wonderful to get reaquainted, sand off some things unresolved, and come to the realization that I have always chosen well in the girlfriend department. I had a fucking blast….

Also, too, this morning I shook hands with my teabagging congress critter at the ‘bucks across the way and introduced myself….I neglected to mention that I might oppose him in the next election, but there will be time…

I wish all of the mothers, their sons, husbands and daughters a splendiferous and Happy Mother’s Day.

🙂
…

Just checking in with Jonah Goldberg:
Was Fascism Right-Wing (Again)?
Yep. Still dumb as a stump. What is this, like a decade of being wrong?

Let’s see who Dr Victor Davis Hanson wants to get off his lawn today:
The Westernized Anti-Westerner
What accounts for hatred of the West by people who voluntarily spent years here?

Hmm, it’s almost as if people come to the USA for many reasons including for education, employment, and asylum. It’s almost like when they get here, they aren’t always greeted with open arms. Some of them have to bear the brunt of racism, xenophobia and classism. Many of them are broke. And it turns out, lots of people come to the USA because it is the best choice of a lot of bad choices, but for them it is still a bad choice. And so, when they finish their education, or when things calm down at home, or when they have made enough money that they can return, many people choose to leave the USA behind and return to their own families in their own country with a head full of bad memories of their time here.

As a general rule, when we encounter Westernized anti-Westerners, we should expect that the more they know about who we are at home, rather than what we do abroad, the angrier they will become

This is just about the only sentence in the Dr. Hanson’s column that makes anything close to sense. He spends a lot of time blaming “a mostly left-wing homegrown anti-Americanism” on the university campuses for turning foreign students into high profile political leaders with a profound anti-American bias. His thesis which seems to be, that they come here and see how decadent we are what with our rights for women, and gay marriage, and that’s what makes them hostile to the western world, and not the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen, our unquestioning support for Israel, our support of oppressive regimes and our hundred year history of meddling in the middle east so we get an unlimited supply of oil.

He seems to think that the wealthy and educated people who return from their various educations and exiles are gaining power by railing against western decadence. And I guess I’m not sure what Dr. Hanson’s problem with that is, because he’s built his career doing the exact same thing.

Someone could make a full time job out of keeping track of all the unarmed African American males being shot by LEO’s (law enforcement Officers.) Yeah that would be a blast. It occurs to me that we haven’t had a mass shooting since the one at that Seatle school last fall. Maybe the recent spate of murder by cops has cooled the murderous outrage of potential mass murderers just a bit or maybe it just seemed to me that about every four months or so another one would take place, but I digress.

Last Sunday in Baltimore a 25 year old man named Freddie Gray died from injuries sustained on April 12th while in police custody where he somehow managed to nearly sever his spinal chord without any assistance, just like that guy a few years ago who while handcuffed in a police cruiser managed to get his previously hidden weapon free and shoot himself in the back of the head, or so we were told. So let’s take a look at the facts as they are currently understood:

According to the Wall Street Journal (subscription required), Gray was in a West Baltimore neighborhood April 12. Shortly after his arrest, he was placed in a police van and reportedly asked for an inhaler because he was having difficulty breathing. It’s unclear whether police attempted to assist Gray, but the Journal notes that officers didn’t call for medical assistance until some 40 minutes after he was arrested. Police records seen by the newspaper also noted that Gray was placed in leg shackles for “acting irate.”

“Acting irate”, heh, nice euphemism you got there, it’d be too bad if something happened to it. Cut to the chase already; his legs were shackled because young, Black and Uppity. And in America today filled with terrified white people, the young uppity negro deserved, no, earned everything he got.

Authorities can’t say if there was a particularly good reason why police arrested Gray. According to the city, an officer made eye contact with Gray, and he took off running, so they pursued him. Though he’d had scrapes with the law before, there’s no indication he was wanted at the time. And though he was found with a switchblade, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said, “We know that having a knife is not necessarily a crime.”

One wonders if there is a police report on file and I know that certain animals consider it a threat to make eye contact with them and among them, is apparently, an animal known as a police officer.

To the list of crimes, add: Running while Black, and making eye contact with your betters. I mean think about it, if this description is accurate, the police acted like a pack of hungry wolves whose chase instinct is activated at the first sight of weakness.

In a country awash in guns and concealed carry morons, a Black dude with a switchblade is “not necessarily a crime.”

“Not necessarily…” What the fuck does that even mean.

Most States and Municipalities have rules regarding length and type of knives that are legal. Surely by now they could have measured the length of the blade, or run a chemical analysis on same just to make sure it wasn’t hollow and filled with cocaine.

They should have just sprinkled some crack on the Freddie while he was prostrate in the holding cell and been done with it.

Next.

An attorney retained by Gray’s family, Billy Murphy, described extensive injuries in a statement Sunday.“His spine was 80 percent severed at his neck. He lapsed into a coma, died, was resuscitated, stayed in a coma and on Monday, underwent extensive surgery at Shock Trauma to save his life,” Murphy said. “He clung to life for seven days and died today at approximately 7 a.m.”

Words fail.

Gray’s family said he was treated for three fractured vertebrae and a crushed voice box, the sorts of injuries that doctors say are usually caused by serious car accidents. The van made at least two stops before reaching the police station, but there’s no footage to say what happened during the journey or at those stops.

It’s a baffling conundrum. “None of the officers describe any use of force,” Deputy Police Commissioner Jerry Rodriguez said. “None of the officers describe using any force against Mr. Gray.” And yet somehow Gray was fatally hurt while in police custody.

A baffling conundrum indeed. A real fucking mystery, must have been the aliens, Rosicrucians, or the Illuminati.

Let’s see if this makes sense. You put a guy in hand cuffs and shackled feet into a panel van with no seatbelts, padding, or bench and then you play Baltimore’s Finest’s favorite pinball game. Get up to speed then slam on the breaks, giggle after you hear a defenceless body slam into the back of the van. Rinse, rewind, repeat. After the first time or two the subject is unconscious which makes handling animals or prey all the easier.

Thanks to Roy for pointing out this HuffPo article.

Scott Walker Tacks Far Right On Immigration

Looks like the likeliest granny starver in the ‘America’s next top Granny Starver’ pageant opened his mouth again. Get a load of this:

“In terms of legal immigration, how we need to approach that going forward is saying — the next president and the next Congress need to make decisions about a legal immigration system that’s based on, first and foremost, on protecting American workers and American wages. Because the more I’ve talked to folks, I’ve talked to [Alabama Sen. Jeff] Sessions and others out there — but it is a fundamentally lost issue by many in elected positions today — is what is this doing for American workers looking for jobs, what is this doing to wages. And we need to have that be at the forefront of our discussion going forward,” Walker said in an interview with Glenn Beck, according to Breitbart News.

Now, I’m not going to point out the irony, not to mention the sheer brass balled gall required by Walker to pretend that the welfare of the working American is his priority. After all, his list of chief “achievements” for the Wisconsin public looks like the record of the Washington Generals. He got elected on cutting an already paid-for rail project in the name of fiscal responsibility when that project would have principally benefited middle and lower class commuters, and whose cancellation cost the state as much in cancellation fees as the project itself would have. He wasted no time in breaking the public employees union, and making Wisconsin into a “right to work” state after running on the premise that he wouldn’t, and whose administration has presided over the worst job growth rank in the Midwest and the 38th worst in the nation, after he made a campaign promise to create 250,000 new jobs in Wisconsin.

And to be fair, Wisconsin liberals too must shoulder some of the blame too for the condition of our state. Not a single one of us invented a time machine, went back in time and either warned the electorate in 2010 about this train wreck of a governor, or prevented whatever trauma caused Mr and Mrs Walker’s boy Scotty to grow up without a soul. Not a single one of us used our multibillion dollar fortune left to us by our John Birch Society founding father to pour millions into an off year race to buy the election wholesale.

I don’t like the term ‘goggle eyed homunculus’ because it’s looksist. Within a certain latitude, there’s not much a person can do with their looks short of radical plastic surgery. That doesn’t even work 100% of the time for the Hollywood set who, one assumes, have a pretty good idea of which plastic surgeons are the next best thing to Michelangelo, and which are closer to the guy at the county fair who carves frozen butter with a chainsaw.

So, I accept that Scott Walker looks like he looks. That’s fine. If he weren’t auditioning for the highest office in the country based on his record of wrecking everything he can get his claws on so he can sell the crumbs to the highest bidder, I don’t think anyone who wasn’t already some kind of bully would make any issue at all of the way he looks.

Because it’s projection. We know Scott Walker’s record, we know what he stands for, and we know that he’s going to try to privatize the US just like he’s tried to privatize Wisconsin. I use the word ‘privatize’, cause it’s a lot simpler than typing out “steal the common wealth and birthright of the citizens and sell it to unscrupulous patrons who are already as rich as Croesus at fire sale prices, who might let the electorate use a degraded version of whatever they haven’t consumed completely, if they can pay through the nose for the privilege ”

So it’s easy to look at Scott Walker and call him all kind of nasty names, because he is a nasty piece of work. It’s easy to think the worst of him, because as a resident of Wisconsin, I haven’t seen him or any republican state legislators consider anything out of reach if it screws the poor, pisses off liberals or saves the 1% a plugged nickel on their taxes. He might be a perfectly agreeable person, one on one, but I don’t know anyone that would want to be between him and the exit in a burning building.

So I don’t look at Scott Walker and see a troglodyte or a homunculus or any other term for someone as ugly on the outside as we imagine Governor Walker to be on the inside. He’s worse. He’s a blank slate who has no conviction that isn’t for sale to a deep pocketed patron. He’s a innocuous looking goof, who simply doesn’t care if cutting Badger care kills people who depend on it and doesn’t see the value in a forest and a river if Gogebic Taconite can mine low grade iron ore there. He’s all too ready to pay out $200 so the Milwaukee Bucks can have a new stadium, in the same exact year he cuts $300 million from the University of Wisconsin’s budget. I think there’s one kind of person in Scott Walker’s world, people who can advance his career. Everyone else is an obstacle to overcome or a resource to be exploited.

When I look at Scott Walker I see that abyss Nietzsche talked about, and as a Wisconsin leftist and liberal, I’ve already spent far too much time looking at him.

So, Hillary Clinton is running for president. That ought to be good for a few laughs. Let’s see what people are saying about that.
First up: Jonah Goldberg says in his column:

Maybe I’m wrong, but it seems obvious to me that if you claim to be a conservative and then suddenly discover that Hillary Clinton is really one too, then you were either never a conservative in the first place or you care about something other than your principles a whole lot more.

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/416862/start-countdown-hillarycons-jonah-goldberg?target=author&tid=897

That is purity trolling, but it’s weak sauce, I assume Jonah knows it’s going to be a long, long campaign and is pacing himself. He’d hate to go full paranoid delusional Whitewater-Vince Foster-Benghazi right out of the gate, that would leave him nowhere to go next week, and he’s got 15 months of Hillary bashing columns to write. Let’s take a look at what the other conservative pundits are saying about Hillary…

Bill Kristol, George Will, and Charles Krauthammer, figure with 18 months of election to go, there’s pleanty of time to talk about Hillary, they all have one more pressing issue on their mind: Iran. This quote from George Will seems to sum up their attitude fairly succinctly:

Obama’s obnoxious air of entitlement to unearned immunity from oversight should not blind us to this fact that has been obvious for some time: Iran is going to be a nuclear power if it intensely wants to be, and it does; no practicable sanctions can be severe and durable enough to defeat this determination.

Source:

Here’s the thing. No country has ever been stopped from developing a nuclear bomb by any means short of a full scale military assault. North Korea managed and they were watching their population starve while they were busily making bombs. Could a more active and engaged administration have prevented that? Clinton managed. He traded food for the end of the bomb program and for the eight years of his administration, that was enough. The Bush administration played tough, ended the food support and concentrated on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and North Korea built a bomb. They saw what the US did to two enemies that did not have nuclear weapons in their arsenal.

So that’s why Iran wants the bomb, to stop US (or Israeli) military intervention. But why do so many conservatives have such a hate on for Iran? Is it wounded pride from the hostage crisis of 1979? The memory of the 1973 energy crisis when OPEC collectively pulled the western world by the short hairs? The vindictiveness of thwarted colonialism that thinks ‘we stole it first’ is a good reason that BP should still own the Iranian oil fields? Is it the Israel lobby who sees a mortal enemy in a country that funded Hamas? Is it the Saudi lobby that sees 80 million Shiite heretics?

It’s all of the above. Plus the thought of increased profits for military contractors if the USA did go to war.

Here’s a story that was reported in USA today right after the deal was announced:
http://americasmarkets.usatoday.com/2015/04/02/oil-prices-fall-on-word-of-nuclear-accord-with-iran/

The historic animosity of the US to Iran, in the wake of the Iranian revolution has been, among other things a price subsidy for every other oil company in the world.

That’s why I want to see renewable energy implemented worldwide. I want national governments to be more powerful than petrochemical companies. I’d love for there to be a windmill energy boom in the great plains states which won’t ruin the water or cause earthquakes or belch more greenhouse gasses into the air. I’d love for rooftops worldwide to sprout solar panels. I’d like to see nine out of ten oil refineries close their doors. I’d even be OK with Lockheed Martin perfecting the fusion power plant they’ve been touting in their press releases, as pollutants go, I can deal with some extra helium.

But the happy little future I outlined above is basically the worst nightmare of the neocons. They depend on a world order supported by and supporting a limitless appetite for oil. The post world war II world order has been sustained by the western world’s control of oil production. I’m not naive enough to think that if no one was fighting over oil and oil money that there would be no fighting, but I’m sick of oil money funding the paranoid warmongering ambitions of a revolting group of reactionaries.

Apologies for the long post on the front page, when I figure out how to make a jump, I will do that.

“What is your damage, Heather?”

Robert Oscar Lopez, American Wanke-No, that Would be Too Gay and I’m Cured of that Now:
Cogs in the Gay Marriage Machine

I think I might be painfully unwell. It’s just so frightening and wrong, but… I’m… I’m starting to become bored with the ever-continuing spiral of our favorite Narcissistic self-hating bisexual. I mean, he’s no less of a complete asshole blaming all of his personality shortcomings on his moms because they didn’t adequately prevent bigotry against gay people in the goddamn ’80s. He’s no less obsessed with equating people thinking he’s an asshole to Nazi Concentration Camp officers and he’s no less convinced that every one of his students is a secret sniper sent by the gay mafia to kill him personally.

• Blah, blah, blah, homofascists, blah blah blah, my gay mommies made me love man-cock against God’s will, blah blah blah, giant narcissistic temper-tantrum for the last few shuddering gasps of the professional homophobe movement.

Read the rest of this entry »

Today has started out so well that I feel it would be, well, a, uh..it would fuck up my day to go after idiots…

The scottish clown is not always a bad experience…(lazy again, with sausage and eggs in the larder) as I got to see the father of one of my oldest friends. I can see that he is getting on in years and still in good health, though regrettably, he forgot our last meeting.

(I was tailgating his ass six ways to Sunday and it pissed him properly off.) To my credit and this is a big ask, he was in a British roadster and moving rather quickly himself, and it was a nice piece of road, freshly paved, and I was interested in what the Toyota station wagon could handle…This was 11-12 years ago.

He did remember the incident when we were throwing snowballs at cars from my front yard (another idiot move on my part), and hit his…He stopped, we ran….

The x on the right is my front yard, the one on the left is where we ended up, also, too, consider the graphic a square…

Anyhoo, he gave us a stern warning, but did not bust us. I need to see his son soon.

Then I get to the ‘bucks across the way and see that all of the usual suspects, by which I mean friends, are on staff. One of them taps my ass he leaves for a break and hooks me up with a cigarette. As I had my tobacco, but left my papers behind…Friends covering your six, without hesitation. I may have practically nothing, but I do have those.

Following that, I meet the grandchild of one of the musicians with whom I play…He is adorable. His great aunt and grandmother are as well.

Then I see an old and cherished friend, one of those that you never have enough time with, and promptly find my back on the floor of the ‘bucks in question. Unbridled enthusiasm mixed with balance related vectors, and gravity, were all part of the equation. It is spring, hopefully, and I love the guy, and today is a good day…

xoxox you all!

And they’re like: “what the fuck are you doing here? Please get the fuck away from me.”

Does Anyone Even Remotely Gay Still Write for this Site, Why Even Bother Still Calling it “Gay Patriot”:
Feminism Becomes Infantile

I feel a bit awkward checking in on our good friends at the Quisling Patriot these days as it’s becoming more and more apparent that anyone with a modicum of sexual attraction to the male gender quietly bailed a long fucking time ago, now that being a self-hating scrub willing to sell your community to bigots doesn’t pay the scratch and attention it once did.

As such, we’re left with V the KKK, a non-Bruceian entity who while able to rant happily along on the general perfidy of faggots and trannies as the dedicated straight male audience to a supposedly gay blog demand, nonetheless doesn’t seem to possess much in the way of you know, self-hating gayness that made the Bruces so entertaining to mock.

And it ends up stretching the credibility even further when this writer for a supposedly gay blog (unless V the K is just a time-traveler who assumes gay just means happy) breaks out the MRA talking points like a man fishing lil’ Ayn from out of the fedora tank.

Shorter (or the last port before Jungle):

• Women having resources for trauma is misandry!

Read the rest of this entry »

Presidential Timber Indeed…

Walker: I remember the movie in the 80s, Trading Places…

Hewitt: Right.

Walker: …you know, with Dan Aykroyd and Eddie Murphy, it’s like Iran and Israel are trading places in the sequel. In the eyes of this president, our ally is supposed to be Israel. Our adversary has been historically Iran. And yet this administration completely does it the other way around. We need to call radical Islamic terrorism for what it is, and a commander-in-chief who’s willing to act.

I think we were in a better place when these guys were goofing on Ebonics and not Freeform Jazz Styling on Foreign Policy.

[Update]

Also, too, we will have another wit joining this band of merry thieves. The Party in question will be introducing themselves at their leisure.