Irony Is the Sound of Freedom, Part Infinity

"Give me my privacy!" they Tweeted. When that didn't work they Facebooked it. Then they went to Snapchat and Instagram to post pics of them demanding their privacy. They were appalled when we paid attention.

Oh, wait; no, they weren't.

"Politicians are tools for the wealthy!" they cried, "Rock the don'tvote!" They made no exception for an aging hippie who's been an attention whore completely dissociated from functional political reality since sometime after the Civil Rights movement's greatest hits, a senile jackass who's completely morally bankrupt on key issues of concern to his base.

Oh, wait; yes, they did.

"You get the fuck off my lawn!" he shouted at himself. He did.

Oh, wait; no, he didn't.

Bizarro Night

Thrilled beyond measure for my Washington Capitals, who are a quarter of the way to a Stanley Cup that they won't win.

Crying for Baltimore. How completely fucking awful. Cops' Tweets (60 percent of them include the words "violent criminals") not helping. People burning down new affordable housing constructed by a church not helping. Governor insulting Mayor not helping. What a horrible fucking night for Baltimore and for my state.

My Dream

I was rooting around in my bag and I found a pack of cigarettes and I was upset because they were shorties instead of 99s and then I remembered that I was lucky to have any cigarettes at all and I was happy. And then I knew the dream was over because I woke up and BFF was pointing and silently screaming while Digby and Atrios raped Glenn Greenwald while Obama held Greenwald's head, snarling, "Take that, Kitty Genovese," and I wasn't racist because Obama's cock was white. And then things got really weird because there was litter so I cried.

The Decline of Honesty

Others, including Himself, seem to agree that George Zimmerman can be both legally not guilty and morally totally wrong in the matter of Trayvon Martin's death. I think this is pretty clear. I ignored the contemporaneous trial coverage, which would have required far more time and energy than I had available or willing, but what I've read in the aftermath--at least, that which seems trustworthy and not overly afflicted by obvious agendae--seems to support a conclusion that the prosecution didn't do Trayvon Martin any favors, the defense didn't have to work very hard to create reasonable doubt, and the judge's jury instructions left them very little, if any, room to convict Zimmerman of anything.

Now let's be honest. I'll go first. George Zimmerman is, in fact, a creepy ass cracker, a cop wannabe who deliberately stalked Trayvon Martin because he was a young nigger in a hoodie, and at the least, deliberately provoked a situation where he was able to gun Martin down. Of course that's not a statement about the law, and if you try to answer it with a legal argument, you're not being honest.

Here's a statement about the law: It's unfortunate, to say the least, that the state of Florida was unable to come up with a charge to fit the crime, or to competently try the charge that it chose (I mean manslaughter, under Florida law--I don't think they ever had a chance of convicting him of second-degree murder). And it's really bad that while our nation's legal principles and George Zimmerman's rights as a defendant were upheld, justice was not, in any way, served. You might be honest if you answer that with a legal argument. Maybe. That won't make you right. But I titled the post the way I did, didn't I?

Let's discuss some people who really aren't being honest--or, if they are, they're so ignorant and/or prejudiced that their views on this case aren't worthy of the public discussion. Let's start with CNN's vaunted juror number B37. Here are some (admittedly selected) samples of her patter:

"I think all of us thought race did not play a role," the juror said . "We never had that discussion."

...

 She believes he thought Martin was suspicious because of the way he acted. "Anybody would think anybody walking down the road, stopping and turning and looking -- if that's exactly what happened -- is suspicious," she said.

...

Juror B37 said Jeantel was not a good witness because the phrases used during her testimony were terms she had never heard before. The juror thought the witness, "felt inadequate toward everyone because of her education and her communication skills. I just felt sadness for her."

...

The juror said she did not think the term "creepy ass cracker" was a racial statement. The juror said this was the way Trayvon and Rachel spoke to each other, "I think it's just everyday life, the type of life that they life and how they're living, in the environment that they're living in." [My note: she didn't say "Trayvon and Rachel." She said "they."]

Holy crap. Okay, I'm willing to concede the possibility that Juror B37 is honest. But if she is, she sure is one ignorant creepy ass cracker. Race didn't play a role? Suspicious? "The type of life that they live"? "Creepy ass cracker" isn't a racial statement? Holy fucking shit. Actually, it's that last one that strains my capacity for belief in Juror B37 most of all.

Look, in addition to the top-line reasoning--bad prosecution, adequate defense, judge's instructions--do we seriously believe that this verdict has nothing to do with the jury being composed of six white women? I mean, aside from known problems with verdicts in six-person juries (Google it), a racially and gender-homogenous jury? In Florida? And race didn't play a role? Oh my paws and whiskers, it strains credibility to believe that this woman is honest, but sure, it's theoretically possible. I didn't hear all the evidence, what the fuck do I know?

Let's move on. I was sitting in a doctor's office--and, full disclosure, my pneumonia is weakly relapsing and I'm doing another round of medical shit and another round of heavy fucking drugs and another round of attempting to rest, this attempt much less successful than the first, but I just started that, so cut me a break, but the point is I'm in a really bad fucking mood, and I'm not really predisposed to give anyone talking about this any more than reasonable doubt as to their honesty, so it's really kinda surprising that I went so light on such a disingenous piece of shit as Juror B37--actually, it was the radiologist's office, and CNN was on the big teevee in the waiting room, tuned to CNN, which is actually how I even heard any of Juror B37's line, because I would ordinarily and otherwise ignore CNN fapping. Anyway, it was whatever CNN polished media tart comes after the Noon of the Wolf, and she was talking to the President of Morehouse College, and some media blonde who founded the Daily Download and now whores for the Daily Beast, and Emily Pinchface-Whitebread, who is as I understand it the head of opinionation for the Washington Moonie Times, who argues that obviously Zimmerman was innocent, Florida should never have charged him, of course Trayvon Martin was a brutal criminal, and the President is a nigger. She cut off the President of Morehouse College, called him irresponsible for even discussing race in this context, and blasted the Daily Beast broad when she accused Ms. Pinchface-Whitebread of not discussing the matter civilly.

Okay, now I'm cherry-picking obvious examples of extreme dishonesty. Kinda like every fucking creepy ass cracker who's reading about one low-grade near-riot in LA and screaming, "Look, niggers are violent, we told you so!"

But wait, there's more. And no, I'm not going to start talking about Edward "I Am Not An Attention Whore" Snowden, famous attention whore, or Glenn "I Have Never Been Wrong and You Are Morally Reprehensible For Disagreeing With Me" Greenwald, famous Brazilian correspondent for a famous British newspaper known for its unerring accuracy (okay, you got me: actual British people mostly refer to it as "The Gruniad").

Yeah, fine. Cheap, tangential, opportunistic, and a little dirty. Like I said, bad mood. Sincere sorries.

But there really is more. Loomis, who some of you don't actually understand, some of you willfully so, points to Dick Cohen's breathtakingly racist column in YFWP. From Cohen: 

I don’t like what George Zimmerman did, and I hate that Trayvon Martin is dead. But I also can understand why Zimmerman was suspicious and why he thought Martin was wearing a uniform we all recognize. I don’t know whether Zimmerman is a racist. But I’m tired of politicians and others who have donned hoodies in solidarity with Martin and who essentially suggest that, for recognizing the reality of urban crime in the United States, I am a racist. The hoodie blinds them as much as it did Zimmerman.

...

Where is the politician who will own up to the painful complexity of the problem and acknowledge the widespread fear of crime committed by young black males? 

...

After all, if young black males are your shooters, then it ought to be young black males whom the police stop and frisk. [My note: This based on an NYPD statistic that 78 percent of shooting suspects are black.] 

Loomis' added value:

Where is the politician who will openly race bait? Where is the politician who will call for racial profiling? Where are our leaders in this time of political correctness, where blacks have everything handed to them on the plate? 

Yup. I think it's pretty clear that Richard Cohen is, in fact, being dishonest. Maybe that's his job. Loomis also hat-tips Atrios' previous ode to Cohen's racism. And of course, Cohen is a go-to for every leftish blogger who wants to talk about racism in media. Just being honest.

Let's sum: failing to acknowledge that race has a role in this discussion? Dishonest. Shut up and go away. A particular verdict was necessary or legal or correct? Dishonest. Shut up and go away. Zimmerman utterly blameless? Dishonest or ignorant. Shut up and go away. "I understand George Zimmerman"? Definitely too fucking stupid to opine, possibly dishonest. Shut up and go away.

I think there's plausibly reasonable doubt about most of the rest.

[Edited 90 minutes later to fix background problem in block quotes. Which were appearing as a total whiteout. Heh. I made a funny.]

Not Too Busy To Say What Must Be Said

Loomis tells you all about Chicago so I don't have to. It's hard to tell, because so many in the media, including a lot of people who know better, are up their own asses about this, but it sounds like there may be a deal soon.

Support CTU. Solidarity forever.

High Holy Day

68th anniversary of D-Day? Or just William Wallace's birthday? Happy birthday, Bromance. He swears that the reason he's got my back is not that I've got a cute ass, and I tend to believe him; his cute ass is by no means the only reason I've got his.

It's a day so holy you have to go back to June 6, 2009 to find me saying anything substantive about it. But that's also because William Wallace has a cute ass.

Doody calls, though: BFF tells of last evening's DCU humbling by the aforementioned Chester club. Yeah, yeah. Another stupid one-goal loss in earlyish USOC going. This is like Harry Potter 6, you know what's coming. Sure, Benny's pissed, and it was a shabby effort. The club is neither as good as its record nor as bad as Beloved thinks it is on a bad night. It's been 10 days since they played, everyone's rusty, and they spent significant time at practice on penalty kicks--they fucking expected a close game of no particular repute. There's nothing to pore-bleed about here. It's just ordinary, annual self-fulfilling prophecy.

Which also describes the MNPPCC police presence. You can watch the (second) video in his linked post for the start of the story. Soon enough after the events of that video, Officer Weissmann, who steps into the picture at about 0:30 of the video, shows why she's not a county cop by trying to extinguish a burning flare with a half a bottle of Aquafina. That's a flare burning on aluminum bleachers. Non-flammable aluminum bleachers. You're a one-woman brain trust, Officer Weissmann (and I apologize if I've improperly spelled your last name).

Shortly thereafter, the po-po descended with a vengeance, with Officer Weissmann leading the charge in rifling through stray jackets laying on the bleachers. Officer Weissmann, who appears to be unaware of the Fourth Amendment and the concept of probable cause (which is unsurprising, given that she's a grim fascist twit who's probably been victimized by institutional misogyny in addition to her own feeble intellect), was soon rewarded with two (!) more unignited flares in some dumbass's jacket. Hilarity ensued. My phone takes crappy pics, but Planet got some good ones, because she's artsy and stuff.

The po-po dragged out the flag guy in the video, and some other dumbass. They stood the dangerous ruffians up along the perimeter fence and yammered at them for...well, until there were about four minutes left in extra time. Terrorist criminals punished by deprivation of the thing they paid to cheer. Justice done. Way to go, police state.

The scene was distracting, and the game mostly boring; during one of the many delays while some player or another lay upon the ground, nursing a thug-inflicted owie (the referee was incompetent and nowhere near in control of the game), I turned to the guy on the rail behind me and chatted quietly and calmly about the incompetence and jackbootedness of the MNPPCC cops, while looking in the direction of that clusterfuck. From 75 yards away, Officer Opie decided I was eyeballing him and calling him a fucktard (I was, by association, but not personally), and came over with a big shit-eating grin and his hand on his Sam Browne, asking if I was talking to him.

BFF is right that I was loud about the jackbootery, though it wasn't when Officer Opie decided I was nostrilling him, or what the fuckever. I do admit that I was shouting about the Fourth Amendment as Officer Weissmann and her little fascist companions drug out the supposed (but apparently not) criminals. Loudly. Repeatedly. They could not possibly not have heard me. I also took the trouble to toss my car keys to Ilse before I went over to about 40 feet away from the circle jerk of interrogationism to exercise my constitutional right to take some pictures of MNCPPC doing some undoubtedly fine police work.

So there you have it. Bloggy holiday, a birthday, one graf about a game, and five grafs about the stupid fucking MNCPPC po-po. Bout average for a USOC post, right?

Happy Mothers Day, or, No Will for Outrage

There are two things really severely annoying me now, and I really only have the time to acknowledge them because not farting about this will rankle all weekend when I should be helping Data and Bam honor their mother, and of course honoring my own sainted mother, the She-Nurse of the SS.

Now, it's no secret that those scheming and selfish gay folk have monopolized the news this week, what with setting themselves up to be bashed in North Carolina (sadly enough, the home of the She-Nurse, though of course she did the right thing, because if she didn't I'd hate her too much to show my love with that nom d'blog), and then deviously gangfucking Barack Obama in his tight preznitential ass with their big gay dicks until he submitted and put on leather chaps and admitted he's been lying for years about loving the ghey and that Sasha and Malia were only procreationalized because Bill Ayers milked him into a bottle and sold the precious jism to Michelle for her nefarious use.

Damn them. And damn him for loving them. Y'know who almost always says it pretty well? Dahlia, that's who. So yeah, what she said, plus, special to everyone who wants to pretend that BarryO publicly stating, as Preznit of the Motherfucking United States, that he supports gay marriage, isn't good enough, because W: just fuck off. I mean, seriously. No one is saying that his support for gay marriage wipes out his warmongering, so quit fucking shitting up the Internets with that fucking strawman, and the other one about how "I support gay marriage," which is what he unequivocally said, badly mangled though it emerged from the newly christened preznitential cocksucker, somehow isn't good enough and he should personally assfuck every state legislature and cracker until they submit to ghey onions.

Furthermore, I'm fucking sick of you. Yes, war is bad. Killing people is bad. Fucking with the Constitution is bad. Therefore, shit on him at every fucking opportunity, keep fucking pretending about the black Corporate helicopters, keep pretending there's no difference whatsoever that's good enough. Keep up the fucking playground taunting of anyone who doesn't accept your absolute stance, who rejects that compassionate Mittens, the gay preppie's worst delayed-time-bomb nightmare, would be demonstrably worse, because there's some alternative that prevents all death and inequity.

Fucking sophist bullshit, objectively no fucking better or more intellectually sophisticated than...

Jonah Goldberg. No, I'm not fucking kidding. But just typing that name illifies me, so let's let Susan do the heavy lifting, and really, she does that lifting very well. I'm leaving all the thinking to her, thanks. Okay, not all, because Alex Pareene did a pretty awesome job, too.

Yeah, okay, I guess I lied. Three things. And I suppose I do have the will for outrage. My bad.
Oh, and fuck Blogger.

Maybe I'm Just Not Objective

I've complained before about the NHL's administration of supplementary discipline. I was pretty sure I had complained, specifically, about the present uberreichsfuhrer's predecessor, who stepped down (was removed) from his post after documentably showing favoritism toward his son, who is a piece of shit, a condition that seems to apply to NHL players named Campbell (and I have erred in the past; the latter is not Colin Campbell's kid). But I digress, and Whispers and fish, I apologize for not warning you about my sudden and entirely provoked assault on a Bruins enemabag, not that those two concepts are severable.

The point, it comes: Brendan Shanahan has relentlessly doled out suspensions to Washington Capitals. I posit that this is because he hates the Capitals, though of course I recognize the likelihood that this is partisan conspiracy theory. As I pointed out in the January post, though, it's pretty objective fact that he treats similar offenses very differently. The Ovechkin/Michalek mashup was classic and damning; Michalek admitted that his offense was revenge-driven, and Ovechkin was, under the NHL's unarguably stupid rules, a redeemed repeat offender. Ovie sat down for three games, Michalek sat for two minutes (literally).

Another example was delivered yesterday. Mike Green of the Caps just completed a 3-game suspension for what was probably a pretty nasty hit on Tampa Bay winger Brett Connolly. You can watch lying cocksucker Shanahan's video on that disciplinary action. The Green hit was uncool, and probably fine-worthy. Shanahan turned it into a deliberate elbowing...of the sort for which he didn't touch Zbynek Michalek, whose elbow was considerably more apparent, more deliberate, and admittedly revenge-driven. You're a fucking pile of shit on a summer sidewalk, Brendan Shanahan.

But that's not even the point. Here's the fucking point:

That's Mark Stuart of the Winnipeg Jets, hammering Marcus Johansson's head into the boards on Friday night. Johansson's helmet came off, and he spent most of a period in the quiet room, being assessed for a concussion. Just like, say, Brett Connolly did. The hit was late--Johansson had disposed of the puck a good two seconds earlier. He was already down when Stuart hit him. This is far more blatant, and far more dangerous, than what Greenie did to Connolly a week earlier. Oh, and a ref was about six feet away, on the unseen right side of the picture; no penalty was called (that's another matter entirely--it's a fast game, but NHL refs are seriously inept and driven by factors not related to game play).

Shanahan's verdict? A $2500 fine.

So yeah, maybe I'm just not objective, and maybe someone out there would like to point out the subjectivity in my assessment of the above photograph (there's probably video of the Comcast feed; I read in a comments thread somewhere that the Jets' feed didn't show a replay, though most Jets fans who commented expressed relief and no small surprise that Stuart didn't get suspended).

I have some suggestions for you, Brendan Shanahan, and I'm moderately troubled because they're fairly similar to my suggestions for middle-aged male state legislators. But I've said before that the best hate is reserved for hockey.

You're a fucking fraud, Brendan Shanahan. I don't know if you're inept, criminal, or both, but it doesn't matter, because you're pretty much just stealing the NHL's money by accepting a salary that you don't deserve. Go the fuck away, you cheating piece of dysenteric shit. Maybe there's a job for someone as stupid and base and fundamentally dishonest as you somewhere, but it's not in administering discipline for the NHL.

A Three-Way Dead Heat for Asshole of the Day

In chronological order (of when I saw each story):

Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky and Mars) was not allowed to board his flight at the Nashville airport this morning after he declined a patdown (known in TSA parlance as "secondary screening") to resolve a scanning anomaly. He (and his father) characterized the incident as "detention" and set about making as much noise as they could about it. The noise continued through the day, with nutters claiming he was being illegally arrested en route to Congress (he was heading to a Roe v. Wade anniversary anti-abortion rally in DC), the Pauls repeating the word "detained" to anyone who would listen, and a statement from the Senator implying that white people shouldn't be screened (that wacky, not-at-all racist Paul family!). The capper comes from Sasha, who sent this lovely demonstration of what a total fucking wackjob Senator Paul is: he thinks that TSA has rigged the machines to trigger random false positives to give TSA an excuse to pat people down. Holy fuck, this man is a United States Senator?  Fuck you, Rand Paul.

Next up is Boston Bruins' goalie Tim Thomas. Full disclosure: I make no bones about seriously despising the Bruins. That river runs real deep. However, Thomas declined to join his Stanley Cup champion team in a visit to the White House today, because he hates Obama. Puck Daddy Greg Wyshynski gets it as wrong as it can be gotten, claiming that Thomas shouldn't be demonized because this is a free speech issue. Holy fucking crap, Wyshynski. No one's passing a law restraining Thomas' freedom of speech. They're correctly noting that he's an unAmerican asshole, a shitty team player, and a graceless twat. Of course he's entitled to be all of those things, each of which has the consequence of making him look like a fucking jerk. Wyshynski is an idiot (and a unabashed Devils fanboy); Thomas is, in essence, a fucking traitor--by his own side's standards. Fuck you, Tim Thomas.


Finally, the NHL's uberreichsfuhrer of discipline, Brendan Shanahan. In the Capitals' overtime loss to the Penguins yesterday, Alex Ovechkin crushed the shit out of Pens defenseman Zbynek Michalek, leaving the ice by a few inches to do so. No penalty call (it probably should've been called as boarding, and it's stunning that it wasn't, given that midget bitch referee Kelly Sutherland demonstrably despises the Capitals). About 5 minutes later, Michalek crushed the shit out of Matt Hendricks, not quite leaving the ice to do so, but elbowing Hendricks in the head. Two minutes, elbowing. After the game, Michalek admitted that the penalty call was correct and that his state of mind was such that the infraction was related to the uncalled offense of a few minutes earlier. Ovechkin and Michalek had disciplinary hearings today, with Shanahan the deciderer. Guess who got a three-game suspension and who got no supplementary discipline? Fucking Shanahan even admitted that Ovechkin got slammed because he's a repeat offender--even though, under the NHL's rules for administering supplementary discipline, Ovechkin had accumulated enough good behavior time to be outside of the window for increased supplementary discipline. Fuck you, Brendan Shanahan.

About Last Night

BDR and Jim proudly claim the mantle and in good spirits, which is fine. Doesn't make them less wrong, doesn't make me love them less. Thunder's message is different; it appears to be, as near I can tell, "I Am Elmo."*

I have considerable experience with this message, and I'm here to tell you: Don't Fuck With Elmo. It's futile. Self-destructive, even.

There will be those who take my message in a less friendly or loving spirit, and that's fine too, in the sense that I don't give a flying fuck. But here's the point: there are people who aren't unsympathetic to the presumed message, if not to some of the wackier statements from individuals interviewed by the media dolts covering the protests, or simply overheard ("reclaim public space"? What the Fuck does that mean? How is it differentiable from "prolonged vagrancy"?). Making traffic worse is not going to capture their sympathy.

There's another element here, which is a little less kind. #Occupy is about as much about sociopathy as much as anything else, by which I mean occupiers asserting that their sociopathy is no less legitimate than the sociopathy of greed. Blocking K Street highlights that. I hate to give the police such a sparkling idea, but there's something to the notion that an aerosol delivery system for Adderall would be way more effective for controlling the protests than is pepper spray, and without the complications of bad PR. I concede that in a very small number of cases, Thorazine would be more appropriate.

Please don't mistake me; sociopathy works just dandy for me. Personally. Your sociopathy does less for me. Sorry, it's the way the thing works.

It's like I said the other day: don't pee on my leg and tell me it's raining.** Sure, like BFF said in my comments yesterday, it's cool and fun and sophisticated to piss off power, though given all that I'm not sure why he didn't keep smoking like the rest of us cool kids. That gives the lie to any contention that this isn't about sociopathy. But there are sympathetic people out there--me among them--who have as much right to have a day unfucked by other peoples' choices as BFF has to fuck up their day. While my personal day wasn't fucked up, my Wednesday travels didn't take me anywhere near the downtown business district, seeing as I'm smart like Federation (thanks to BFF for triggering that happy memory the other day). Another day, another pattern of geography? I'd be through being cool.


* Yes, while I was not raised on Sesame Street (my brother, 5 years younger, was--that places me pretty precisely, no?), I'm aware that the cited meme predates Elmo, by a lot, having emerged in the halcyon days of original SNL Sesame Street yore, before Belushi Henson died, when Sesame Street didn't suck. Sadly, Bam-Bam is here to tell you, loudly, that Sesame Street equals Elmo. Resistance is irrelevant.

** I am increasingly aware that this admonition applies to every word ever uttered, on the Internet or elsewhere.

Things That Say You're A Fucking Retard

1. You think that blocking K Street will do anything other than make people quite rightly despise you.

2. You're Obama's Secretary of Health and Human Services.

3. You're Obama.

Other possibilities not excluded.

It's Like This

Lazy stream-of-consciousness blogging on a few issues of the day:

Work: I've mentioned my work before, and I won't do so with any level of specificity right now, but here's the essence: I am a mid-level tyrant for a government contractor, holding sway over several petty fiefdoms, one of which is concerned with making a Federal agency's Web site go. Once upon a time, in the course of discussing something else, I wrote this about part of what I do:

One of my adorable little gifts--or not, depending on your perspective and the given value of "adorable" and "gifts"--is that I speak fluent Web, understand how things should work, know something about the place of the Web in communications strategies, sort through hours of technical blahrg from actual Webheads, and then distill the whole mess into something that actual Webheads can run with, rather than getting endlessly trapped inside their engineer-like minds.

The other part of that is that I'm really very good--and I sincerely don't mean to be immodest here--at helping nontechnical peeps to understand what technology can and can't do.

This is why it's pretty fucking galling when the buttheads don't even fucking bother to ask. Or worse, when they try to tell me what technology should do. Y'know what? I don't fucking tell you how to cure cancer or prevent heart attacks or whatever the fuck it is you do or research. Don't fucking tell me how to do with the Web what you just told me you wanted the fucking Web to do for you.

#Occupy: I'm terribly sorry you got arrested. I'm really, really glad that BFF didn't. In return for this overwhelming show of empathy, don't fucking tell me you weren't trying to get arrested when you did a fucking barn-raising in McPherson Square. For my part, I won't piss on your leg and tell you it's raining.

Tino: Santino Quaranta retires. Aiyee. Well, I've certainly had plenty to say about old Tino over the years, much of it unkind. To his eternal credit, Tino hasn't sought me out in 232 and beat the shit out of me. Hell, he even had a chance to finish me off in a Popeyes on I-95 one night, and didn't do it. That's gotta be worth something.

It's unfortunate that the competitive fires in Tino didn't drive more than anger, tightness, and 100-mph shots into the mezzanine. He managed moments of beauty during his time here, and I certainly wasn't unhappy to see him on the field this season, especially given the sheer loathsomeness of the options, but I don't want to damn him now with that kind of faint praise. Since his return to the team, he's been as black and red as anyone, and we will miss his energy.

Some selected Tino quotes:

(4/25/2011): Santino Quaranta I already dealt with. He's just a big sack of testosterone and anger. Heart is no longer a problem for him, but he doesn't seem to have any remaining talent to go with it, or at least the intelligence to harness his talent (and experience--it's incredible how long he's been in the league, for his age) in a useful direction. Props to him for getting his ass back on defense, and congratulations to him for being no worse than my fourth or fifth most hated player on my own fucking club.

No one loves like I do.

(3/17/2011) I myself am excited about Tino Quaranta, now that management has seen fit to pick up and retain players equally or more loathsome.

I do love a deathmask retrospective, don't you?

(8/15/2010) Here's what Goff doesn't tell you in his hack: about 90 seconds earlier, Dallas broke free on exactly the same play. They failed to score because Santino Quaranta--hailed as a hero by many in the commenting community, though I'm not sure why--grabbed the ball carrier's (I think it was Ferreira) jersey, dragging him back to prevent the 2-on-1 breakaway. It was a straight red-card professional foul that very clearly and very obviously prevented a goal. Abbey Okulaja ignored it (bless him).

I vividly remember this game and this sequence, which is unusual for me. It's a perfect example of why I'm loathe to kick Tino's slumped body. Well, that and the shabby treatment he got from the team on his way out.

(4/11/2010) The other item: you should never listen to me again, because it's true. I was 10 fucking feet from the unforgiven, but no longer discommodated, Santino Quaranta, and all I did was thank him for a nice goal and speak pleasantly, and briefly. No ranting. No attempt to disembowel him with my greasy Popeye's spork. Just politeness and smiles and thank yous. And that, beloved minions, is the only kind of self-complicity one should waste time whining about.

The aforementioned Popeyes incident, also covered recently by BFF.

(6/14/2008) Tino's discommodation is, of course reversed, with apologies (but not with forgiveness, because Minions has a pretty definite policy on that, too).

I mean, it took his courageous admission of a Vicodin addiction to spur that, but whatever, I manned up.

And the best for last:

(5/24/2008) You see, tonight's Man of the Match, in my book, would be none other than Tino. It was Tino who, through the glory of embellishment that he could only have learned while lapping hungrily at Landon Donovan's pussy, turned a very nice run into a well-earned penalty (in truth, there were two earlier occasions when DCU could easily have been awarded penalties; in this case, there was contact, and Tino was definitely going down, he just made it look better than it was). Minutes later, his run into space with the ball, coupled with a very nice feed to someone (I forgot who), set up the one moment this season when the ball has richocheted onto The New Mister Em's foot in the six-box.

And that last? That's your third problem. Things just haven't been falling for the offense. It doesn't much matter why Emilio isn't the same guy he was last season. Part of it is that some nontrivial number of his goals last season were poached, and he's been so innately lazy about getting into the box this season that his poaching opportunities have dwindled.

So, Tino for MOTM? Sure enough. Apparently Moreno won the text message voting, because he was the guy they flashed on the board at the end of the game. And Peralta had a really fun equalizer, stretching himself out to head a ball two feet off the ground into the net (bDr correctly noted that Peralta might could have just foot-tapped it, but it was a lot more fun the way it happened). Fred moved reasonably well off-ball, and Gallardo's touch and control (as long as he's not kicking a set piece) are a marvel. But Tino ran his ass off and earned it.

No, he did not earn my forgiveness. bDr's brother asked me a pertinent question when he wondered if, should Tino break Jay Heaps in half, spit on the body, and wipe his ass on a Duke t-shirt in front of 25,000 fans, I'd get around to forgiving. Actually, he phrased the question a lot less violently and my answer wasn't terribly affirming. Only when I embellished the violence and emphasis could I get to a place where the possibility of any sort of Tino-warmth could be forthcoming.

Emphasis added.

It's pretty clear that I've had a real complex relationship with Santino Quaranta, at least in my head, for a real long time now. Tino's name and number will never be up on the wall (though he could hardly shame it any worse than fucking Harkes does), but it'll be an oddly painful and incredibly strange thing to see a number 25 on someone else's United kit someday.

Best wishes for a happy and successful retirement, Tino.

Remind Me

Why I support this futbol team. Our protected list for the upcoming expansion draft, says Goff:

Charlie Davies
Dwayne DeRosario
Dejan Jakovic
Perry Kitchen
Chris Korb
Brandon McDonald
Chris Pontius
Clyde Simms
Joe Willis
Josh Wolff
Daniel Woolard

This imparts some information we needed to know. Foremost, that this team is managed by complete fucking mongoloids. We protected the useless diving pussy Charlie Davies instead of daring the brand-new Froggyfucks to take him? Holy shit, that's utterly bereft of intelligence or character. Chris Korb, the latest in a series of useless midgets? Slow, stupid, Daniel Fucking Woolard, a reject of the fucking Chicago Fire? This what Kevin Payne and Benny Olsen think is the right and left sides of your future defense, wherever it may play.

After the decision to protect Davies, the most mindboggling choice for protection is Clyde Simms. It is very clear to anyone who set foot in RFK Stadium this season, save perhaps Clyde himself, that Clyde's toast. This is sad. Clyde's been an anchor for us. But he's done done done, a perfect example of a player who needs to be exposed to the draft.

It's excusable that the club left Boskovic unprotected. His salary and knee combine to make his selection very unlikely. But we're going to lose either Brettschneider or Quaranta, both of whom are far more useful than tiny ineffectual Chris Korb or slow, stupid Daniel Fucking Woolard, who shines as the worst free agent acquisition by this club since...uhm, Joseph Ngwenya. Here's the thing; Ngwenya doesn't play. Saint Benny seems convinced that Woolard is a starting left back (or, when injuries and malice overtake us, a starting center back).

Are there valid criticisms of Brettschneider and Quaranta? Of course there are. You know I despise Quaranta, and despise that he's so rooted in our club's culture. Brettschneider's no great huge hairy deal--he's young and probably a little too aggressive for his own good, but he's a lot more promising than that diving poisonous punk Charlie Davies.

Fucking disgrace.

Update: Fullback agrees, which is totally expected since he started the discussion a couple of weeks ago and essentially steered me to my position (though I'd never have backed protecting Davies, Korb, or Woolard independent of other intellectual influences, since my feelings about all three are pretty visceral).

Strategy

Okay, so contra this, Hogeland (actually, Martin Luther King, channelled through Hogeland, and furthered by some logorrhea I read regularly) has convinced me that my thinking was pretty lazy when I wrote that, if assaulted by police for even minor violations of bullshit laws:

your two reasonable and lawful options are to run the fuck away, or put your hands on your head and wait to be arrested. I'm not surprised that some people choose, under that particular stress, to throw shit at the cops, or otherwise resist violently. That they do does not obviate that they were, themselves, assaulted by the state on specious grounds, and it doesn't invalidate the movement.

It's not the first part that's lazy. The lazy and problematic bit is that resisting police instruction, legal or illegal, does constructively invalidate the movement. My problem, in addition to some inherent intellectual laziness, was that I was being far too nice. Hogeland quotes King:

In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law, as would the rabid segregationist. That would lead to anarchy. One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.

Anarchists (I include faux anarchists, pseudo-anarchists, partial anarchists, and mere sophists, without classifying named individuals) will quibble, but King disposes of that pretty neatly; of course they'll quibble. They're against law. I'm so dramatically unconvinced that the answer to lawlessness by power is anarchy that I've just flatly abandoned most of my reading in that realm. I recognize that this puts me squarely in the camp of faith in due process. Is that a religion as dumb as any other? Might it be my downfall, our downfall? Sure. History and math say it's more likely #Occupy's downfall, unless so-called civilization is doomed to fail anyway, and if that's the dilly I'll go apologize to all the faux anarchists, pseudo-anarchists, and partial anarchists if I''m not too busy or too dead. Sophists I'll still shoot, since the collapse of order will leave me free to do so without legal consequence, pretty much the only thing that restrains me now.

A beloved says that all publicity is good publicity. Decency forbids me from going too far with this, but the fatal flaw here is that this maxim goes for pigs as well as for protesters. Would pigs make shit up whether or not protesters are pure? Of course they would. But you have to give them the chance to fuck up thusly, and it's very clear that #Occupy isn't doing so.

To the extent, of course, that #Occupy can be said to be an entity capable of doing one thing or another. But that's a strategic fail that belies more than I'm willing to concede without a fight at this point--and I'm not yet intellectually equipped for that fight, which I might, after all, lose.

Fuck Penn State

First, I'm not objective about this for a variety of reasons. I have a just-barely teenager and a tween, for one. I have also, for my entire life, at least that part of it that I remember, despised the Pennsylvania State University with the flaming passion of a thousand trillion white-hot exploding suns. Penn State may well have been my first hate, though that's so lost in the mists of mental disorder that I couldn't say that with certainty. No matter. Not objective. However.

Those valid issues aside, there's a lot to be disturbed about here. Let's not cry for Zombie Joe Paterno. The PSU board had no choice but to explosively cover its ass, and that's putting it mildly; it's real clear that the PSU president handled this--or failed to--in a spectacularly bad way. Criminal charges against Paterno seem a bit of a stretch to me, but it's pretty clear that even a legend should lose his job for covering for a likely child rapist buddy, even if he did it in a Pontius Pilate, not-my-problem sorta way. This is pretty much no-brain (Brains!) stuff.

The more disturbing issues to me surround the community's reaction. Really? You're actually rioting violently over this? Jesus, talk about bad judgment. Why don't you get jobs, you dirty hippies. And while you're at it, find a message, because "We support guys in power who wash their hands of child rapers" doesn't even have the same resonance as "Give us all your banker stuff because we're unwashed Communist slackers." I think you see the problem here. Rioting in aid of Zombie Joe is just kid stuff, right? Fucking assholes (pick an object).

That's all I have to say about any of this, ever, really. The child raper should be in jail. Zombie Joe should be doddering off quietly into the night. What the fuck is difficult about this, beyond the spectre of the violent and despicable act that started it?

Why I'd Really Like Some People To STFU About #Occupy

I'm not gonna lie; #Occupy annoys me. Not because I disagree or anything. And certainly not because it's physically or logistically inconvenient, though my job will take me to the neighborhood around the World Bank one day this week, which may well be entertaining. But it's not like #Occupy Gaithersburg is on the way. No one's dumb enough to try to occupy Gaithersburg.

Of course #Occupy is intellectually inconvenient: Though I try very hard to leave complicity-whinging to others, how guilty should I feel about the obvious need for massive wealth redistribution? Is my bank evil, and is the bank I'd switch to, if I weren't so fucking lazy, simply less evil? How will my autistic son fare in the new world order, which will presumably include far fewer of the processed crunchy, salty chip-type foods that are, along with pizza and McDonalds, the great mass of his diet? Can I just pay some more taxes and avoid actually getting lined up against the wall like the motherfucker that I am?

But I'm callous, and it's easy for me to give these questions (other than the one about Bam-Bam) only a few moments' thought before I dash off to the next part of the thrill ride that is my day-to-day existence. So that's not it. What annoys me about #Occupy is the massive outburst of fucktardery it engenders.

No Message:  I keep reading about how #Occupy is doomed to fail because it has no message. The level of lazy or obtuse it requires to not be able to discern a message here is stupefying. Look. My personal favorite, for reasons known to those of you who know me as something other than a cartoon Internet rock star, is "You Know Things are Messed Up When Librarians Start Marching." Super bonus points to the librarian in question for fucking up the capitalization, not that that's relevant to the matter at hand. "Close Corporate Tax Loopholes, Tax Religious Groups, End the Wars, Legalize Weed, and Bring Back Arrested Development" is also exceedingly awesome.

So the movement is stupid because not everyone is protesting about the same specific symptom of our culture, our economy, our governance? The movement is irrelevant because you're too lazy to read the signs and discern some obvious themes? Get bent, asshole, but more to the point, shut the fuck up.

The same goes for the linked complaint about the movement's lack of discernable leadership. Look, I think the Greek demos style consensus model is pretty fucking lame, and not tremendously effective in the sense of focus. So the fuck what? Friend Jack Crow makes, as a general proposition, some engaging arguments about power (I don't agree with him when it comes to function, but I find it hard to argue with him about the dynamic). What, exactly, is wrong with letting #Occupy experiment with actualizing shared power--especially when all it's sharing is power over how to protest? 

Dirty Unwashed Hippies: OMGWTFBBQ, how incredibly fucking dreary. Edroso does a better job with this than most of the other bloggers to whom I pay attention. Hippie-bashing (except as practiced by Eric Cartman) is every bit as massively retarded as it was when Richard Fucking Nixon pioneered it. It's especially totemic for fans of police riots. Like...oh. Nixon. Never mind. I don't know what it is about peoples' hair that makes other people want to shoot them. It's pretty fucking psychopathic, no? Unless you're talking about Kyle Beckerman. Someone hold that useless shit down while I shave his head, please.

The dirty unwashed hippie meme has begot the safety and sanitation meme that many cities are using as justification for their police riots. This is pretty fucking simple to me. The First Amendment does not guarantee the right of peaceable assembly as long as you don't take a dump in the park. It doesn't guarantee the right of peaceable assembly as long as you leave room in the park for mommies and their baby carriages. Camping out at McPherson Square is not the same fucking thing as crying wolf in a crowded theatre. Using some turds on the ground as an excuse to suppress the Constitution is like...well, it's not like anything. It is what it is, and the notion that you're in the wrong if you're attacked by rioting police, that you deserve to be shot or gassed or beanbagged or whatever when you're attacked by the state is simply unAmerican. At least it is if you're the Tea Party, which is peopled by citizens who think that the Second Amendment is there to defend them from the government.

I happen to think that, if you're at McPherson Square and the police attack (they won't--it's not surprising or coincidental that DC is among the places where state-sponsored violence hasn't erupted, because My Local Law Enforcers, for all their flavors and stripes and kit, have Been There more times than I can count, and they're not dumb enough to be provoked, which is both gratifying and scary), your two reasonable and lawful options are to run the fuck away, or put your hands on your head and wait to be arrested. I'm not surprised that some people choose, under that particular stress, to throw shit at the cops, or otherwise resist violently. That they do does not obviate that they were, themselves, assaulted by the state on specious grounds, and it doesn't invalidate the movement.


You're Under Arrest for Closing Your Account: Yeah, really. I got to this at a chain of links that began at LGM and ended with a video from #Occupy Santa Cruz.  Two protesters entered a BoA branch in Santa Cruz to close their accounts. No following word on whether, when they left the signs outside the next day, they were allowed to close their accounts, but it says here at Alternet that BoA charges a fee for account closure.

The protesters in that video weren't arrested--in fact, it appears that the Santa Cruz cops, at least the two in the video, aren't stupid. Not so (allegedly) at a Citibank in New York, where Citibank officials (allegedly) locked protesters in and had them arrested as they tried to close their accounts. Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with these people? How fucking stupid/arrogant is "I've got your money, shut up, I'm calling the cops"?

My question earlier was not entirely jokified; the money from which our family operates is in accounts at CapOne, which purchased Chevy Chase, a local/metro operation, a little over a year ago. We're credit union members (Ilse is, as you may recall, a unionized public employee), but that's a pain in the arse logistically. I'm also a USAA member, and I could bank there. While I have the impression that it's not in the same class of banking evil as the big fellas, I don't pay enough attention to know.


You're Fired: BFF and many others wrote last week about Lisa Simeone, who got fired by a production company associated with NPR for her #Occupy-related activities. She may or may not have been unfired; I lost track. NPR may or may not have gotten her fired; I'll never know. Lisa Simeone was no longer a journalist; all of her professional broadcast activities were about music.

More laterly, or maybe concomitantly, a journalist named Caitlin Curran went to an #Occupy protest in New York, and held up a sign, and got photographed, and the photo went all Internetty, and she got canned as a freelance Web producer by The Takeaway, a public radio production of, it appears, no consequence or integrity (hint: their Web site features a NYT semen-exchange widget). Pearl-clutching commentary on her piece on Gawker sets a pretty rigid standard for journalists, apparently allowing no research or opinion of any kind. Of course, we could just tell that to Fox News, but TBogg focuses it even better, reminding us that snarky, stupid #Occupy-basher Erin Burnett, of notoriously liberal mainstream newsfeces outlet CNN, is engaged to a Citibank executive.

Oh, snap.

In Conclusion: Of course, this is all just alternately formed, and better-formed, inconvenient intellect, so all that up top was a fucking lie, at the bottom, like it usually is. And of course I still have no desire to blow up our culture to fix anything. Of course I'm willing to have my life changed some--I'm serious about paying more taxes, about redistributing some of my wealth (which is not, to me or mine, substantial, but is far greater than that of a ridiculous percentage of humans) in some meaningful way, and assuming I'm not the only one going up against the wall--it's not like I'm even close to the one percent.

Here's the biggest intellectual inconvenience: Do those limits to my willingness make me a dick? I don't think so. I don't know if most Occupiers think so, either. But I'm watching and listening, because that's sure something I'd like to know. That others, many better off than me, some less so, are so fucking dismissive of the movement, is their poverty.

All The Nod This Shit Is Getting From Me

There's nearly as much noise about what a pile of shit the 911gasm is as the 911gasm is making itself. Nearly, but different in tenor and still only nearly in quantity. A little while ago (as I write this), United's number 9, Charlie Davies, scored in the 11th minute of a soccer game. Talkybobbleheads went wild for this bit of insignificant random numerology.

Think for a second about how fucked up in the head someone, individually or collectively, has to be to write this:

ON THE 10TH anniversary of al-Qaeda’s attack on New York and Washington, the conventional wisdom seems to be evolving from “We will be hit again” to “Osama bin Laden won by provoking us into a decade of overreaction.”

The feeling is understandable but incorrect, and it would be dangerous if it took hold.

That is a serious contender for the most fucking abysmally retarded thing I've ever read (h/t to Thunder, who linked to this gem of YFWP swill in BFF's comments).

I've never thought that 3,000 people senselessly killed in one day by wackaloons was or is a good thing, and anyone who thinks that the people--American or not--killed in the wars since constitute a good thing is dangerously fucking insane. Apparently, Fred Hiatt disagrees. I'm not going to get all chesty about that part, pretend I'm better because even I can do the pretty simple fucking math here. Nobody of sense or humanity wants fellow citizens murdered. Nobody of sense or humanity wants anyone to die prematurely or needlessly (and I'm not even up for the mental gymnastics of contextifying "needlessly" here). And nobody of sense or humanity could possibly contort the incredibly senseless changes in our national mindset since that day into a good thing, by any measure or in any context. It fails every test of logic, every test of truth, every test of rationality. That's a part I can get chesty about.

But apparently, Fred Hiatt differs, and he thinks I'm wrong. That's why I now call on the President of the United States to use his extraordinary powers--granted by Congress in the past 10 years--to shut Fred Hiatt and Your Fucking Washington Post the fucking fuck up. I'd personally consider that to be an isolated good outcome of 9/11.

Best wishes to you and yours for weathering the next 24 hours; for my part, I dread the afternoon's football games, and the mute button is likely. If you or someone you love lost someone that you or they loved on 9/11, or in the wars we spawned in its name, I am terribly sorry for that, and I respect your right to remember your loss, or theirs, as you see fit. But anyone who tells me that 9/11, or the changes since, are a good thing, and sneers that I'm wrong for thinking otherwise, is certainly a fit motherfucker to be punched.

Feel Good Story of the Year

YFWP brings us an offbeat story that intrigued me when I saw the headline in an actual paper copy of the rag that I was reading while waiting for a bacon-and-egg sammich yesterday morning.

The Supremes' 1896 decision Plessy v. Ferguson was one that staid historians like to call a landmark, and that judgmentarian history geeks like me prefer to call a travesty. Homer Plessy, who was what was once called an octaroon back when people tracked such metrics, and what we would now just call a brown person, was arrested in Louisiana for refusing to leave a whites-only rail car. Louisiana law defined octaroons as brown people and limited them to their own damn rail cars. Hilarity did not ensue, as a state judge named Ferguson held that the state could so prohibit brown persons from occupying the same rail cars as those with less melanin. The case advanced to the Supremes, who held on a 7-1 vote that treating brown persons differently did not demean them. The original Mr. Justice Harlan was the lone dissenter, correctly labelling the decision as every bit as ridiculous as the Dred Scott case. The separate but equal doctrine that followed the decision (doctrinally--of course, in reality conditions were far from equal) held for 58 years, until Brown vs. Board of Education in 1954.

Fast forward to Plessy and Ferguson's descendants. Phoebe Ferguson, the judge's great-great-granddaughter, and Keith Plessy, one generation closer to Homer Plessy (his great-grandfather was Homer's cousin; you figure it out) organized a foundation to teach the history of civil rights through education, preservation, and outreach. It's a tremendous example of how we should all just shut the fuck up and get along.

So do that. Uhm, please.

Updated prior to publication: Jeebus, is Anthony Weiner ever a dumbfuck. On behalf of everyone who continues to believe that there is some difference, thanks for the cockpunch, asshole. Thanks for putting such an incredible, no, impossible fucking strain on the good feelings associated with this post (which I wrote about 4 hours ahead of Weiner's admission that no, never mind, he really did twittertwat pictures of his stuffed boyshorts to random babes, scheduled for publication some hours hence--now in the past with the post unpublished, for reasons I don't bloogergrok). Fucking dipshit.

Rebel Leader Killed

Obi-Wan Kenobi dead after firefight with Imperial stormtroopers, Vader still refuses to release birth certificate.

(via)

On His Knees, Eager To Please

There are those who question the President's motivation in releasing his archived long-form Hawaii birth certificate, who cannot take him at face value. I'm not one of them. I think it's good that he did it, because anyone who continues to focus on the birth certificate as an issue crawls further out the Limb of Discernable Looniness. This includes those who ask why he didn't do it sooner; the answer to that is simply that he already released his fucking birth certificate, under the law of the state of his birth. No further answer to that fucktarded question is necessary.

It's unfortunate that The Trump has chosen to pursue that line of inquiry, because it just exposes him as dumber and dumber, and I really want that Trump/Palin (or Palin/Trump) ticket for 2012. Yes, I maintain that Obama is better than any (labelled) Republican, and better than anarchy or revolution or civil war or whatever the fuck it is that sophists want, if they even know or can agree. But que sera squared, and all that.

So why is it so easy for me to take Obama at face value on this, to believe that he really thinks he was going to put the issue to rest (or, to indulge WaPo gossips, that he got so pissed at George Stephanopoulos that he paid the twenty bucks to pursue a Hawaii state FOIA request)?

Please. Because he's a fucking dumbass, one of the stupidest theoretically smart people who's ever lived. And because he is one of the most pathetically insecure motherfuckers ever to politic. And the worst poker player ever. He really still thinks that Republicans can be his friends, he really thinks that logic plays some role in their machinations, in their disjointed and clannish and lower-Maslovian thought processes.

In short, he's a Jeffersonian. He'll fuck the slaves, oh yes he will, but he can't bear the thought of them figuring out that it's his cock plundering their holes. He doesn't understand why they can't just relax and be happy, and why the only people who can make them relax and be happy are the guys who not only want to rape the slaves, but break it off in their asses and then rape and gutshoot their sisters in front of them.

Wow. Sorry, Rude Pundit moment there. What I meant to say is this:

He's a Jeffersonian. He genuinely believes in the innate goodness of people. Well, fuck that, and God Bless Hobbes and Hamilton. As long as he wants these inbred, insular, xenophobic mongoloids to like him, he'll continue to be an ineffectual and irrelevant piece of lint in the bellybutton of history. What a fucking waste.