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.]

Information Free

Beloveds know I've been recovering from pneumonia for over two weeks now. Please focus on "recovering" rather than on "pneumonia." Thank you.

Items and judgments:

The Surveillance State: Yes. Of course it's bad. You think it's news? Holy shit, how do you keep from drowning when you look up in the rain?

Glenn Greenwald: Shut the fuck up and enjoy the Confederations Cup, you self-promoting bitch. Or the protests against it. I don't give a fuck. Just shut the fuck up.

VRA: Holy shit. What a pack of fucking tools.

DOMA: Isn't John Roberts a fascinating human being? Savior and tool? Jeebus.

That'll do. Vamos United.

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.

Fine Canadian Wine

So yesterday the US Womens National Team beat the Canadians in an Olympic semifinal game, 4-3, in extra time, to advance to the gold medal game. It was wacky in a number of ways, and the Canadians are feeling unjustifiably aggrieved about the whole thing. Let's discuss this, and let's not bother to do it kindly, because the Canadians are collectively way the fuck off their stereotypically polite nut about this whole thing.

It started with the Canadian coach, a Kiwi asshole named John Herdman, trying to work the referees in the presser the day before the game. I foolishly misread Herdman's performance (I mean other than the part about him being an asshole); I thought it portended a lot of Canadian diving. I was wrong, as Canadian forward Melissa Tancredi showed immediately by committing two brutal, bookable fouls within the first minute of the game. By our count, Tancredi was responsible for 9 of the 19 fouls called on the Canadians (USWNT was called for 20, all legit in reality and many of them questionable in light of what the Canadians were getting away with), which alone should've gotten her red-carded for persistence; she committed another dozen or so that went uncalled.

So the despicable fuckface John Herdman's strategy, then, was to try to neutralize the officials when he planned to turn the game into a rugby match. I don't have a problem with this, in and of itself. The Canadians have spent 11 years showing that they can't beat the US team at soccer. It's perfectly understandable that they'd want to try something else.

And it was working. The Canadian's persistent chippy fouls and outright brutality got their star player, Christine Sinclair, into prime attacking position three times--and she closed the deal on each, fueled by the Canadians' dislike of the US team coupled with her own personal rivalry with Abby Wambach, USWNT's (and, until yesterday, the world's) leading scorer. Good on her. In addition to three very well-played goals, I'll credit Sinclair (who I've never liked, but I have to acknowledge that she can score) with not personally participating in the brutality.

With the US down 3-2, Erin McLeod decided to deliberately delay the game by holding the ball; apparently, she'd been warned about that (she admitted as much, though it was a whiny, so-what sort of admission). The referee called her on it and awarded an indirect free kick inside the box--which bounced off of the arms of two Canadians. One arm was tucked. The other wasn't. Wambach converted the ensuing penalty to equalize, and the game was settled in the closing moments of extra time by an Alex Morgan header as USWNT fans collapsed in exhaustion and confusion.

This has unleashed a torrent of whining from Canadians who apparently didn't understand their team's strategy of fouling early, often, and hard, which had to that point been quite successful. They're wrong. The McLeod call was legitimate; no, it's not called often. Teams also don't often pursue a strategy of deliberately cheating, and get away with that even less often. To be offended at being called on it at a critical moment--with an admittedly dire result--is pretty poor. The handball wasn't deliberate, but Eve-Marie Nault's arm was well away from her body. She was making no effort to tuck it. The call is discretionary, but completely legit.

In short? Shut the fuck up, Canada. You rolled. You lost. I'll freely admit that your hypocritical whining in the aftermath makes me all the more happy to taste your bitter tears, but really? That's your doing.

Updated:

FIFA is investigating comments that Herdman and the Canadian players made in the wake of their failure.

In the same story, Abby Wambach admits that she lobbied for the McLeod call by counting out loud while McLeod was holding the ball and pretending to look for a play.

Video: NBC captures the utterly innocent and blameless Melissa Tancredi deliberately stomping on Carli Lloyd's head.

YFWP: Christine Sinclair whines.

AP (from YFWP): The delay call, discussed.

I repeat: shut the fuck up, Canada. And anything nice I said about Christine Sinclair? Fuck that. What a classless piece of shit. I hope FIFA disciplines her and her coach for explicitly accusing the referee of fixing the match.

Also updated:

Bronze medal game, 8 AM Eastern time on Thursday. Go France, not that the Canadians' utterly reprehensible behavior has altered that--the only time I'm not pulling for the French women is when they're playing the US.

More updating:

From the FIFA Laws of the Game (Law 12):

An indirect free kick is awarded to the opposing team if a goalkeeper, inside his own penalty area, commits any of the following four offences:

• controls the ball with his hands for more than six seconds before releasing it from his possession

In short: seriously, Canada. Shut the fuck up.

Excess

Ilse and I are on a vacation swing, having started on Sunday with dinner with her parents, Joseph and Jesusina, at an ostentatious meat palace in the capital of the Confederacy. We stayed at a modest (in American terms) hotel, and continued the next day, driving our gas-guzzling vehicle (at a high rate of speed, guzzling extra gas) on to North Carolina, where we spent two days visiting my mother, the She-Nurse of the SS, and her boyfriend. We ate modestly, but we ate, and we stayed in a slightly less nice hotel at my mother's expense (she and her gigolo just moved to a smaller place that doesn't have really room for overnight guests, not American ones anyway). We drove on, again at a pretty high rate of speed, to Asheville, North Carolina, a beautiful place, where last night we ate a seriously fat-ass meal and stayed in a hotel of the same chain we stayed at in Richmond.

So why am I so pissed off at what I visited today? A ginormous emblem of excess and rapacious capitalism, Biltmore House is a serious candidate for the capitol of capitalism. Rife with pillaged treasures and the produce of years of exploitation of Americans who couldn't afford it, the mansion is a vomitorious display. BFF characterized it as "amazing and appalling;" he's right, but I'm having trouble getting past the appalling part.

I'd like to think I'm not just pissed off because I just don't have the balls to be that fucking evil. And I wish I were sure that would be intellectually honest.

Wow. What a Fucking DICK.

Meet Alexander (Sasha) Semin. Erratic sometime goal-scorer. Moody European skating fairy who fights like a girl:



Former Washington Capital. Pissy little emo bitch who signed with a division rival.

Fuck you, Sasha Semin. Headhunting in hockey is despicable and wrong, but it'll be worth the 10-game suspension that Ovie will get for destroying your poncy ass the first chance he gets.

Dick.

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.

Fuck You, You Rapist Pigs

I'm sick to death of this nonsense. If you give a flying fuck about other people having consensual sex, then drop dead puking, screaming, and bleeding from your fucking pores, you insufferably evil bag of censorious shit. I really can't conceive of anything more indecent than passing laws requiring women to be medically raped for any reason, and denying women health care coverage based on your concept of morality is the fucking nadir of theoretically free thought. Die. Just die.

Also, what Digby said.

Also, h/t to Tbogg for the Digby and for this:

Fucking assholes. Just die.

Nothing To Say

It's been a month since I posted; this post serves only to assert that I continue to exist, and that you're welcome to use this space as a navigational tool. The volume and quality of fucktardery haven't changed, and the same things are and are not. Some maybe more; if you give a fuck about other people having sex, shut the fuck up. If you think the Washington Capitals suck for any discernable reason other than the long absence of Mike Green and the continuing absence of Nick Backstrom (whose rapist scored on the Capitals last night--thanks, Brendan Shanahan, you gormless fucking cocksucker), shut the fuck up. Especially and totally, if you give a fuck about the Republican primaries for any reason other than the pure entertainment value of people taking Rick Santorum seriously, shut the fuck up a whole lot. If you think vaccines are bad, shut the fuck up a whole lot, and please consider dying painfully, too.

I'll go back to the first for a moment; Sasha's poignant mention of an asshole Virginia legislator who didn't get laid because he supports state-sanctioned rape is worth a look, though to be honest, the guy is such a smarmy piece-of-shit fuckwit that I have trouble believing he's ever been laid.

But that's all I got. I'm just asserting that I continue to am. Y'all continue too.

Shorter NBC Sports Ice Hockey Broadcasting Crew

My goodness, the Pittsburgh Penguins' cocks certainly are tasty. Slurp. Yum.

(It's 1-0 Caps at the first intermission, the Pens down on an abysmally dumb turnover by Yevgeni Malkin, whose cock is apparently the yummiest, since poor Cindy Crysby was tragically and brutally struck down in his prime by a Washington Capital, and yet Doc Emrick and Eddie Olczyk still can't shut the fuck up about how fucking primo mega-alpha dominant Malkin is. And don't fucking get me started on that egregious can't-die-hard-enough asshole Mike Milbury. Furthermore, Marc-Andre Fleury has bobbled the puck on easy handles four fucking times, two of which almost resulted in goals, one of which was denied only by the graceless turdery of Alexander Semin, and yet these NBC fucks can't stop picking on Tomas Vokoun--who is wretched and should leave my fucking city on the first stagecoach, but who is playing reasonably well thus far tonight. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck NBC Sports.)

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.

Oh, For Fucks Sake

Twice.

First, there's some lunatic who decided that it'd be fun to hit #Occupy protesters with his car down by the Convention Center in two separate incidents on Friday night. Accounts differ sharply about what happened, though the police are investigating one incident as a hit-and-run and cited or arrested six pedestrians, Occupiers all, in the other. Apparently both incidents involved the same driver. DC Police Chief Cathy Lanier, who is usually a pretty reasonable egg (and her position here is disappointing, though unsurprising despite her usual tendency toward reason), has had enough of this; her press statement today called the Occupiers "increasingly confrontational and violent," belying my earlier conviction that MPD would be smart enough not to engage.

I have no trouble believing that the following things are true:

-Some asshole wanted to commit vehicular assault against Occupiers.
-Some Occupiers were dumb enough to believe that no one was crazy enough to commit vehicular assault against them.
-The Occupiers were in a particularly irritable humor that night, since the event they were protesting at was an Americans for Prosperity dinner gala.
-MPD is pretty fucking tired of this shit, and also, two different sets of cops, of varying levels of sympathy, handled the two different incidents, five minutes and no more than two blocks apart.

Of course, if I'm right, it doesn't negate vehicular assaults. Nor does it negate the consequences of violent protest, if that's in fact what was occurring. To be clear, my opinion is that probably both of those things occurred. My opinion, my asshole, right?


But it's not doing anything to improve my humor about the mass of dickweeds who are expressing unbridled joy that maybe some protesters got assaulted for the crime of creating an inconvenience, or their fervid wish that these unwashed loser hippies would just get jobs, which are of course plentiful, except when we're talking about President Negro. In fact, it in no way makes motherfuckers who need to shut the fuck up a whole lot any less motherfucking tiresome.

Second, there's the growing parade of women who've allegedly been harassed or assaulted by Herman Cain, and the legion of retards suggesting that they're all whores, that Bill Clinton was worse, or that liberals are responsible for the sudden outpouring of information about candidate Cain's behavior as president of the National Restaurant Association. I'll go all in on Dahlia Lithwick; my lede for this item goes way too easy on lying motherfuckers, because what they're really saying is that sexual harassment doesn't exist.

I don't profess to know what happened, but actual legal settlements by the candidate's employer sort of point to some conviction on their part that something did, in fact, actually happen. Contemporary witness accounts--attested by affidavit--also tend to militate toward the notion that this isn't bullshit. Conservatives' conviction that Monica Lewinsky was the last victim of sexual harassment need to be met with punches in the mouth.

I've read a lot about how the shadow of sexual harassment has permanently changed workplace social dynamics. I have something to say about this. I've been wrongly accused of sexual harassment. I've been rightly accused of sexual harassment in one instance, at least in the sense that, while my actual behavior was unthreatening, inoffensive, and irrelevant, I damn sure wanted to do something inappropriate with the accuser, and while I didn't overtly manifest that, my behavior was probably such, in some way, that she picked up on that vibe (I beat the rap, which didn't negate my Carterian heartlust). And in another instance, I was involved in a wildly inappropriate relationship with a colleague that she could easily have perceived as harassment, had she chosen to do so (she didn't, and in fact wallowed willingly in the inappropriateness, but that doesn't change what could easily have been).

This shit's real. It was a long time ago. I was younger. But it's all real. I was a dick. I got better, at least I think I did--my last brush with a grievance was over a dozen years ago (it was wrongful--the righteous one was farther back, and to be fair, I got out of the business of managing people for about 7 of those years). Does the shadow of those happenings affect the way I act now? Fucking A. I examine my behavior in the light of my past. But what casts the shadow is my behavior, not the threat of what people might do if they don't like me. And what that shadow darkens is any intention I might have of being a dick. This cannot be construed as a bad thing. It provides additional internal motivation--as if I need any--to not be an asshole.

My past has convinced me that truth will out. Herman Cain's behavior is a perfect model of a guy who's scared shitless that truth is outing.

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.

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.

Rock the Constitution

Yeah, just go ahead and use crosshairs on a map to delineate your political opponents, former Governor Qutter. Everyone believes that you're not inciting anybody. Instaputz nails the logic.

My hero for today: Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik:

"When you look at unbalanced people, how they respond to the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government. The anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous."

That's one righteously pissed off lawman, there. 


It's pretty clear that the guy who shot Gabrielle Giffords was sick beyond measure, in ways well beyond politics (I got a look at the guy's YouTube stuff before they pulled it down--he's a rambling, delusional, incoherent paranoid, and if any of my usual commenters want to pretend I have a sense of humor about this, try me.). Dumbasses like Sarah Palin, who lied about her "sincere condolences" in the wake of her now-successful incitement to criminal acts against lawfully elected politicians, need to understand that being a public figure doesn't grant the right to hate speech, the right to incite criminally insane persons to violent acts that transcend decent peoples' ability to comprehend. 

Fuck you, Sarah Palin, you ignorant piece of snowbilly trash, you fetid pile of diseased moose shit. Go to the fucking fiery Hell you deserve, and claim to believe in.

Please Accept This Olive Branch What I Has Lovingly Coated In Poison Ivy For Your Own Good. Bitch.

So...uhm...as you've no doubt heard, Mrs. Clarence Thomas left a voicemail at 7:30 AM on a Saturday at Professor Anita Hill's office number, gently suggesting that Professor Hill apologize for testifying about Mrs. Thomas' husband's sexual harassment all those years ago, and pray for some understanding of her own behavior. I'm sure you've read the details.

We know it was really Mrs. Clarence Thomas because she said so: “I did place a call to Ms. Hill at her office extending an olive branch to her after all these years, in hopes that we could ultimately get past what happened so long ago,” she said. “That offer still stands. I would be very happy to meet and talk with her if she would be willing to do the same. Certainly no offense was ever intended.”

Briefly: Yes, it was.

Less briefly: Really? That's an olive branch? How do you act when you're being a malicious cunt, then? I mean, seriously, we've got to be able to tell the difference.

Via LGM: Three Things to Remember When Clarence Thomas's Wife Calls You.

I've heard tell of the wingnutosphere going apeshit over Professor Hill referring the matter to Brandeis University Security, but can't find linkage, at least not without searching more deeply and hitting more wingnutty sites than I'd care to do.

Things I Learned on the Internets

After a dreadful week of banditry, I finally slumped down at my laptop to catch up on the Intertubes and find out what happened this week. I'm going to be a lazy dick and mostly not use links (it's a quiz; "Landru, I don't fucking care about your blogroll" does, of course, constitute a passing grade), but I'll note that I'm grateful to blackDogred for tips on some several of these bits of learning.

1. Libertarians are fucking retards. There is no respect in which this statement fails. Period.

2. One of my brother's school chums died this week. While the guy did a couple of remarkably dumb things--a (self-inclusive) hallmark of schooldays contemporaries, actually--he was also, it seems, pretty dedicated to the city of Gophershole (I imagine someone needs to be), and it's all pretty fucking sad.

3. The New York Times lies. A lot. I have no idea whether Richard Blumenthal is a good guy or a bad guy, but the Times sure Gorefucked the hell out of him.

4. It appears that my driving has not improved as much as I had thought, and that makes me sad and humble. Take comfort, aggrieved victim; no one will be in the back seat when I drive the exact same route next weekend.

5. As a corollary to number one, Rand Paul is a very special fucking retard who does far more than prove number one.

6. Some people are so fucking sick that they want to reflect on whether Dora the Explorer (who, as a victim of meme exhaustion, I dislike, but who is not actually a horrible thing) is an illegal immigrant. I have had enough. When my horrible, frustrated, anger-induced downfall comes, it will come over this incredibly butt-stupid issue, probably because some sick fucking racist retard has the fucking temerity to tell me how brown people are stealing our country and that doesn't make him a racist. Shut up, you lying motherfuckers.

7. Seriously, libertarians are actually fucking retarded, in a medical sense. They should have guardians appointed for them, be unallowed to manage their own affairs. They're that fucking stupid.

8. Some (likely British) assclown thinks Joe Cole is worth a lengthy blog post. That's really very funny. Quite possibly the funniest thing of the week.

9. Rand Paul is so fucking retarded that he is causing pigs to fly.

10. That's all some pretty grim shit, except for the Joe Cole thing, so I should wrap the list with the upbeat thing I learned from the Intertubes (not that I actually learned it, I'm just well reminded): Planet rocks. Classically. But rocks nonetheless. Might want to leave off with the Debussy, because French things that aren't food don't really do anyone any good. But Mozart loud and proud, Best Kid Evar, and rock on.

Things That Trouble Me

Comedy Central's censoring of the latest episode of South Park certainly fits, and I don't have an easy point of view here. The sort of terrorism that led to the censorship is personal. That's a little different from my usual, cold, numbers-based approach to random terror. On the other hand, my view of religion is well-defined; keep yours out of my face, whether it's Jesus-based or Allah-based or Gummi-Bears-based. Matt Stone and Trey Parker have a pretty absolute free speech right here; the terrorists threatening them--or the terrorist wannabe douchebags threatening them in the name of terrorism--are pretty full of shit. On the other hand, Comedy Central ain't the gummint. Stone and Parker have a right to not be afraid. Comedy Central has a business. The Supreme Court of My Head is declining cert and wants to take a long nap.

I do not understand the current vogue for the phrase "epistemic closure," and while I probably have the wherewithal to search out the necessary reading, I certainly don't have the energy, because I know it will just sap whatever energy I have left. It appears to be some massive conflagration involving douchebags, some quite probably from my side. If anyone feels like explaining this in a paragraph or less, I'll be grateful. If not...well, you're not my monkeys. At least those of you aren't Ilse aren't my monkeys.

The Securities and Exchange Commission had 3,962 employees in 2008, according to its budget justification. 33 of them got busted for looking at porn on government computers, some while on work time. That's 0.8 percent. I defy you to find an organization where 0.8 percent of employees aren't looking at, or trying to look at, porn on their work computers. The issue has precisely nothing--possibly even less--to do with financial regulation or the pending legislation thereon. So shut up, Darrell Issa, you lying motherfucker. Of course people should be disciplined for looking at porn on government computers. Pretending that the impact of their behavior on the financial crisis had an impact greater than zero is fucking retarded. Which, come to think of it, is a pretty good descriptor for Darrell Issa. Shut up, you lying motherfuckers.

Finally: the hockey. Capitals Insider gives us a brief video of one fan--ONE--staying positive. I've been lucky enough to spend most of my time in the Phone Booth down in the lower bowl this season, where one is a little better insulated from fucktardery. Last night, a kind friend gave me a free ticket (and a lovely date with Purple, with whom I had spent very little time of late) in the upper deck. Section 424 is considerably more proletarian than the lower bowl, and it showed in my neighbors' overall level of cognitive development (so did the amount of beer they had consumed). The appalling lack of knowledge about the rules of the game (no, fucktard, when a guy crosses the line ahead of the puck, it is, in fact, offsides, and a tripping call is not, in fact, appropriate every single time a warrior for the home team falls down on bad ice), its players (Mike Green is a motherfucking Norris Trophy finalist whether or not I think he should win it, you fucking dipshits, and even those have bad games), and reality in general (there are, in fact, more persons of Canadian extraction playing for the Capitals than for Les Mamafuckers du Froggerville, so stop fucking chanting "USA! USA! USA!", you fucking inbred cracker pieces of dysenteric shit), was pretty jawdropping.

The Caps lost to cut their series lead to 3-2, mostly because Les Habs wanted it more, a perfectly understandable, if loathsome, state of affairs. It's no big deal, however much we'd like it to be (I am contemplating the possibility that a depressive mindset that I've always attributed to Terps fandom may in fact be more broadly regional that I've thought, and I may or may not get back to you about that), though I will not be happy if we end up in a Game 7 (uhm, not least because it would coincide with a DCU home game, which I would most assuredly miss). And I really don't like it when objective evidence tends to confirm Steinz' recent assertion (affirmed by Himself, though I now can't find the post, which makes me think I maybe hallucinated that bait--what say you about that, dogma-N?) that Caps fans are teatards.

Panty-Wetting

Yes, a brown person (presumably--do they have any other kind in Nigeria?), apparently Muslim in nature, tried to blow up an airplane on U.S. soil. Let's review some fundamental and related reality-based principles:

• Most Muslims do not, in fact, hate us so much that they're fucking insane enough to set their balls on fire trying to blow up an airplane.
• It's sort of miraculous that they don't, since we keep bombing their civilians and claiming we killed terrists.
• One guy--a guy who any moron should've noticed shouldn't be on a fucking airplane--slipping through security in Amsterdam is not a reason to impose further violations of common sense on air travel, which is already afflicted with a plethora of common sense violations.
• How many people on the airplane? Maybe 250? Who weren't killed? How many died on International Terrorists Fucked Our Sister Day? 3,000, give or take? Right. How many Iraqi and Afghani civilians have we killed in the last 8 years? Tens of thousands (my estimate is low, to keep the discussion reasonable--if you won't admit to that many, you're just a lying fuckwit)? Right. Shut the fucking fuck up.
• Whoa. Crazy guy who set his balls on fire is the son of a Nigerian banker, and his father turned him in? Wow! Nigerian bankers are scammers, right? Something fishy about this, right? Wrong. Shut the fucking fuck up.
• You're not scared enough about this, right? You need to do something about it, like beat the shit out of anyone on your airplane who's got a blanket or a laptop or needs to take a dump, right? Wrong. Shut the fucking fuck up. Unless someone very nearby your location has actually set their balls on fire, remain calm. Since the statistical incidence of this is something like 1 in every 94 trillion passenger air miles, you'll probably get to remain calm indefinitely.
• This is all related to the fact that Landru smokes, right? Wrong. Shut the fucking fuck up, Purple.

We live in a fear-driven, fascist country. Last year's elections did not, and could not have, changed anything about that.¹ Now, do I advocate standing up and taking action against all that? Fuck no. These crazy Nazi cocksuckers have guns and shit. Do I think it's worth noting? Yeah. Yeah, it is. Calm down and change your fucking panties.

Update: Seriously. Just fucking stop it. Idiots.

Another update: Nate Silver validates my numerology. Generically, I mean. He's not saying, "Look, Landru's numbers are good." He doesn't know that I'm a statistical genius. But yeah, something like one terrorist incident for every 16.5 million departures. One terrorist incident every 11.5 billion miles flown. Calm down and change your fucking panties, you warjunkie fearmongering twats. Just plain shut the fucking fuck up. (Thanks dogma-N.)

One more update: A related point of view. Poor people don't get blowed up by Islamunofascists.

¹ Why yes. Yes, I did fucking tell you so.