The creepiest thing I've seen in quite some time . . . .

This picture made me throw up in my mouth a little. This is really what is meant by "defacing the flag." Ugh!

Quote for the day (Stuff that still applies EVEN MORE Division)

(Via Bette Midler)

If the world made sense, this would happen:

Via benediction

It is truly crazy to incite violence against abortion providers with lies about "baby parts", and then to become self-righteously offended when the connection between your words and someone's violent actions are pointed out. The right-wingnuts own the Planned Parenthood murders. They have cried fire in a crowded theater until some bastard started a blaze, and then they act surprised? Please . . . . .

The 2nd Amendment is More Powerful Than the 7th Commandment

People's right to bear arms always seems to be more important than people's right to expect not to be killed. Or that their kids not get killed in school. Andy Borowitz sums it up, as usual.

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report) – Americans who are opposed to being shot, a constituency that has historically failed to find representation in Washington, are making a new effort to make its controversial ideas heard in the nation’s capital. 

“When you bring up the idea of not wanting to be shot with members of Congress, there’s always been pushback,” Carol Foyler, founder of the lobbying group Americans Opposed to Being Shot, said. “Their reaction has been, basically, ‘Not being shot: who’s going to support something like that?’” 

Foyler, however, believes that the right to not be shot, much like women’s right to vote, the right to same-sex marriage, and other rights that were deemed controversial in their day, may be an idea whose time has finally come. 

“For years, we’ve been talking about the right to not be shot and people have been looking at us like we’re out of our minds,” she said. “But recent polls show that a vast majority of Americans, in fact, do not want to be shot.” 

While Foyler and other anti-being-shot activists believe that Washington may finally be receptive to their radical ideas, Wayne LaPierre, the executive vice-president of the National Rifle Association, is doubtful. “People who don’t want to be shot are a very narrow interest group,” he said.

Good Dog

Keystone Progress Daily Funnies .: Far Left Side, July 26, 2015

Quote for the Day (Rocker Speaking Truth to Power Division)

. . . [C]orporations don’t have children. They don’t have feelings or soul. They don’t depend on uncontaminated water, clean air, or healthy food to survive. They are beholden to one thing — the bottom line. I choose to speak truth to this economic power. - Neil Young (via Jim Hightower on Alternet)

Trump's the rump of the GOP field

 Ah, Donald Trump consistently shows what a hypocritical dumb-ass he is (via Alternet):

The Donald's going to have a hard time doubling down on this one.  

Politico is reporting that Trump, while speaking at a Family Leadership Summit in Ames, Iowa Saturday, told the crowd, "[Sen John McCain] was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren't captured." The two men had been engaged in a media war over the past few days. 

Trump's slight was reportedly met with a scattering of boos from the crowd. 

McCain was held captive in a North Vietnamese prison camp for five-and-a-half years, while Trump received four military deferments between 1964 to 1968.

"Ya big baby!"

I have no trouble that Trump avoided Viet Nam---I won the draft lottery myself, and avoided that awful and illegal conflict, but for someone who utilized his wealth and connections to stay out of the fight to then critcise someone who did wind up in the fray (many of whom had no choice in the matter because they weren't as fortunate as The Donald) is inexcusable. Trump never seems to have any trouble finding a lower pit to bark his bilious statements from. He is a worthless waste of the air he breathes, and that he is taken seriously says more about the quality of our corporate-loving media and the depths the GOP has sunk to that it does about his sorry ass.

Bush-whacked?

Never Forget . . . . .

Is this thing on?

Image from fineartamerica.com by steven-digman

The effort of writing on a little seen blog when it seems the world is going to hell in a very large hand basket is often too much; this is obvious from my infrequent postings. What can be said about cops seeming to have a license to kill African-Americans, billionaires blatantly buying power, racist assholes provoking terrorist assholes to attack, or right wingers fantasizing a military takeover by Obama of Texas? You can't compete with such insane reality.

Nevertheless, I am still here, and I hope to start more frequent missives in this space. Maybe Bernie Sanders running for President has lifted my spirits (which it has), but the springtime weather also is bucking up my psyche. There is hope in this world, and to not see it is to surrender to the forces that would drag us down.

More to come.

Nuts, meet knee . . . .

Is it just me, or do all the GOP front runners in the run up to 2016 look like guys you'd want to knee in the nuts in High School?

. . . and I NEVER kneed anyone in the nuts then!

It's going to be a long year . . . . .

Our country has lost its mind and its principles

America uses torture, report confirms. So what values are we protecting? Is it the same ones we are now subverting? Russell Brand nails it again:



How much torture is too much? How about ANY???

Conservatives Are Weak Terrified P*ssies

Sometimes the polite response to bigotry, idiocy and fear is inadequate. Cenk Uygur gets real with this one:



Scary black kids! That's what these cases are all about. Not racism or unfettered police powers. Right?

Russell Brand nails it

We don't jail the bankers who destroy peoples lives, but we arrest the people who are feeding those people. America's priories are so clear . . . . .

And those CHristian values that so many of our leaders crow about? Apparently, Christian values = Capitalism.

Jesus is weeping.

A letter from our nicer neighbors to the North:

(Via Daily Kos)

No big mystery why the right wingnuts and Repuglicans want to cut funds for education. They want a dumb, scared electorate.

Fracking is fucked up!

(Via Mother Jones)

I have a great idea. Let's take one of the globe's most important agricultural regions, one with severe water constraints and a fast-dropping water table. And let's set up shop there with a highly water-intensive form of fossil fuel extraction, one that throws off copious amounts of toxic wastewater. Nothing could possibly go wrong ... right? Well...

Almost 3 billion gallons of oil industry wastewater have been illegally dumped into central California aquifers that supply drinking water and farming irrigation, according to state documents obtained by the Center for Biological Diversity. The wastewater entered the aquifers through at least nine injection disposal wells used by the oil industry to dispose of waste contaminated with fracking fluids and other pollutants.
The documents also reveal that Central Valley Water Board testing found high levels of arsenic, thallium and nitrates—contaminants sometimes found in oil industry wastewater—in water-supply wells near these waste-disposal operations.

Here where I live in California, people are forbidden (under legal penalties) from washing their cars,among other water use activities, and private well owners are being required to install meters and reduce water usage. These frackers are not only using water, they are poisoning it so it can't be used for other purposes.

It is INSANE to let oil corporations frack at any time, but during a drought like the one we are having it is criminal. If corporations are people, then they should be arrested.

American Priorities

(Via Keystone Daily Funnies)

I often think that we react to things like terror in a way that makes things worse, while we ignore things the monied interests and media don't think we can do anything about. Thus priorities are set . . . .

An amazing article: A Cop's Take on Ferguson

This is part of an amazing article from a former police officer at Daily Kos.

On the Bundy Ranch, armed protesters were violently obstructing law enforcement from performing their duties.  Sniper rifles were pointed at those law enforcement officers. Then those “snipers” openly gloated about how they had the agents in their sights the entire time. And what was the police response?  All out retreat.  Nobody was arrested. No tear gas deployed. No tanks were called in. No Snipers posted in the neighborhood. No rubber bullets fired. Nothing. Police officers in mortal danger met with heavily armed resistance and no one had to answer for it. Could any reasonable person look at scenes coming out of Nevada and say they looked peaceful?

The people who were so quick to cheer the bullies at Bundy Ranch now spew venom at the "thugs" in Ferguson. The racism in this is sickening---and obvious.

Another incredible insight:

As a cop I learned that it’s usually best to wait until you know as much information as possible before you go on the record so I’ll be completely honest;

I don’t know why an unarmed 18 year old was shot multiple times. 

I don't know what that police officer felt in the seconds before he pulled the trigger. 

I don’t know why the Ferguson Police chose to withhold details about this shooting. 

I don’t know why this police chief decided to have SWAT teams on foot patrols. 

I don't know why this police chief deployed Armored Vehicles and Snipers to this area. 

I don’t know why police officers were locking up reporters. 

I don’t know how a community that is 67% black has a police department that is 96% white.

Rather than take responsibility for the slaying of a black child, the authorities attempt to paint him with the "gangster" brush. And the ignorant racists in the media and our country lap it up.

Follow the link and read the whole article. It is a powerful indictment of the brutality and overkill used in this situation. This shit must change!

Hobby Lobby and the Supremes

Shorter version of the Supreme Court Hobby Lobby decision:

Corporations are "people" with religious freedom under the Constitution. Women? Not so much.

Conserative White Male Resentment of the Day

(Via Lawyers, Guns and Money) Conserative White Male Resentment of the Day  They call it rollin' coal---I call it rollin' ASSHOLES! There is a whole lot of insanity going on . . . . .

Don't Be a Dick (Cheney, that is)

(Via The Borowitz Report)

BAGHDAD —In a development that offers a faint glimmer of hope for Iraq, both Sunnis and Shiites are finding common ground in the view that former Vice-President Dick Cheney seriously needs to shut up.

In the days following the publication, this week, of a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece about Iraq that Cheney wrote with his daughter Liz, hatred of the former Vice-President has, to the surprise of many, become the first thing that Sunnis and Shiites have agreed upon in centuries. 

Iraqi observers in recent days have reported seeing both Sunnis and Shiites reading the Cheneys’ op-ed then tearing it to shreds in a rage. 

“Cheney is an ass!” a Sunni merchant reportedly exclaimed in a Baghdad market on Thursday, to the resounding cheers of several Shiites nearby. 

“Historically, it’s been challenging to find anything that Sunnis and Shiites agree on,” said Sabah al-Alousi, a history professor at the University of Baghdad. “That’s why their apparent consensus that Dick Cheney needs to shut the hell up is so significant.” 

Visiting Baghdad on Friday, Secretary of State John Kerry said that the joint Sunni-Shiite calls for Dick Cheney to shut his pie hole were a cause for optimism. 

“If Dick Cheney winds up being the one thing that brings Sunnis and Shiites together, the United States owes him a debt of thanks,” he said, adding that the two sects’ view of the former Vice-President was also shared by the Kurds.