Yes, They Are What You Don't Want to Think They Are

Yes, Indeed They Are

What you see above are "cookies." These are cookies that a kid brought to her second grade classroom as the weekly reward for her classmates' good work. Her mother made them for the class. Her feminist, insane mother. She told the teacher that she thought it would be a good teaching aid for the second graders to learn about vaginas. (No, I am not making this up. How could anybody make up such a thing?) You can read the whole story from the teacher's keyboard right here. Including and not to be missed, the email from the mom to the teacher after the nasty shouting incident in the classroom in front of all the second-graders in which the word "vagina" was used in a loud voice at least 987,000 times, according to the teacher. The email which ended "I hope you end up with an abusive husband that beats on you every night."

We are a doomed people.

Break a Leg!

Are you ready for this? Some guy in Portland, Oregon, had his leg broken in multiple places as the result of an altercation with employees of a Costco store. The dude, named Timothy Walls, is suing the story for $670,000. Apparently he took exception to an employee of the store grabbing his basket as he was leaving because he had not shown his sales receipt on his way out. (They do this at Sam's too, but with people who are so old they make me look young. One presumes it was the same in Portland, but we don't know from the news story.)  According to the report, another employee--not the one who performed the original stop--laid some sort of Ninja move that he learned in the military on Walls and that resulted in the multiple fractures to his leg. Walls claims the store did not have the right to detain him just because he had not shown his receipt.

I tell you this story not because it's surprising--who knows anymore in this country what can happen to you if you exhibit any kind of behavior outside the norm?--but because my sympathies are automatically with the shopper, and I wonder how you feel about it after reading the account.

Right!

Of course, you don't.

Same Formula, Same Result

Sign is from six years ago; the sentiment is timeless

Our Nobel Peace Prize winning president has launched us into another war in the Middle East. I don't know how much more cockamamie the reasoning has to be before somebody with some sense in Congress or anywhere else stands up and hollers "This is bullshit!" All of it. Every last scrap. Haven't we learned anything from the past ten years of war? Here we are embarking on another crusade for truth, justice, and the American way against enemies we've characterized as more evil than Satan. Wasn't this what we said about the communists? Al Qaeda? Every enemy we've ever had?

Now here we are again: committing the country to a war to solve a problem that from the beginning the administration and the Pentagon both say there is no military solution for. In what universe does this make sense? We've been here, we've done this. We're not even fully extracted from the disaster that was the Afghanistan war. And of course you've noticed that the administration and the generals are all being very careful to tell us that this action will not be of short duration. It will take years.

My God. How many more billions are we going to sink into the business of killing? We are an insane people to put up with this while our own country is falling down around our ears.

Here are some links of people who are as distressed as I am: no military solution; apocalypse now; real reason we're bombing Syria.

Cowardly Dissimulating Midgets

The wonderful phrase is James Kuntsler's from his angry blog this week entitled "Barbarism vs Stupidism" which begins thus: "In my lifetime, the USA has not blundered into a more incoherent, feckless, and unfavorable foreign policy quandary than we see today." Notice, he tells us, how the crisis in Ukraine has disappeared from the news and front pages. Why? Because:

The US-led campaign to tilt Ukraine to Euroland and NATO — and away from the Russian-led Eurasian Customs Union — turned an “intelligence” fiasco into a strategic humiliation for the Obama White House. . . . So, the reason that all this has vanished from the news media is that it’s game-over in Ukraine. We busted it up, and can do more with it, and pretty soon the rump Ukraine region run out of Kiev will go crawling back to Russia begging for a little heating fuel.

And this before he sinks his teeth into the incredibly insane policy we've just initiated in Syria.

Does any tattoo-free American adult outside the Kardashian-NFL mass hypnosis matrix feel confident about the trajectory of US policy regarding the so-called Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL)? First, there is the astonishing humiliation that this ragtag band of psychopaths managed to undo ten years, 4,500 US battle deaths, and $1+ trillion worth of nation-building effort in Iraq in a matter of a few weeks this summer. The US public does not seem to have groked the damage to our honor, self-confidence, and international standing in this debacle. . . .

We’ll look back on these weirdly placid years after the 2008 train wreck with amazement. These are the rudderless years of no leadership, of cowardly dissimulating midgets. A people can only take so much of that.  

Although I agree almost totally with Kuntsler, particularly in his disgust for the imbecility that passes for leadership of this country, I'm not sure I agree that the NLF-saturated, smug, overfed gullible idiots who allow their government get away with so many monstrous lies and to perpetrate an unending stream of outrages on common sense without taking to the streets in dudgeon right now will one day be stirred enough to register some massive protest to these crimes. I agree with the general proposition that people can only take so much, but don't you see? We're past the point of doing anything about it. We've let things go too far to get anything changed without a blood bath ensuing. We'll be gunned down like dogs if the national security state decides that we finally get it. And half of us, at least, will be right there with the storm troopers applauding the final crushing of American constitutional democracy, not that we're not well on the road already.

It's Far Worse

"When I woke up today, I thought I knew roughly how much of a problem income inequality is in America. But then I saw this graph showing just how much the richest 1 percent make, and it shook me to my core so completely that I now realize everything I thought I knew is wrong: The bottom 70 percent of Americans are actually experiencing NEGATIVE growth since the year 2000. Down is really up! The richest 1 percent have tripled their money EVERY year since 2005." (Source)

Tight vs. Not

Another Version of Red

Apologies for the cramped image. This was the best the software could arrange. You will find the source of this interesting view of the US here. (I should note here that the disappeared states of New Hampshire and Maine are the same color as their New England neighbors, i.e., not up tight.

"According to the study, states with strict regulations in their communities — such as dry counties, frequent death penalty sentences, strict school discipline and gay marriage bans — are "tight." Everything from the numbers of cops per capita to rates of substance use to the availability and access to booze, were considered when classifying some states as "tighter" — meaning "strongly enforced rules and little tolerance for deviance" — than their "loose" neighbors, in this case meaning states with "greater tolerance for deviance."

There's considerably more that went into it, and reading the source that is referenced above will give you a fuller picture. I cannot say I'm very surprised by this.

Neighborly Spirit in HI

I cannot believe stuff like this happens. I guess I'm just too old and naive. And she's got her little kid in the car. What's he going to turn out like? I cannot imagine acting like this in front of one of my kids under any circumstances. Lord help us all.

The Death of the Liberal Class

Chris Hedges talking about the main ideas of his book, The Death of the Liberal Class. The man makes a lot of sense.

Up, up, up . . .