Category: Stupid

Headline of the Day

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DEA Warns of Stoned Rabbits if Utah Passes Medical Marijuana.

The dead enders in the drug prohibition industry have become increasingly shrill as the rest of the population realizes that prison works to fight drug use like gasoline puts out fires.

The story gets even weirder:

Utah is considering a bill that would allow patients with certain debilitating conditions to be treated with edible forms of marijuana. If the bill passes, the state’s wildlife may “cultivate a taste” for the plant, lose their fear of humans, and basically be high all the time. That’s according to testimony presented to a Utah Senate panel (time stamp 58:00) last week by an agent of the Drug Enforcement Administration.

“I deal in facts. I deal in science,” said special agent Matt Fairbanks, who’s been working in the state for a decade. He is member of the “marijuana eradication” team in Utah. Some of his colleagues in Georgia recently achieved notoriety by raiding a retiree’s garden and seizing a number of okra plants

.(emphasis original)

Illegal pot growing does constitute an environmental issue, frequently the farms contribute to erosion, and apply various agricultural chemicals to excess, but stoned bunny rabbits?

Seriously?

I think that this “Reefer Madness” bullsh%$ needs to be called out.

I will note that the Utah senate panel went with sanity, as opposed to the, “Think of the poor bunnies,” claptrap, and passed the bill along to the state senate.

Why Scott Walker Said Something Batsh%$ Insane………

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At CPAC, Scott Walker implied that union activists and the terrorist group ISIS are equivalent:

At the Conservative Political Action Conference on Thursday, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker drew a comparison between Islamic State militants and the Wisconsin union protesters with whom he has repeatedly clashed since 2011.

In response to a question about how he would deal with global threats such as the one posed by ISIS, Walker drew from his personal experience.

“If I can take on a 100,000 protesters, I can do the same across the world,” Walker said on the CPAC stage, after giving a longer answer about how he would handle ISIS if he were the president.

Rather unsurprisingly, Democratic firebrand Senator condemned the comments.

Rather more surprising is the fact that he was condemned on the (web) pages of the reactionary mouthpiece The National Review:

But former Texas Gov. Rick Perry quickly criticized Walker’s remarks. And NRO’s Jim Geraghty was appalled:

That is a terrible response. First, taking on a bunch of protesters is not comparably difficult to taking on a Caliphate with sympathizers and terrorists around the globe, and saying so suggests Walker doesn’t quite understand the complexity of the challenge from ISIS and its allied groups.

Secondly, it is insulting to the protesters, a group I take no pleasure in defending. The protesters in Wisconsin, so furiously angry over Walker’s reforms and disruptive to the procedures of passing laws, earned plenty of legitimate criticism. But they’re not ISIS. They’re not beheading innocent people. They’re Americans, and as much as we may find their ideas, worldview, and perspective spectacularly wrongheaded, they don’t deserve to be compared to murderous terrorists.

No one should be shocked by Walker’s statement.  Statements like this are a required part of running for office as a Republican, particularly for Presidential candidates.

There is a cultural imperative among Republicans to troll liberals/Democrats.

When a Republican candidate says something that makes non-Republican heads explode, it is seen as an independent good by the base.

The issue these days is that each time a Republican tries to make liberal heads explode, the bar keeps getting moved further down the road toward “to crazy even for Republicans”, and these days the line is pretty narrow.

It’s stupid, it’s immature, and it is exceedingly juvenile, but that is today’s Republican party in a nut shell.

Guck Foogle

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After requiring that blogs with adult content to label themselves as such for over a decade (forever in internet time) Google is now using this labeling to kick the blogs out:

Google is banning public explicit photos and videos from its blogging service Blogger, and giving affected users just one month to comply.

The new rules require any blog with “sexually explicit or graphic nude images or video” to take them down by 23 March, or the blog will be made private by Google. A private blog can only be seen by the owner or admins of the blog, and people who the owner has shared the blog with.

Google promises that the majority of users of the service, which Google acquired from Twitter co-founder Evan Williams’ Pyra Labs in 2003, won’t see any change from the new rules. But many users are concerned that the new rules represent a huge about-turn from Google’s previously stated support of explicit material on its platform. The company’s previous policy said: “We do allow adult content on Blogger, including images or videos that contain nudity or sexual activity … All blogs marked as ‘adult’ will be placed behind an ‘adult content’ warning interstitial.” Its only exceptions were to ban illegal explicit content, explicit images shared without the subject’s consent (commonly known as “revenge porn”) and making money on adult content.

Zoe Margolis, author of the Girl with a One Track Mind books and sex blog, joined Blogger in 2004. She says that “either Google believes in freedom of expression, or it doesn’t. Restricting blogs which contain explicit content to ‘private only’ effectively kills them off. This is like offering a library where all the books in it are invisible to the readers unless an author is standing there and personally hands each reader a copy of their book.”

Let me note that my ox is not gored on this.

While I may be f%$#ing profane, I tend to %$# out that sh%$ when I use those f%$#ing words.

Google needs to get its f%$#ing head out of its f%$#ing ass.

They should also admit that they have dropped the word, “Don’t,” from its favorite logo.

Their new logo is, “Be evil.”

Today’s Must Read

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Ted Rall’s essay Obama Destroyed Libya. (alternate link here, the first link is twitchy)

He makes a number of points, that Libya under Gaddafi was generally prosperous, at least by the standards of Africa and the Arab world, albeit with a pretty horrific human rights record, and now it is a basket case with a growing lawlessness and it has become a locus for terrorist activity.

I think that the most important part of his essay though, is his conclusion that Barack Obama did not learn the lesson that he should have from this fiasco:

To Obama’s credit, he admits that he screwed up in Libya. Unfortunately, he drew the wrong lesson. In 2014, he told an interviewer that a large ground invasion force might have helped Libya’s post-Gaddafi government succeed. Because that worked so well in Iraq and Afghanistan. But if he really believes that, why doesn’t he order in the troops?

 Obama’s real mistake was to depose a secular socialist autocrat and allow him to be replaced by a bunch of crazy religious fundamentalist militias whose factionalism ensured they’d never be able to govern.

 Bush committed this error in Iraq. Obama made it in Libya. And now he’s doing it again in Syria.

Obama’s already destroyed one country with a “stupid war”, and now he’s trying for a sequel in Syria.

The foreign policy consensus as regards the Arab world is a toxic mixture of hubris, which, when juxtaposed with the incomprehensible need to appease the various Gulf monarchs (UAE in Libya, Saudi Arabia with Syria) has produced nothing but failure and insecurity.

This all looks so much like Athens’ disastrous Sicilian Expedition during the Peloponnesian War.

H/T DC at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.

Our Private Little War is Going so F%$#ing Well

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With a ceasefire coming into effect on Sunday, the Ukrainian rebels have seized the strategically significant town of Debaltseve:

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko called Wednesday for an international peacekeeping mission in his nation’s war-torn east, a stark admission that his nation can no longer fend off pro-Russian rebels after a major battlefield defeat.

 Any international force on the ground would harden the battle lines after 10 months of fighting, forcing Ukraine to give up for now its attempts to reunify the nation. But it would also halt Russian-backed rebels from pushing onward toward Kiev.

 The suggestion came hours after thousands of Ukrainian troops fled the encircled railway hub of Debaltseve, where fighting only intensified after a cease-fire ostensibly took effect Sunday. Nearly a year after Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula, the fresh loss threatened tough political consequences for Ukraine’s pro-Western president amid questions of how the troops became surrounded in recent weeks.

 Soldiers described a chaotic nighttime retreat over eastern Ukraine’s frozen steppe, with shells raining down on them from two sides.

It’s gotten to the point that even the German press are starting to condemn Victoria “F%$# the EU” Nuland and her role in creating this conflict.  (Google translate link)

The Europeans have begun to realize that following the reckless and bellicose US policies has created nothing but headaches for them.

It also appears that it’s creating headaches at the Brookings Institution as well:

A new report co-produced by the Brookings Institution is not going over well within the think tank. The report calls for an escalation in tensions between the United States and Russia with a recommendation for the US to supply the government in Kiev with $3 billion worth of weapons. The report also had contributions from the Atlantic Council and the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. One of the authors of the report, Michele Flournoy, is expected to be selected as defense secretary should Hillary Clinton win the White House and operates a think tank underwritten by defense contractors.

Brookings Institution fellow and former US State Department official Jeremy Shapiro took direct aim at the report in a piece titled “Why Arming the Ukrainians is a Bad Idea.” While acknowledging it was difficult to write the rebuttal given that his boss, Brookings Institution President Strobe Talbott, had co-authored the report, Shapiro nonetheless took apart the report’s bellicose and reckless recommendations:

The Ukrainian calculus is one of immediate desperation. But the United States needs to think for the longer-term. And if U.S.-provided weapons fail to induce a Russian retreat in Ukraine and instead cause an escalation of the war, the net result will not be peace and compromise. There has recently been much escalation in Ukraine, but it could go much further. As horrible as it is, the Ukrainian civil war still looks rather tame by the standards of Bosnia, Chechnya or Syria. Further escalation will mean much more violence, suffering and death in Ukraine.
The report authors counter that if the United States does not stand up to Russia in Ukraine, the Putin regime will be emboldened to make similar mischief all over Europe and beyond. This is the familiar credibility argument that gave us the war in Vietnam, among other misadventures. In fact, U.S. credibility is not enhanced by making bluffs that we will not ultimately fulfill or by embarking on wasting wars that we do not need.

Ouch. That would be a brutal critique from a rival let alone a colleague. Apparently the war party has not secured its own base and the eagerness to play chicken with a fellow nuclear power has limited support even among DC’s deep state intellectuals.

The Neocon and Liberal Interventionist belief in the “unipolar world”, and in the necessity take action to preserve the illusion of this state is harming both our own foreign policy interests as well as the rest of the world.

Headline of the Day

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The rolling disaster of John Boehner’s speakership

Here is the last ‘graph and money quote:

So on the whole, Boehner is managing to combine legislative incompetence with PR incompetence. He’s already sure to be known as one of the weakest speakers in American history, for at least some reasons that are out of his control. But he might also be known as one of the least effective. Perhaps no one could have done a better job in his place, but since no other Republican seems to want the job, we may never know.

This is the Washington Post, so it’s the very definition of a mainstream assertion.

I am not sure why he has remained speaker, he has failed the most basic job of that role, the ability to count votes, repeatedly.

I gotta figure that Boehner has convinced everyone on the Republican side of the aisle that speaker is the worst job in the world.

Considering his record, it’s clear that he has certainly shown that it is an awful job.

He may have screwed up in reverse.

This Must be a Definition of “Ethics” I was Previously Unaware Of………

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The North Carolina ethics commission has decided that there is no need for a politician to report if they are f%$#ing a lobbyist:

Sex between lobbyists and government officials who are covered under North Carolina’s ethics laws does not constitute a gift that must be listed in disclosure reports, the State Ethics Commission said Friday.

“Consensual sexual relationships do not have monetary value and therefore are not reportable as gifts or ‘reportable expenditures made for lobbying’ for purposes of the lobbying law’s expenditure reporting provisions,” the formal advisory opinion says.

The opinion was in a response to an inquiry from the Secretary of State’s lobbying compliance director, Joal H. Broun, in a letter on Dec. 15.

“You have asked whether consensual ‘sexual favors or sexual acts’ between a lobbyist and a designated individual constitutes a gift or ‘thing of value’ that would trigger the gift ban and reporting requirements,’” the opinion says.

Broun’s request also wanted to know if that activity falls within the definition of “goodwill lobbying,” which is an indirect attempt to influence legislation or executive action, such as the building of relationships, according to state law, and is also considered lobbying.

The seven-member ethics commission says Broun’s letter was “general and largely hypothetical, with little or no supporting facts,” which also limits the commission’s response. But the opinion says sexual behavior would not constitute goodwill lobbying, either.

However, providing a prostitute to a legislator or other covered official would constitute a gift or item of value and would have to be reported on disclosure forms – which, of course, would also be evidence of a crime, the opinion says.

So, if you hire a prostitute, it’s a lobbying gift covered by disclosure laws, but if you employ a temporary liaison officer at your lobbying group, at a predetermined hourly rate, there is no need for disclosure.

My guess is that we are going to see a lot of “Rent Boys” hired as consultants in North Carolina state politics.

What a F%$#ing Coward

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The Universe was created by the Flying Spaghetti Monster, hallowed be his noodly appendage, Ramen

Scott Walker traveled to London, the graveyard of gravitas for Republican Presidential candidates like Mitt Rmoney and Chris “Jabba the Governor” Christie, and when he is asked about evolution, he punts on it.

I mean that literally. He said, “I’m going to punt on that one as well.”

 I’m not surprised that Walker is a chickensh%$. It’s been obvious to me since he started to make national news, but I think that the press, and voters on both the myth and reality sides of the evolution will notice as well:

Likely 2016 presidential candidate Scott Walker refused to say Wednesday whether he believes in the theory of evolution, dodging that question and several others about foreign policy after delivering a speech about global trade in London.

“I’m going to punt on that one as well,” said Wisconsin’s Republican governor when asked about evolution at the end of an hour-long appearance at the prestigious Chatham House think tank. “That’s a question a politician shouldn’t be involved in one way or the other. So I’m going to leave that up to you.”

Real profile in courage there, Scotty boy.

In Addition to Everything Else, Benjaman Netanyahu Could Not find his Ass with both Hands

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Netanyahu decided on some political meddling on the judging panel for the Israel prize for Literature, and in response, the judging panel resigned en mass:

The Education Ministry fears the Israel Prize in literature may not be granted this year, after the entire judges panel resigned this week to protest efforts by the Prime Minister’s Office to intervene in its composition.

Now literary lions are likely to shun the panel, making it hard to establish a replacement, ministry sources warned.

In an unusual move, the Prime Minister’s Office vetoed two people originally nominated as judges for the prize – professors Avner Holtzman and Ariel Hirschfeld. After Haaretz reported this on Sunday, all five of the people ultimately appointed to the panel resigned, to protest “the clear politicization of the prize and the vote of no confidence in the professionals’ professional judgment,” as one of the five, Prof. Nissim Calderon, put it.

Moreover, Prof. Yigal Schwartz, who was one of the candidates for the prize in the field of literary research, announced Tuesday night that he is withdrawing his candidacy in protest.

“This is an unparalleled scandal,” said Schwartz, a professor of literature at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and editor-in-chief of the Kinneret Zmora-Bitan Dvir publishing house. “I’m withdrawing my candidacy and urge other candidates to do the same. This isn’t a mistake; it’s a continuation of Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu’s deliberate policy of undermining Israel’s elites to gain votes from other groups. This is sabotage that it’s impossible not to oppose. Even this institution, the Israel Prize, which had remained untainted, they have sabotaged.”

“No such thing has ever happened before,” Calderon agreed.

Tuesday, it emerged that Netanyahu’s office had also vetoed a nominee to the judges’ panel for the Israel Prize in film – producer Chayim Sharir. Another member of that panel, producer Ram Loevy, has also resigned in protest.

Over the past few weeks, Education Ministry staffers had repeatedly warned Netanyahu’s aides against intervening in the panel’s composition, but the bureau dismissed these warnings, they said.

Now, the ministry is awaiting “instructions from the prime minister’s bureau” on how to fill the judges’ panel, they said.

Aside from Calderon, the other judges who resigned were Prof. Nurith Gertz, Prof. Ziva Ben-Porat, Prof. Ephraim Hazan and Dr. Uri Hollander. Author Gail Hareven had resigned earlier, after learning independently of the veto imposed on Hirschfeld and Holtzman.

In their resignation letter, the five scholars said the intervention by Netanyahu’s bureau constituted “politicization of Israel’s most important prize, which is supposed to be granted solely on the basis of professional and artistic considerations,” and raised fear that extraneous considerations would taint the award.

At first, the bureau declined to say why it suddenly decided to veto Hirschfeld and Holtzman after the two had already begun work. Tuesday, it said in a statement that it “decided to review the panel’s composition” after discovering that Hirschfeld supported refusal to do army service. The statement did not say why Holtzman was nixed.

Note that Bibi is minister of education in addition to being PM.

He took the portfolio when the previous minister, and his party, left the coalition government.

Netanyahu is claiming that the panel contains, “Too many anti-Zionist extremists.”

I call bullsh%$ on this.

If Netanyahu really had issues, they could have been presented 2-3 months ago, at the start of the process.

This is not a firm stand on his principles (as if he had any), this is yet another case of him fomenting conflict for political gain:   He is going for the Nixonian option of campaigning against academics to create the illusion that he cares for the ordinary Israeli.

Or, to quote Spiro Agnew, he is playing the, “Effete intellectual snob,” card.

MADD Issues a Bogus Report on Uber and Drunk Driving, and Now We Discover that Uber Paid them Off

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Last week, MADD and Uber co-released a report that strongly suggested that car sharing service reduces the incidence of drunk driving.

Pro Publica took a look at the report, and found that there was no “there” there:

………

What is Uber’s evidence that they “likely prevented” so many crashes?

Not much.

Indeed, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, which co-authored the report, cautioned us against connecting the rise of Uber to a drop in drunk driving. “Nobody is saying that there is a causation relationship here, this is a correlation relationship. Purely correlational,” said Amy George, senior vice president of marketing and communications for MADD. (MADD took a less cautious stance in a press release last week: New Report from MADD, Uber Reveals Ridesharing Services Important Innovation to Reduce Drunk Driving.)

Uber’s report has two key graphics: The first shows alcohol-involved crashes in California markets where Uber operates. The second shows the same, but in cities where there is no Uber service. Each graph compares accidents between under-30 and 30-and-over drivers. The charts actually show, in general, a downward trend of drunk driving accidents in both Uber and non-Uber markets.

But Uber and Plouffe are hanging their assertion on another facet of the analysis: drunk driving crashes for those under 30 have dropped more in cities that have Uber versus those that don’t.

“We believe there is a direct relationship between the presence of uberX (Uber’s lowest-cost option) in a city and the amount of drunk driving crashes involving younger populations,” the report says.
That could be. But we don’t really know, and neither does Uber.”We believe there is a direct relationship between the presence of uberX (Uber’s lowest-cost option) in a city and the amount of drunk driving crashes involving younger populations,” the report says.

That could be. But we don’t really know, and neither does Uber.

And now we know that 6 months ago, Uber dropped a load of cash in MADD’s lap:

Uber and Mothers Against Drunk Driving last week put out a report suggesting Uber helped reduced drunk-driving accidents. However, the claim gets a little wobbly when you take a closer look at the numbers, as ProPublica just did. Now MADD is backing away from the assertion, claiming the relationship is “purely correlational.” Meanwhile, it turns out Uber started donating money to MADD last summer. Surely that is unrelated, right?
 ………

Now MADD is backpedaling: “Nobody is saying that there is a causation relationship here, this is a correlation relationship. Purely correlational,” Amy George, senior vice president of marketing and communications at MADD, tells ProPublica.

Funny, but last week in a press release MADD seemed to feel differently:

Released today, the study demonstrates that not only is Uber a convenient transportation option but that it can also be a powerful tool in the fight to reduce the number of drunk-driving crashes.

There’s another twist, which is that Uber has been contributing financially to MADD. Last summer, Uber and MADD announced a partnership in which Uber would donate $1 to MADD for every ride taken and $10 for every new customer who used the service in a 24-hour period around the 4th of July, as long as customers used a promo code, UberMADD.This past weekend Uber ran a similar promotion, donating a buck for every ride from 3 p.m. to midnight on Super Bowl Sunday when riders used the promo code ThinkandRide.

Uber: Using lies about drunk driving deaths to promote its own agenda since 2014.

Nice work guys.

Full disclosure: My mother was killed by a drunk driver.

That being said, I’m not a fan of the various non-profits who work in this issue. I find them overly punitive in their approach, and there seems to be a lot of corruption around them: Candy Lightner, the founder of MADD, ended up working as a lobbyist for the American Beverage Institute, and SADD was forced to settle with the commonwealth of Massachusetts over the outsize golden parachute given its founder, Robert Anastas.  (The case was actually used as an example of self-dealing in the Massachusetts non-profit application form instruction book in the 1990s)

Floriduh!

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The Leg passed a law banning juvenile sexting, and it appears that in so doing, they effectively legalized sexting:

The Florida legislature is commonly considered to be one of the stupidest law-making bodies in the United States, and for good reason. Who can forget the time the state’s fine representatives inadvertently banned all computers and smartphones? Or the time the legislature unintentionally outlawed sex? Now, however, the Sunshine State’s legislators may have outdone themselves: In an effort to outlaw sexting between teenagers, Florida accidentally legalized it.

Here’s the sorry story of the state’s latest legal mishap: In 2011, the legislature passed a “sexting” statute barring minors from sending images of nudity (their own or somebody else’s) to other minors. The first offense would qualify as only a civil infraction; minors who violated the law would merely have to perform court-ordered community service or pay a $60 fine. The second and third offenses, however, would qualify as misdemeanors, while the fourth offense would qualify as a felony.

Under this law, Florida prosecutors thought they had a slam-dunk case when they brought charges against a minor who texted a picture of her own vagina to a classmate because she was “bored.” But the state quickly ran into a problem: Florida law doesn’t give any court jurisdiction of civil infractions by juveniles—as opposed to criminal infractions—and the sexting statute doesn’t grant any court this kind of jurisdiction. Accordingly, no court in the state currently has legal authority to hear a case involving minors sexting. The prosecutors attempting to prosecute the sexting teen got their case thrown out of court, a decision an appeals court later affirmed.

The upshot of this misadventure in statute-drafting is that Florida’s sexting law is completely unenforceable. Thanks to the statute’s layered structure, the more serious penalties for sexting can only come after a minor has been convicted of his first offense. But because that first offense is a civil infraction—and because no court can hear civil cases involving minors—it is legally impossible for any minor to be charged with that first offense. As a result, there simply cannot be a second, third, or fourth offense. Sexting between teens—even sexting images of a minor’s nude body—is now functionally legal in Florida.

Of course, the bigger picture, that Florida wanted to make this a crime for a child to send pix of their own naughty bits, and in some cases, make it a felony, is the really stupid part.

Seriously.

Isn’t there already enough overcrowding in prisons without criminalize victimless teen stupidity?

H/t Tech Dirt.

It is Ironic that this News Comes Out Just Before Tết

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The US is looking to expand its supply of arms to the Ukraine:

With Russian-backed separatists pressing their attacks in Ukraine, NATO’s military commander, Gen. Philip M. Breedlove, now supports providing defensive weapons and equipment to Kiev’s beleaguered forces, and an array of administration and military officials appear to be edging toward that position, American officials said Sunday.

President Obama has made no decisions on providing such lethal assistance. But after a series of striking reversals that Ukraine’s forces have suffered in recent weeks, the Obama administration is taking a fresh look at the question of military aid.

Secretary of State John Kerry, who plans to visit Kiev on Thursday, is open to new discussions about providing lethal assistance, as is Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, officials said. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, who is leaving his post soon, backs sending defensive weapons to the Ukrainian forces.

It appears that the only person with any sanity left in the Obama administration is Susan Rice:

In recent months, Susan E. Rice, Mr. Obama’s national security adviser, has resisted proposals to provide lethal assistance, several officials said. But one official who is familiar with her views insisted that Ms. Rice was now prepared to reconsider the issue.

It’s interesting that the person that Barack Obama has been determined to keep on his staff, John Seymour McCain III, in a fit of infantile pique blocked her nomination to Secretary of State is stopping this, for now at least.

In some ways, it’s a good thing.

He could be listening to the slavering war monger that is Samantha Powers on this.

BTW, the usual crop of DC psychopaths has weighed in:

Fueling the broader debate over policy is an independent report to be issued Monday by eight former senior American officials, who urge the United States to send $3 billion in defensive arms and equipment to Ukraine, including anti-armor missiles, reconnaissance drones, armored Humvees and radars that can determine the location of enemy rocket and artillery fire.

Michèle A. Flournoy, a former senior Pentagon official who is a leading candidate to serve as defense secretary if Hillary Rodham Clinton is elected president, joined in preparing the report. Others include James G. Stavridis, a retired admiral who served as the top NATO military commander, and Ivo Daalder, the ambassador to NATO during Mr. Obama’s first term.

“The West needs to bolster deterrence in Ukraine by raising the risks and costs to Russia of any renewed major offensive,” the report says. “That requires providing direct military assistance — in far larger amounts than provided to date and including lethal defensive arms.”

They don’t get it.

Russia sees this as an existential issue, and they see US actions, from the expansion of NATO to the multiple coups engineered in the Ukraine and other former Soviet republics under the guise of “color revolutions” as a part of a war that has continued to be waged against Russia since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Truth is, I agree with the Russian view on this.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, we have seen this sort of insanity become a fixture of US foreign policy.

The US believes that it can enforce its preferred solution anywhere in the world, even when it does not serve any meaningful interest of America.

There is also the small fact that the Ukrainian military really does not exist as a particularly functional entity.

It has had to be backed up by Fascist militias, and its attempts to use conscription have been met with protests, an orgy of draft dodging, and the mass purchase sinecures as priests.

And these idiots in the Pentagon and White House are determined to go to war with Russia because their latest color revolution did not go exactly as planned.

Buy a Truck, Because Your Penis is Too Small

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Advertising, Exploiting People with Insecurity About Their Manhood for more than a Century

In the conflation of automobiles and manhood that is the American car advertisement, the latest GM ad, which doesn’t even bother making the juxtaposition between one’s choice in transportation and one’s manhood, and they pretty explicitly state it.

The video attached shows hoe they bring in a “focus group” of young women who look at pictures, and they universally find the guy in front of a truck sexier than the same guy in front of a hatchback.

First, they obviously had to find a group of women dumb enough not to think, “Hey, these are the same guys?  Are you trying to imply that I am a vacuous shallow bitch?”

Seriously. Just how tiny does a potential car buyer’s penis have to be for this ad to work?

Portrait of the Candidate as a Young Pothead

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It appears that Jeb Bush was a major stoner during his high school years:

In the fall of 1967, when a 14-year-old Texan named John Ellis Bush arrived on the bucolic campus of Phillips Academy in Andover, great expectations preceded him.

 Jeb, as he was known, should have been an easy fit in that elite and ivied world. His much-accomplished father and his older brother had both gone to Andover; no one was surprised that Jeb had followed suit.

 But this Bush almost ran aground in those first, formative prep school days. He bore little resemblance to his father, a star on many fronts at Andover, and might have been an even worse student than brother George. Classmates said he smoked a notable amount of pot — as many did — and sometimes bullied smaller students.

 Resolutely apolitical despite his lineage, he refused to join the Progressive Andover Republicans club and often declined even to participate in informal bull sessions with classmates. In a tumultuous season in American life, he seemed to his peers strangely detached and indifferent.

(emphasis mine)

So Dubyah is the smart one?

That is a scary thought.

Can We Please Give them back to Mexico?

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In Texas, boy was suspended for bringing the “one ring to rule them all” to school to make a classmate vanish:

Tolkien lore led a Texas boy to suspension after he brought his “one ring” to school.

Kermit Elementary School officials called it a threat when the 9-year-old boy, Aiden Steward, in a playful act of make-believe, told a classmate he could make him disappear with a ring forged in fictional Middle Earth’s Mount Doom.

“It sounded unbelievable,” the boy’s father, Jason Steward, told the Daily News. He insists his son “didn’t mean anything by it.”

The Stewards had just watched “The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies” days earlier, inspiring Aiden’s imagination and leading him to proclaim that he had in his possession the one ring to rule them all.

“Kids act out movies that they see. When I watched Superman as a kid, I went outside and tried to fly,” Steward said.

Aiden claimed Thursday he could put a ring on his friend’s head and make him invisible like Bilbo Baggins, who stole Gollum’s “precious” in J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy series “The Lord of the Rings.”

“I assure you my son lacks the magical powers necessary to threaten his friend’s existence,” the boy’s father later wrote in an email. “If he did, I’m sure he’d bring him right back.”

It gets better.

This kid has been suspended for referring to another student as “Black”, and for the 2nd suspension, it was for bringing a science book to school:

Two of the disciplinary actions this year were in-school suspensions for referring to a classmate as black and bringing his favorite book to school: “The Big Book of Knowledge.”

“He loves that book. They were studying the solar system and he took it to school. He thought his teacher would be impressed,” Steward said.

But the teacher learned the popular children’s encyclopedia had a section on pregnancy, depicting a pregnant woman in an illustration, he explained.

They suspended a kid from school for bringing a science book.

Can we please give the whole state back to Mexico?

One Can only Hope that California will foll of the Example of ……… Mississippi

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H/t Neo at Stellar Parthenon for the Pic

In California, a state with one of the highest rates of unvaccinated children in the nation, multiple schools have been sending non-inoculated children home in the wake of the Measles outbreak:

A California high school barred dozens of non-vaccinated students from school on Wednesday over concern that a classmate may have contracted measles in a rare outbreak of the highly contagious disease that began at a Disneyland resort last month.

 The order, which affects 66 students at Palm Desert High School near the resort community of Palm Springs, marks at least the second time a California school has prohibited non-vaccinated students from classes since the outbreak began.

 Earlier this month, a school in the Los Angeles suburb of Huntington Beach ordered non-vaccinated children to stay home until this Thursday. And in nearby Arizona, officials in Maricopa County asked non-vaccinated students who were potentially exposed to the disease to stay home.

 “We are simply responding, being very careful and making sure we’re taking the best care of students and staff,” said Mary Perry, a spokeswoman for the Desert Sands Unified School District, which overseas Palm Desert High. She said the non-vaccinated students have been ordered to stay home until Feb. 9.

All the while, Mississippi has the best child vaccination rate in the nation:

It’s tough being a child in Mississippi. The state has the nation’s worst rates for infant mortality and low-weight newborns. Its childhood poverty rate ranks as the nation’s second worst. Overall, the residents of Mississippi are the unhealthiest in the country.

 But there is one notable exception to these dour health stats: Mississippi has the highest vaccination rate for school-age children. It’s not even close. Last year, 99.7 percent of the state’s kindergartners were fully vaccinated. Just 140 students in Mississippi entered school without all of their required shots.

 Compare that with California, epicenter of the ongoing Disney measles outbreak, where last year almost 8 percent of kindergartners — totaling 41,000 children — failed to get the required immunizations against mumps, measles and rubella. In Oregon, that number was 6.8 percent. In Pennsylvania, it was nearly 15 percent, or 22,700 kindergartners. And each of these states has suffered measles outbreaks in the last two years.

 “It’s nice not having measles in Mississippi,” said Mary Currier, Mississippi state health officer.

 The secret of Mississippi’s success stems from a strong public health program and — most importantly — a strict mandatory vaccination law that lacks the loopholes found in almost every other state.

I am not quite sure just why Mississippi has the best policy in the nation, no exemption except for real medical issues, things like compromised immune systems.

The antivaxxers endanger all the rest of us on the basis of myths promulgated by a doctor who was paid off by lawyers who wanted a ready pool of rubes plaintiffs.

The final word of the day has to come from Nigerian writer and lawyer Elnathan John:

Our thoughts are also with the measles-ravaged country America. I hope we are screening them before they come to Africa.
— Elnathan John (@elnathan) February 1, 2015

Alan Grayson Was Right! They Want You To ‘Die Quickly’*

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Michael R. “Andromeda” Strain. a resident “scholar” for the American Enterprise Institute, penned an OP/ED, and the moral pygmy that is Washington Post editorial editor Fred Hiatt, published a work titled, “End Obamacare, and people could die. That’s okay.”

He wants the death penalty for poverty.

What’s more, he tacitly admits that Obamacare saves lives.

 Seriously, the Washington Post has the 2nd worst opinion pages in the nation.

*This is not my bon mot, it is courtesy of Crooks and Liars.

For the Love of Ghod, Make it Stop!!!

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Kind of Like Norman Rockwell ……… On Acid

Caribu Barbie has announced that she is seriously considering running for President in 2016:

Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin told The Washington Post in an interview Friday that she is “seriously interested” in running for the White House in 2016.

 “You can absolutely say that I am seriously interested,” Palin said, when asked to clarify her thinking about a possible presidential bid.

 Palin, the GOP’s 2008 vice-presidential nominee, said she stood by comments she made Thursday in Las Vegas to ABC News, where she first expressed enthusiasm about potentially competing for the Republican presidential nomination.

 “I am. As I said yesterday, I’m really interested in the opportunity to serve at some point,” Palin said Friday, as former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum, a potential 2016 rival, looked on.

She also just delivered a speech at Steve King’s wingnut extravaganza “Freedom Forum”.

It appears that her teleprompter froze, and she had to “wing it”.

The speech was so remarkable that the DNC communications director issued the following two wrod press release:

DNC Communications Director Mo Elleithee issued the following statement in response to Palin: “Thank you!” pic.twitter.com/aBYSZA2oQ7
— Zeke Miller (@ZekeJMiller) January 24, 2015

While I am sure that Jon Stewart, Jay Leno, Stephen Colbert and Larry Wilmore are rejoicing, but the rest of us are in for some very “interesting” times. (as in the Chinese curse)

The Push-Back Against the Lindsey Graham Presidential Needs to Get Less Awful

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Let’s be clear here:  Senator Lindsey Graham is a blithering idiot, whose only claim to policy expertise is his playing ventriloquist dummy to petulant child Senator John Sidney McCain III’s harebrained “Forever War” foreign policy initiatives.

This is a guy who has literally been wrong on absolutely every foreign policy initiative that he has ever been a part of.

He makes Richard Bruce Cheney look level headed and competent.

These are all legitimate reasons for him to be criticized, and ridiculed, for his recent statements about running for President.

There is also the issue of his personal affect.

Specifically, for lack of a better term, he minces almost as much as Michelle Bachmann’s husband Marcus.  (Not that there’s anything wrong with that)

So, over the past few days, we have been bombarded with tasteless cartoons and Photoshop jobs mocking the (never Married, not that there’s anything wrong with that) distinguished gentleman from South Carolina.  (I’m talking to you, Howie Klein)

Lindsey Graham sucks, both as a potential candidate, and even more so as a potential President.

It simply does not matter whatever else he does, or does not suck.

Republican Family Values in Action

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The Teabagger is the one on the Left

Teabagger heroine, and terrorist wannabe, Holly Fisher has been exposed exposed cheating on her military veteran husband:

In July, liberals were delighted by the moronic antics of a woman who quickly became known as “Holly Hobby Lobby.” Shortly following the Hobby Lobby Supreme Court ruling that allowed companies to inject their religion into female employees’ healthcare, Holly Fisher decided to poorly “troll” liberals a bit.

Our heroine bravely stood in front of a Hobby Lobby store wearing a “PRO-LIFE” t-shirt and holding a Chick-Fil-A cup. She captioned her photo “HOW TO MAKE A LIBERAL’S HEAD EXPLODE,” and set it loose on Twitter.

………

This photo gained Holly the admiration of the conservative world. Quickly, she became a hero to all who have trouble figuring out how to work a microwave. [I love that turn of phrase MGS] Unfortunately, her new photo — the one conservatives adored — bore a striking resemblance to “the White Widow,” a jihadist suicide bomber who blew herself and four other people up in 2004.

………

“The conservative woman behind several viral photos cheated on her combat veteran husband repeatedly & then lied about it, Gotnews.com has learned,” [The world’s worst undeserving claimant of the term “Journalist”, and member of the class Myxogastria, Charles C.] Johnson wrote.

According to Johnson, multiple sources within the Tea Party confirmed that Fisher had a prolonged affair with Joel Frewa, a now-former video editor for the Tea Party News Network. Johnson says Frewa resigned after word of the affair began to leak out.

“The affair took place at a “Restoring the Dream” event, a Faith & Freedom conference, and on Election night 2014,” Johnson said.

The irony here is delicious, but it is far from surprising.

H/t Blade at the Stellar Parthenon.