"The blog has made Glab into a hip town crier, commenting on everything from local politics and cultural happenings to national and international events, all rendered in a colorful, intelligent, working-class vernacular that owes some of its style to Glab’s Chicago-hometown heroes Studs Terkel and Mike Royko." — David Brent Johnson in Bloom Magazine
How weird, weird, weird is it that some of those same Birthers and fellow trash can sniffers who turned purple when a brown man was elected Prez — because, after all, BHO couldn’t possibly be a real American — are now pretty cool with Ted Cruz?
That is, with the Tex. Sen. potentially being the CEO of the US Inc. Cruz, who certainly is not shooting down rumors that he’s f’nta run for the Oval O. come 2016, was born in — drum roll, please — Canada.
Hoser
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Which, last I checked, is not part of the United States. Although, being predominantly white, maybe it is at that.
Donald Trump and some doorknob polisher named Lord Christopher Monckton, both of whom transformed themselves into dicks (in the 1940s, savvy-dame-snafu sense of slang as diminutive for detective, ironically) to hunt down proof of Barack Obama’s real place of birth in Kenya or Abortiastan, are big, big, big on a Great White North Presidency. Emphasis on the word…, aw, you know.
h/t to Wonkette for pointing this all out. Ironically, I had no idea Rafael Edward “Ted” Cruz wasn’t born in this holy land. Then again, I studiously avoid reading anything at all about the gun-loving, gay-marriage-hating North American moose.
I get the sense that constitutional experts think Cruz being born north of the 49th Parallel should be no impediment to his presidential ambitions. Apparently, as long as his Mom was a US citizen and had lived in the Greatest Nation This Earth Has Ever Seen for 10 years prior to his emergence, he’s cool to be the Boss.
Eligible
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Which, fascinatingly enough, should have shut all those Birthers the hell up even if Barack Obama was born in the Kremlin or Mau-Mau-ia. His Mom, after all, was a Kansan, which I know for a fact is in Murrica.
Ah, none of it matters anyhow; Hillary Clinton is a lock to be the next White House target of Right Wingnut Nation.
Anybody care to risk a C-note on that proposition?
“We build a fire in a powder magazine, then double the fire department to put it out. We inflame wild beasts with the smell of blood, and then innocently wonder at the wave of brutal appetite that sweeps the land as a consequence.” — Mark Twain
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BANG, YOU’RE DEAD
I was as enraged as anyone after learning of yesterday’s madness in Connecticut.
I took to Facebook and ranted:
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— and —
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America, with its psycho-sexual fixation on guns, is indeed deranged.
That said, a sociologist and criminologist from Northeastern University named Jack Levin appeared on NPR’s All Things Considered yesterday afternoon to put yesterday’s horror in perspective.
“The truth is,” Levin said, “there’s still about 20 mass killings every year in this country, and that has been true for decades.”
In other words, things aren’t getting worse.
Which is scant consolation to the parents who lost kids in Sandy Hook.
◗ US population, 1990: 248,709.873 — 23,440 homicides.
◗ US population, 2011: 311,591,917 — 14,612 homicides
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“We are,” Freeman writes, “moving in the right direction.”
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PEOPLE ONLY ACT WHEN FACED WITH CRISIS?
Politico Ray Hanania points out this example of how mightily weird our species is:
◗ One guy tries to use a shoe bomb on an airplane — Now every air travel passenger must remove her or his shoes before reaching the gate.
◗ Some 31 lunatics have committed school shootings since Columbine — No changes have been instituted.
Whew! I Feel Safer Now.
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ACTION!
Yesterday morning, Kevin Sears, the Toastmaster General of Bloomington, and I mused on the inevitable movie about Jerry Sanduski, Joe Paterno, and the Penn State scandal. Here’s what we agreed upon:
Gary Busey will play Sanduski
Al Pacino will play Paterno
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That’s all you need to know.
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THE LAST MEN IN THE MOON
Precisely 40 years ago today, Gene Cernan, Harrison “Jack” Schmidt, and Ron Evans departed lunar orbit and began their quarter-million mile trip back to Earth.
Cernan and Schmidt were the last human beings to walk on the moon.
Jack Schmidt On The Moon
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Their mission, Apollo 17, originally was planned to be the third-to-last lunar trip but budget cutbacks forced NASA to cancel Apollos 18 and 19.
The two astronauts in the Lunar Module that descended to the moon’s surface from the Command Module spent a little more than three days on the Earth’s natural satellite. Their craft landed in the Taurus-Littrow lunar valley. The two walked on the moon for a total of 23 hours.
Schmidt was a geologist who’d go on to serve as United States Senator from New Mexico. Cernan was a Navy jet pilot before joining NASA. Both men are still alive and are approaching the age of 80.
Cernan & Schmidt On The Trip Back To Earth
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Before he left the moon, Cernan carved the initials of his daughter on a lunar boulder.
Cheap energy, gasoline especially, is our birthright
House Of Worship
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These are things many, many citizens of this holy land accept as, well, gospel. “[T]he popular sentiment underlying these statements is so strong that politicians defy it at their peril,” he writes.
Crazy? You decide.
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LOVE STORY
Only paramedics, firefighters, and cops reacted faster to the Aurora, Colorado, Shooting Rampage than the gun fanatics who shrieked and howled that even the slightest jigger to the nation’s firearms laws would be a dastardly infringement on their sacred rights.
We don’t even argue much anymore about whether or not NRA members and their fellow travelers have the god-given right to lull themselves to sleep at night holding their loved ones close — and I’m not referring to their spouses or lovers. The gun control debate was settled and signed-off ages ago.
The Winner!
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Those folks who are sexually aroused by guns are staunch defenders of an absolutist read of the Second Amendment have pounded their chests for the last six days and declared the gun to be an honest citizen’s only possible defense against a tyrannical government.
I had an online exchange with one such soul last night:
Gun Rights Defender: “The reason I believe we should be able to have guns is simply because the armed services and the police have them and they work for the rulers not the people.”
Me: “The ‘rulers’ never fear guns in the hands of the citizenry because they (the ‘rulers’) will always be able to outgun them.”
The defender’s conceit holds that a bunch of old men in Lawrence County who own hunting rifles will stand as a robust defense against the jack-booted thugs who want to impose the unimaginable horror of health care reform on us.
I, on the other hand, happen to know the US Army issues to its soldiers, among other kill-toys, M16 rifles, M4 carbines, 7.62x51mm FN SCAR assault rifles, M203 grenade launchers, Mossberg 590 shotguns, M107 Long Range Sniper Rifles, and — as sidearms — 9mm M9 pistols. Oh, and the soldiers are trained to kill people with these things.
Groups of soldiers regularly practice firing M2 heavy machine guns, MK19 grenade machine guns, a variety of mortars (the smallest of which launches a 60mm shell), several types of towed howitzers, the FIM-92 Stinger shoulder-launched heat-seeking anti-aircraft missile, and the FGM-148 Javelin anti-tank guided missile.
How well do you think your Uncle Wayne and his fishing buddies would fare in a showdown with a battalion of 18-24 year-olds lugging hardware like that around?
Oh Yeah, Uncle Wayne’ll Do Just Fine Against These Guys
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History teaches us corrupt, despotic governments usually fall in a whimper. No shots were fired, for instance, to bring down the “Evil Empire” of the Soviet Union. Here’s another anecdotal example: The only regime still standing against the Arab Spring revolts is the one — Syria — that insurgents took up arms against.
The gun romeos need to come up with a better rationalization for their defense of the madness.
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GHOUL JUSTICE
Actor Wm. Bullion points out that one of the survivors of the Aurora, Colorado, Shooting Rampage not only will sue the parent company of the movie theater in which the incident occurred but has hired a publicist.
Wm. (Billy) Bullion
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One of my legal sources informs me it’s unlikely the theater would be found liable for the shootings but would probably settle for a tidy sum with any of the ghouls (my characterization) who’d throw court papers its way.
Bullion quotes Cassandra Williams of W.E.T. PR: “We’re going to make sure whoever is accountable is going to take responsibility for this tragedy.”
Bullion observes: “”Yes, the FAMILY’S PUBLICIST is holding the movie theater ACCOUNTABLE.” (His caps.)
The source story reveals that the survivor’s attorney is also considering suing Warner Brothers for releasing violent movies and any of James Holmes’ doctors for allowing the suspect to walk the streets.
You have to give this survivor credit: Apparently he can find the silver lining in any dark cloud.
Payout For a Bullet Hole
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THERE’S A MAN WITH A GUN OVER THERE
A redux posting: Here’s Buffalo Springfield (with the shockingly young Stephen Stills and Neil Young) performing “For What It’s Worth” on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in 1967.
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BTW: Tommy Smothers was one of the unheralded coolest guys of the ’60s. Check out David Bianculli’s book, “Dangerously Funny.”
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Here’s how I waste my time. How about you? Share your fave sites with us via the comments section. Just type in the name of the site, not the url; we’ll find them. If we like them, we’ll include them — if not, we’ll ignore them.
❏ XKCD — “A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.”
❏ Skepchick — Women scientists look at the world and the universe.
❏ Indexed — All the answers in graph form, on index cards.
❏ Present and Correct — (New Listing) Fun, compelling, gorgeous and/or scary graphic designs and visual creations throughout the years and from all over the world.
❏ Flip Flop Fly Ball — Baseball as seen through infographics, haikus, song lyrics, and other odd communications devices.
