It Would Be Funnier If It Were Not So Sad

Pursuit of Happiness

In Sandy Springs Georgia, you can carry a gun almost everywhere, but need a prescription for a vibrator.

My favorite part of the story is this paragraph:

Of course there are plenty of other reasons besides medical afflictions – real or imagined – that a woman might need a sex toy. Maybe she's bored. Maybe her partner likes them. (Maybe they're more fun than her partner.) Maybe it's Tuesday.

The gun nuts rely on the currently-popular misinterpretation of the 2nd Amendment. Well, what about that "pursuit of happiness" thing?

The Alfred E. Neuman Party

Still aren't convinced that the once-respectable Republican Party is dominated by lunatics? Check out this story.

With a mostly party-line vote on Thursday, the House of Representatives passed an amendment sponsored by Rep. David McKinley (R-WV) that seeks to prevent the Department of Defense from using funding to address the national security impacts of climate change.

Posted Just Because His Name/Image Drive Right Wingers Apoplectic

Bill De Blasio has supplanted Nancy Pelosi as the chief bugaboo for the right wing boobs. Just say his name and quiver.

 

William Black: How to rob a bank (from the inside, that is)

I think this is poorly titled, but that's a minor point. This is just one more refutation of those few diehards who still would have it that the banks were the victims in the housing debacle that took down the U.S. economy.   Yes, there are still people who believe the crisis was driven primarily by Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac, and by poor people deliberately lying to the banks in order to obtain fraudulent loans. 18:48 minutes · Filmed Sep 2013 · Posted May 2014 · TEDxUMKC William Black is a former bank regulator who’s seen firsthand how banking systems can be used to commit fraud — and how “liar's loans” and other tricky tactics led to the 2008 US banking crisis that threatened the international economy. In this engaging talk, Black, now an academic, reveals the best way to rob a bank — from the inside. William Black is a professor of economics and law at University of Missouri, Kansas City. WATCH NOW http://www.ted.com/talks/william_black_how_to_rob_a_bank_from_the_inside_that_is?utm_source=newsletter_daily&utm_campaign=daily&utm_medium=email&utm_content=button__2014-05-12#t-3097

Teensy Weensy Glimmers of Republican Sanity

Republican Senator Rand Paul is right about two things in today's news. Like a stopped clock?

His op-ed piece in the NY Times demanding release of the "Drone Memos" is exactly right. Obama has nominated the author of at least two memos which authorize the killing of US citizens abroad to the First Circuit Court of Appeals, one step below the Supremes, and everyone deserves to see how he has justified target killings of citizens who have never been tried or convicted.

And Paul gets it right again when he calls for the Republicans to stop all of their craziness around the country on the voter id non-issue. Crazy is his word...and mine.

And Mitt Romney thinks the minimum wage should be raised. OMG

Sports Racism

It is remotely possible that I could somehow be talked into having the teeniest bit of sympathy for Donald Sterling, the racist owner of the Los Angeles Clippers. His troubles have, after all, been caused by the release of taped private conversations. (I don't know that this matters, but I seem to recall hearing at some point that the conversations were taped at his request.) For that to happen, however, someone will have to make a far stronger 4th-amendment argument than anything I have yet heard. As far as I'm concerned, he deserves all of the penalties that have been handed down by the NBA as well as all of the social opprobrium generally.

There has been much written about the fact that Sterling's history of racism was never a secret. His fellow owners, who now feel forced to take action against him, have been quite comfortable with him for the last 35 years. I think that is probably true and speaks to the matter of institutional racism in the United States.

But rather than try to generalize about past actions, or the lack of actions, and speculate about what that all means, it is far more interesting to me to look at the world of professional sports right now, already thinking of Donald Sterling as a relic of the past. The same sports commentators who are congratulating the new NBA commissioner for his prompt action against Sterling's overt racism, apparently see no racism in the names and logos of the Washington Redskins or the Cleveland Indians.

People need to stay away from Cleveland baseball games and Washington football games, wherever they are played. At home in recent years, Cleveland has always ranked at or near the bottom of Major League Baseball attendance. At this early point in the current season, they are at the bottom. If baseball fans around the country would simply refuse to show up to Cleveland's road games, so that they drew as poorly on the road as they do at home, I have no doubt the other owners would unite to take action.

I don't know anything about the NFL, but I think I know enough about capitalist owners to think a similar boycott of Washington football games around the country would produce results.

Yeah, I'm Still Here

Because I feel better writing what is on my mind, than not doing so, I've decided to start this nonsense again after a break of several weeks. But, let me repeat, I'm doing it for myself, not for you.

The obesity / diabetes epidemic documented in this film can hardly be considered an example of progress, in the event there is still anyone left who thinks the march of time is synonymous with social/political/economic advance.



The irritating aspect of this story is that there are people who genuinely prefer to believe this problem just, somehow, happened, and that for the government to try to do anything about it is overreach or another obnoxious example of the nanny state at work. These are the people who label as "bad science" all studies that don't support their economic interests. And they are people who clamor for individual responsibility but have no sense of, or understanding even, of the need for corporate responsibility.

Here is a shameful, but typical, story from 2003 about the pressure the sugar industry brought to bear on the US State Department to extort the World Health Organization into changing the conclusions about sugar in one of its reports. At the time this story ran, the issue was still up in the air. I believe the ultimate result was that the WHO bowed to US threats to pull its funding support and changed its report.

No doubt there are some examples of corporations who have made socially-responsible decisions that went against their bottom line. And it might even be true that those stories are under-reported, although that would seem to indicate a very atypically non-media-savvy corporation. But, if those examples exist, gawd gave us the internet to find them. Personally, I'm not going to waste my time, but I'll gladly give equal time to anyone who can find a story about corporate good citizenship that can offset the corporate role in obesity, or the recent story about General Motors and the faulty ignition switch.