Latest Entry
Morning Awful: Pakistani Floods
Sep 2, 2010 Morning Awful View Comments
Gosh, if only we had 90-plus-thousand troops and a hundred thousand contractors with airbases and supply lines to do something about this.
Recent Entries
Pederasty and Violence
Sep 1, 2010 terrorism View Comments
A disturbing report that shows it’s not just the girls who’ll suffer in the new Afghanistan:
For centuries, Afghan men have taken boys, roughly 9 to 15 years old, as lovers. Some research suggests that half the Pashtun tribal members in Kandahar and other southern towns are bacha baz, the term for an older man with a boy lover. Literally it means “boy player.” The men like to boast about it.
The article draws a direct line between this practice and the social misogyny of the Taliban. Terrorism expert Jessica Stern draws a direct line between pederasty and terrorism. This theme also shows up in viral videos from opposition Iran. I wonder if there’s a link between church-sponsored pederasty and the age of IRA violence? It’s a question certainly worth an Irish sociologist’s time.
Firebagger Report
Sep 1, 2010 11-Dimensional Chess, firebaggers View Comments
What happens when you increase the number of claims adjusters for an oil spill by 50%, allow claimants to use the internet to apply, reduce average processing time to just ten days, and put the man in charge of the 9/11 victim’s compensation fund in charge of writing the checks? A “lag” in payments up to ten days:
But signs are emerging that Feinberg’s goals – particularly his pledge to respond to personal claims for emergency payments within 48 hours – may be overly ambitious. Applicants participating in our BP Claims Project say that they have not received responses within two days of filing claims and that they have encountered an array of service problems, from a system crash to difficulty in transferring critical paperwork. (Emphasis mine)
Remember when Katrina victims lived for years in poisonous trailers waiting for the FEMA check?
And don’t you just love that HuffPo firebagger framing?
Meanwhile, you’ve got to love the lack of excitement as the White House takes up the cause of new stimulus (except for the small business bill, it’s all tax cuts):
On the list of possible actions: additional tax cuts for small businesses beyond those included in a $30 billion small-business lending bill before the Senate. It’s not clear what those tax breaks would target or how much they might cost in lost revenue to the government.
Also in the mix: a possible payroll tax cut for businesses and individuals, as well as other business tax breaks, according to people familiar with the discussions. Currently, income taxes are scheduled to rise with the expiration of Bush-era tax cuts at the end of this year. (Emphasis mine)
But at least the cuts are more stimulative than billionaire tax cuts. Meanwhile, the White House puts up a wall between drillers and regulators that bears this telling notice:
The employees also must ask to step down when their inspections or official duties involve a company employing a family member or close personal friend.
And for at least two years, they cannot perform inspections or other work involving former employers in the industry. Lawmakers in the House and Senate have advanced proposals for a similar two-year timeout.
The new policy is directed toward the most clear-cut potential conflicts of interest and tacitly acknowledges the reality that along the Gulf Coast, drilling regulators may live next door to rig workers and supervisors they see in the field. The bureau guidelines don’t require recusal in those situations, as long as the neighbors have limited personal knowledge of each other and only share general conversations.
That still could create obstacles to conducting inspections in some tightknit areas, where a small pool of regulators may have connections to people on multiple rigs. (Emphasis mine)
Because he’s just like Bush because Bush was such a centrist. See how that works?
Actually, I kid. Obama rides consensus and there’s no consensus in DC for stimulus yet because Democrats still think Americans are more scared of the deficit than the jobs picture.
The president also ended 40 years of federal delay and obfuscation over Agent Orange:
As many as 150,000 Veterans may submit Agent Orange claims in the next 12 to 18 months. Additionally, VA will review approximately 90,000 previously denied claims from Vietnam Veterans for service connection for these three new diseases. All those who are awarded service-connection, and who are not currently enrolled in the VA health care system, will become eligible for enrollment.
Because (again) he’s “just like Bush.”
Morning Awful: Clueless Beckerheads
Sep 1, 2010 Morning Awful View Comments
Clueless Beckerheads week continues!
Morning Awful: Clueless Beckerheads
Aug 31, 2010 Morning Awful View Comments
This man has the Black Panthers of the 1960s utterly confused with the “new black panthers” of Beckian fearmongery.
What, Me Worry?
Aug 30, 2010 Authoritarianism, firebaggers View Comments
I keep hearing this refrain: there is no difference between Democrats and Republicans, and the president hasn’t shat out my insta-paradise yet, so why should I bother to vote? The answer, from my local newspaper:
Alabama Republican Party Chairman Mike Hubbard said he won’t give away the party’s election playbook, but he’s not quiet about the goal of controlling state legislative power.
Hubbard said the party has an eye on 15 or 16 targeted House seats and eight Senate seats where he said the demographics show a Democratically-held seat could become Republican. (Emphasis mine)
Down-ballot races are where the Republican Party aims to “take American back.” More importantly, it’s where the GOP has managed to dumb-down America by taking over school boards, bankrupting states and cities with bogus tax-cut theology, and installing idiocracy wherever they can. That’s not oil in the Gulf of Mexico — it’s the festering putrefaction of a conservatism that died of deregulation fever.
Today, the children of that philosophy want to do the same for you, wherever you are. I remind the reader of Bob Altemeyer’s experiment with right-wing authoritarian (RWA) personalities:
The game proceeded as usual. Background material was read, Elites (all males) nominated themselves, and the Elites were briefed. Then the “wedgies” started. As soon as the game began, the Elite from the Middle East announced the price of oil had just doubled. A little later the former Soviet Union (known as the Confederation of Independent States in 1994) bought a lot of armies and invaded North America. The latter had insufficient conventional forces to defend itself, and so retaliated with nuclear weapons. A nuclear holocaust ensued which killed everyone on earth–7.4 billion people–and almost all other forms of life which had the misfortune of co-habitating the same planet as a species with nukes.
When this happens in the Global Change Game, the facilitators turn out all the lights and explain what a nuclear war would produce. Then the players are given a second chance to determine the future, turning back the clock to two years before the hounds of war were loosed. The former Soviet Union however rebuilt its armies and invaded China this time, killing 400 million people. The Middle East Elite then called for a “United Nations” meeting to discuss handling future crises, but no agreements were reached.
At this point the ozone-layer crisis occurred but — perhaps because of the recent failure of the United Nations meeting — no one called for a summit. Only Europe took steps to reduce its harmful gas emissions, so the crisis got worse. Poverty was spreading unchecked in the underdeveloped regions, which could not control their population growth. Instead of dealing with the social and economic problems “back home,” Elites began jockeying among themselves for power and protection, forming military alliances to confront other budding alliances. Threats raced around the room and the Confederation of Independent States warned it was ready to start another nuclear war. Partly because their Elites had used their meager resources to buy into alliances, Africa and Asia were on the point of collapse. An Elite called for a United Nations meeting to deal with the crises — take your pick — and nobody came.
By the time forty years had passed the world was divided into armed camps threatening each other with another nuclear destruction. One billion, seven hundred thousand people had died of starvation and disease. Throw in the 400 million who died in the Soviet-China war and casualties reached 2.1 billion. Throw in the 7.4 billion who died in the nuclear holocaust, and the high RWAs managed to kill 9.5 billion people in their world — although we, like some battlefield news releases, are counting some of the corpses twice.
The authoritarian world ended in disaster for many reasons. One was likely the character of their Elites, who put more than twice as much money in their own pockets as the low RWA Elites had. (The Middle East Elite ended up the World’s Richest Man; part of his wealth came from money he had conned from Third World Elites as payment for joining his alliance.) But more importantly, the high RWAs proved incredibly ethnocentric. There they were, in a big room full of people just like themselves, and they all turned their backs on each other and paid attention only to their own group. They too were all reading from the same page, but writ large on their page was, “Care About Your Own; We Are NOT All In This Together.”
The high RWAs also suffered because, while they say on surveys that they care about the environment, when push comes to shove they usually push and shove for the bucks. That is, they didn’t care much about the long-term environmental consequences of their economic acts. For example a facilitator told Latin America that converting much of the region’s forests to a single species of tree would make the ecosystem vulnerable. But the players decided to do it anyway because the tree’s lumber was very profitable just then. And the highs proved quite inflexible when it came to birth control. Advised that “just letting things go” would cause the populations in underdeveloped areas to explode, the authoritarians just let things go. (Emphasis mine)
Anyone who says voting is not worthwhile is basically saying it’s okay for people like that to be in charge of everything. That’s not merely wrongheaded, it’s suicidal.
Morning Awful: Clueless Beckerheads
Aug 30, 2010 Morning Awful View Comments
The weekend saw a gathering of Beckerheads who couldn’t articulate why they were on the National Mall watching wind-up toys praise Beck between prerecorded Goldline ads. When this interviewer asked them to explain why terrorists still have access to guns in America, they were utterly incoherent:
Anyone who tells you to stay home in November is saying that these people inherit the Earth.
Rabbi Boteach Plays God
Aug 29, 2010 Sunday Sermon View Comments
In response to the question as to whether suicide bombers go to heaven, Imam Rauf said, “One of the things that we are taught is never to say somebody will go to hell or somebody will go to heaven. It is up to God to decide.”
Hmmm. Then allow me to play G-d for a moment.
Suicide bombers go to hell where they burn forever and ever. Period. There. That’s settled. Their souls are driven to the darkest reaches of the blackest netherworld where they suffer for all eternity in the anal cavities of the universe.
Those are the words of Rabbi Boteach, who (like me) enjoys posting privileges at Huffington Post, writing about Imam Rauf of the Cordoba House — you know, the Muslim YMCA that’s not a mosque and lies 99 strides from ground zero?
My question to the rabbi is why it is so terrible the imam has left the judgment of souls up to God? What of the mentally retarded and ill pressed into service — is their fire as hot in his hell as that of the men who strapped the rig to their victim and dropped him or her off? What of the unwilling, drugged, and indoctrinated children? Do they all burn equally?
The Rabbi says:
A preparedness to criticize one’s own community when some of its members are guilty of serious moral lapses is the hallmark of the courageous leadership and religious integrity. When in February of 1994 Baruch Goldstein slaughtered 29 innocent Muslims in Hebron in a mosque, some Rabbis shamed themselves by finding mitigating circumstances for murder. They shunned any comparison between Goldstein and an Islamic suicide bomber. He was a doctor whose friends had been stabbed, they said, and so he snapped. He saw too many Jews murdered, so he became unhinged and sought revenge. He was privy to secret intelligence that the Muslims were about to slaughter the Jews of Hebron, so he struck a preemptive blow. Every one of these cowardly excuses was a betrayal of a Rabbi’s responsibility to teach and enforce the Ten Commandments, among which the most serious is, “Thou shalt not murder.”
I’m glad the rabbi calls out his fellow rabbis. But Imam Rauf has been helping the FBI, so he quite obviously doesn’t support terrorist acts. In fact, here’s a sample of Rauf’s public statements on terrorism:
Rauf: “We condemn terrorists. We recognize it exists in our faith, but we are committed to eradicate it.” A May 21 New York Daily News article quoted Rauf stating: “We condemn terrorists. We recognize it exists in our faith, but we are committed to eradicate it.” He also stated: “We want to rebuild this community. … This is about moderate Muslims who intend to be and want to be part of the solution.”
Slate: Rauf has “denounced church burnings in Muslim countries … proposed to reclaim Islam from violent radicals.” An August 2 Slate.com article reported that Rauf “has denounced church burnings in Muslim countries, rejected Islamic triumphalism over Christians and Jews, and proposed to reclaim Islam from violent radicals such as Osama Bin Laden.”
The rabbi needs to get his head out of the Torah for five minutes. The chief difference between Judaism and its Abrahamic brother-faiths is that God alone gets to judge the soul in their theologies. It’s a meritocratic afterlife. You have to admire this.
Football-Time In Alabama
Aug 29, 2010 Football, alabama View Comments
It is time to admit the drums and brass carried from down the street weren’t lying, that the crackle-and-grunt rhythm of the season punctuated by the screaming cicada is not your imagination. A goddess named Victory will soon bring a mighty roar of exhortation to our weekends; all shall pledge their fealty.
Giants whose first lick knocks the young hope of Texas out of the game: they all begin as schoolboys amid buzzing creeks and clicking cotton. Corn-fed kids scrapping over yards of dirt have dreams of destiny: to be stuffed with homework and protein at training-tables, to stand with legends, to raise a trophy.
Whistles and horns organize the boys. Some are burned black from work all summer in fields of endless soybeans. Nothing builds character like an August two-a-day; the wind-sprint after five hours of practice makes a young man tougher than he conceived.
Some declare it a crime against nature and reason, but in truth they are jealous. Denounced as a kind of violent committee meeting, divided into two rival denominations and many lesser-known, this postmodern pagan ritual is our War Dance, a song of blood and sweat and tears.
