Hey, that woman saved what’s important–their beer! And won’t the polar melting ice make for a better brew when it reaches here?

The answer to all of your questions is No. No, it doesn’t make you bad, and no, they still don’t get it. It’s obviously because of the gay marrying in SF. And yes, we are totally screwed. Glad I didn’t reproduce.

I feel sorry for all the desperate people suffering, no matter who they voted for. Yeah, I said it. No snark here.

@Cynica: Indeed … why have global warming addressed when you can have an administration that attacks the serious problem of TWO DUDES HOLDING HANDS! We can’t have that.
And sorry JNOV, but two-time Bush voters deserve to be branded on their foreheads for being STOOOPID. Any sentient being remotely familiar with his biography could have predicted the slaughter that has occurred. The dead will take their revenge. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

@Blogenfreude: Don’t apologize. I just am not there, ya know? Those people look so poor and undernourished, and I think about the people who didn’t give a shit about the black folks and other poor in Katrina (my brother lived down there and left three hours before it hit), and I just can’t work up any ire for these people. Feel free to do it for me. I just don’t have it in me. And I would have saved the beer too, although at first I wondered why they had those paint cans on that board.

50% of the population is below average in intelligence. They can’t help it. Its like being short, you just are. No amount of screaming at them “Get taller, you short shit” will make them grow. The stupids don’t understand the world the way us geniuses here do, never will. They most of them didn’t know what they were doing when they voted for someone they were attracted to because he was proudly, truculently stupid just like them. he made them feel good about themselves. Like when Reagan said “Some people say there are no simple answers to the issues. Well, there are.” Too bad, of course, that the simple answers are wrong. You can’t hate the dumb ones, they don’t think, they follow the herd. All you can do is try to get the whole herd turned in the right direction, and then they will follow.

@promnight: Sad to believe they’re merely a herd to be turned in the right direction.

Any passion and will they have - or we have - will be ground into a fine powder by those in charge. The crimes continue, but they are not crimes because those in charge will not say that it is light when the sun is up.

@promnight: I think it’s fair to hate the idiots as well as the Best and the Brightest, since from Rummy to Cletus, all have done great harm in my lifetime. To not grant the fools their share of the blame would be to treat them as children. Ignorant or not, they’re all responsible for their actions.

@nojo: In the law, we call it “diminished capacity.” You’re not going to get off scot-free, but the degree of culpability is less because of the lack of competence.
Maybe I’m like JNOV - I have less ire for the folks flooded out than for the morons who bought 4000 sq ft McMansions in the far exurbs and put zero down with an exploding ARM and used their house line of equity to buy monsterous SUVs and now are bitching about gas being $4.50 a gallon and the cost of heating oil and they can’t pay their mortgage. Chickens, meet roost.

P.S. @Blog: That photo? A totally doctored post-Katrina photo that was floating around the Tubez. Just FYI.

I think I will change my name to SanFranHusseinLefty. Of course, Wordpress is such a clusterfuck it’s probably a pain in the ass.

@SanFranLefty: There’s nothing wrong with that. I admit I changed my birth certificate when I was young. It was originally Raging Hunglikeacamel Hussein Hummusandpitaeater Honky Monk. With all the H’s, I just go by Raging H. Monk now. It’s easier on the driver license and the passport. You should go by SanFranHusseinLefty. You Mooslim, you.

@JNOV: i see where you and sf(h)l are coming from. and i certainly don’t feel ire toward them. but, especially for those who talk about personal responsibility and other republican buzz phrases, i feel like it’s somewhat appropriate to feel what being left totally responsible for oneself without government intervention is like. for those who advocate paying as little in taxes as possible, to see the effects first hand of crumbling infrastructure and government’s diminished capability to handle disaster. maybe it takes first hand experience for these people to realize that they’ve been hoodwinked.

no one deserves to be flooded or burned or earthquaked out of house and home, and natural disasters can’t always be prevented. but they can be mitigated and the damages can be repaired, but only if we put the right resources and policies in place. so, shouldn’t those who blocked appropriate measures to mitigate disasters feel the brunt of them?

i dunno…i feel sorry for them, and i feel angry at the situation. and i direct at lot of anger to those in power who fucked it up. but there’s still more anger, and it has to go somewhere.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t help them. I’m merely saying we should ask which of them condemned New Orleans because it was (a) prone to flooding, (b) sinful, or (c) full of darkies, and help the rest first.

/TJ

Anyone listen to Le Show today? I only heard a snippet, but someone in Congress (Conyers?) was chewing some laywer’s ass. Today’s broadcast isn’t up on his site yet. Can anyone help?

/TJ

Never mind: http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/06/yoo_we_dont_make_claims_of_inf.php

@JNOV: Yes, that’s one the one, although it’s near Mamet in the live version. The poetry of Yoo’s evasions, his inability to answer Yes or No without a preamble, and for that matter his inability to answer the question asked.

So, how does Cal feel about having a war criminal on its faculty?

@nojo: Yeah, I saw the clip - I didn’t realize that was Yoo when I was listening to the radio. Cal hired him? Wow. Oh, wait — he’s been there from almost a decade. Tenure — good to have.

@nojo: Please, PLEASE put up this douchey picture!

http://www.law.berkeley.edu/faculty/profiles/facultyProfile.php?facID=235

@ragingmonk: In the same vein, I’m going to legally change my name, just to piss people off, to Reporter-Ululation-Hussein-bin-Cubinstein. You know, just to make sure everyone is pissed at me.

@pocket gay: The Republicans were successful in regressing the American political consciousness to that of 5-year-olds. Namely, wanting stuff without putting work into it or paying for it. And now we’re all paying for it.

The thing that chaps my ass is that the standard reichwing talking point about Katrina victims in New Orleans (and I’m talking Lower Ninth, etc., in Orleans Parish, not Kenner or Metairie or Crackatown) is that “they could have gotten out but didn’t, and those people always want a handout when they should be pulling themselves up out of the cesspool of floodwater.”

Then, when it comes to the Midwest and people who lived in places that flooded in 1993, what’s said when those people want FEMA help and criticize the government for failing to provide for them in a speedy manner?

Well, since they’re predominately of the Caucasian variety …. nothing.

Con Law Question

The COJCOLDS had their ward churches read a letter from their head honchos today about supporting a CA constl amendment opposing same sex marriage, and there is a big con law muddle going on my fave exmormon board right now.

Under what circumstances can a non-state actor be found to have violated civil liberties? For some reason EEOC claims come to mind (and who eviscerated the EEOC anyway), but I’m confused about how far private actors can go in jumping on rights.

Here’s the letter that was read: http://www.lds.org/ldsorg/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=e1fa5f74db46c010VgnVCM1000004d82620aRCRD&locale=0&sourceId=1aba862384d20110VgnVCM100000176f620a____

@rptrhusseincub: I support your decision completely. Even if it means pissing off everyone. You gotta measure your mark in the world someway.

@nohusseinjo: Regarding Yoo and Addington:

“We’re all in strung out shape, but stay frosty, and alert. We can’t afford to let one of those bastards in here.“–Cpl. Dwayne Hicks (Michael Biehn), Aliens, 1986.

@JNOV: He doesn’t look at all like Alfred E. Neuman. I have standards to maintain.

@ragingcluehusseinmonk: “I like to watch.” - Chauncey Gardiner

@nohusseinalfredeneumanjo: Peter Sellers in Being There:

Dennis Watson: Ah, tell me, Mr. Gardner… have you ever had sex with a man?
Chance the Gardener: No… I don’t think so.

@nojo: Fine. Well, I guess that’s what gravatar is for.

@nojo: Nojo, you’re too egalitarian is your problem, or else you are forgetting the downside of elitism. I think we here in the US America have a totally fucked up veiw of what “equality” under the law means, and what “elitism” means. Equality does not mean everyone is equal, it just means that noone has special legal privileges, and noone has special legal disadvantages, everyone is theoretically equal to succeed or fail on their own merits, and not because of special legal status.

But the republicans and the conservatives misconstrue this to mean everyone is actually equal, from which it follows that anyone who does not succeed is morally flawed and deserved it, and this jsutifies their “devil take the hindmost” approach to the world, the rich are rich because they deserve it, and they owe nothing to the poor, because the poor deserve their poverty. And some liberals also misconstrue the idea of “equality,” with disastrous consequences, particularly in education, which ahas adopted a Lake Wobegone veiwpoint that a school is not successful unless all the kids are above average. Sorry, not everyone deserves a high school diploma, or to go to college, as Judge Smails said, the world needs ditch diggers too. Thats ok, as long as the ditchdiggers get paid a living wage and their children have a real chance at opportunity based on their abilities. It was maybe a misguided application of this egalitarianism that led to throwing all teh crazies out of the asylums to die in the streets or go to prison, too.

No, we need more good old fashioned elitism in this country. Because the flip side of elitism is the recognition that the more gifted and fortunate owe an obligation to the less fortunate and less gifted. Its the opposite of conservative social lassaiz faire, let the lazy and dumb starve in the streets. The true elitist recognizes that some people are simply limited, whether obviously, because of lack of intelligence or an obvious physical disability, or subtly, because they simply lack the talents or fortitude necessary to compete successfully in a hard world, and the elitist knows that he or she is ethically bound to help those less fortunate, because its not their fault. Its just not their fault.

You see, as usual, everyone is wrong but me, because really, this fiction of egalitarianism under which everyone is held to the same standard, harmful to the less fortunate and less able, it causes more pain, justifies draconion punishments, and justifies feelings of superiority and lack of compassion and charity. Whereas elitism fosters mercy and charity, because part of recognizing that some are more able than others is to recognize that those less able are where they are through no fault of their own, just as so many of the fortunate are where they are through no merit of their own (Ecclesiastes), and that the fortunate owe, literally owe, an obligation to care for the less fortunate.

@promnight: Ecclesiastes is probably my favorite book of the Bible. It’s perfect for the cynics. And it sounds like a bipolar dude wrote it. Its end message: everything is bullshit.

@JNOV: Well, it’s complicated by the free exercise of religion question. But one could argue that any politicking will cause them to lose their 501(c)(3) tax exemption.

That photo is hee-larious. Looks like something that’d be done at the Glamor Shots in the mall.

@promnight: That’s what I was taught growing up, only Mama called it “noblesse oblige.”