More politics. An angry take down of an article calling for JoeBiden's resignation. http://jefvjohnson.com/home/blog/
1:58 PM - 15 Aug 12 via Twitter for Android · Details
RACISM
Earlier this week I saw some right-leaning writer claim that describing Paul Ryan’s style as "aw shucks" was a racially loaded description, demeaning to white people. This is stupid. Then I saw an uproar over Joe Biden saying something about Romney "putting chains on people" to an audience that was roughly 50% black. This is also stupid. I made a joke about it on twitter, thinking it funny how desperately the right wants to be able to call someone racist for a change. Then I saw this article by Matt Latimer on the front page of the daily beast and I thought, ‘there’s a decent chance that people take this shit seriously, and they read this article and think the issue is being laid out fairly, and it’s infuriating.’ If you have some time to kill, proceed. Continue reading →
DEAR MR. ROMNEY
I understand you’re in a bit of a pickle, regarding your presidential bid. You come off as kind of a tool and you’re awkward and unpleasant; you seem positively antagonistic toward people when they ask you basic questions, and you think it’s funny to abuse gay people and dogs. You lie a lot and, well, it turns out that at least half of the American people don’t like voting for unpleasant, confrontational liars.
I know you’ve got your dudes working hard to keep all the minorities from being allowed to vote, but you and I both know that the same dudes were stealing the same votes four years ago. Let’s face it, John McCain comes off looking pretty good next to you. Hell, you lost against McCain and then got snubbed for Sarah F-ing Palin, and that hilarious, doomed ticket is being looked back on fondly by your party. I know, you were thinking that you’d get a jump in the polls when you named your VP, but obviously that hasn’t worked out. If anything, Ryan makes you look worse to everyone except the people who were already resigned to voting for you.
You know what would help? No, you don’t. Continue reading →
DREAM THEATER
I am not usually one to remember my dreams, but in the last week I’ve been able to fairly vividly recall two.
1:
I was sitting at a bar in a diner (basically exactly where Walter White was sitting at the beginning of this season of Breaking Bad) and my dog Bobo was on the floor beside my stool. I was waiting, and I knew that I had just been involved in a crime. I suspect it was something like being involved in a bank robbery, and I got the impression when I woke up from the dream that someone had died in the commission of the crime. Anyway, I didn’t seem too disturbed by it, and when the cops walked in to arrest me, I was pretty nonchalant.
I was sitting at a bar in a diner (basically exactly where Walter White was sitting at the beginning of this season of Breaking Bad) and my dog Bobo was on the floor beside my stool. I was waiting, and I knew that I had just been involved in a crime. I suspect it was something like being involved in a bank robbery, and I got the impression when I woke up from the dream that someone had died in the commission of the crime. Anyway, I didn’t seem too disturbed by it, and when the cops walked in to arrest me, I was pretty nonchalant.
…until they went to take away Bobo and put on the cuffs. I begged them to let me pet my dog for a few more minutes before they took me away, because this was probably the last time I’d ever see him, and when I reached for him they took him away and he made this howl-bark noise he makes when I come home from work. I woke up close to tears, and, of course, I went out and petted Bobo for a while before going back to sleep.
2:
A few nights later, I dreamed that Amanda and I were driving through somewhere that I thought was Salt Lake City. I’ve never been to Salt Lake City, but I do not imagine it is a place with lots of rivers and no traffic, but that’s where this was. I was running out of gas, the car was sputtering, and I swerved across an empty road to get to a gas station. I must not have seen the only other car on the road, but I cut some guy off and he followed us into the gas station lot. He got out of his car and proceeded to act as if I were not only threatening him, but actually had taken him hostage.
A few nights later, I dreamed that Amanda and I were driving through somewhere that I thought was Salt Lake City. I’ve never been to Salt Lake City, but I do not imagine it is a place with lots of rivers and no traffic, but that’s where this was. I was running out of gas, the car was sputtering, and I swerved across an empty road to get to a gas station. I must not have seen the only other car on the road, but I cut some guy off and he followed us into the gas station lot. He got out of his car and proceeded to act as if I were not only threatening him, but actually had taken him hostage.
He holds his hands up and twitches a lot and I try to ignore him. He goes into the gas station and comes out acting much the same, hands up. He gets very close to me and begs me not to stab his eyes out with an ink pen, and it’s then that I notice he’s holding an ink pen like a weapon, like he’s about to make his escape from a nonexistent kidnapping by stabbing me. I take the pen from him and actually do threaten him then and I draw a line across his throat with the pen. Amanda and I get in the car and drive away and I are immediately pursued by several police cars, because, I guess, that guy called the police and reported himself as a hostage (?) while he was in the gas station.
The take-aways:
I like my dog
I don’t like cops
I should steer clear of Salt Lake City
I don’t like cops
I should steer clear of Salt Lake City
UPDATE
These things happened:
Chik-fil-a became a focal point for offensive behavior. About that, I will only say that I don’t chose to give money to companies that so publicly brag about their support for positions I oppose. I will also say that the people who rallied to chik-fil-a’s defense did so in a generally abhorrent manner and I wouldn’t want to go to a place full of people singing American anthems and bragging about Jesus and using hateful speech no matter why they were there.
Olympics. NBC Universal controls at least a half-dozen channels on my TV and chooses to use only one of them to show choppy, spoiler-heavy coverage. I have seen more water polo than anything else this year, and I do not give a damn about water polo.
Romney. You really want this guy to be the face of the nation? When it comes to representing America abroad (never mind all the other ways) he might be worse than Bush. I imagine he’ll get a lot of spite votes from the crowd discussed above.
Book. Not one single sale of Highmark part 2. Perhaps I should rethink this serialized novel idea. Not that I won’t finish the thing, I just may not be trying to sell any more sections. If all one-dozen people who have bought it so far were to insist, I might reconsider. Better yet, get some people to buy this thing. It’s allegedly good, not that I’m a fair and impartial source.
Borscht. I made borscht. It was terrible.
Job. I would like one.
MUTUALLY ASSURED DESTRUCTION
I saw a stomach-churning amount of pro-gun rhetoric over the weekend. The argument that is made, again and again, reminds me of the concept of mutually assured destruction as it applied to the Cold War. The idea, in a nutshell, was that the USSR would never fire nuclear weapons at the USA or vice versa because both sides understood that the last thing the other guy would do before being wiped out would be to fire their arsenal back, thereby basically wiping out both nations (and, most of the planet).
Now, this concept may have worked on some level for nations involved in a nuclear stand-off, but it depends on the concept of "rational actors." A "rational actor" is a nation or group that will not take an action that will result in it’s destruction, so, even though Stalin or whoever would really love to have blasted that smug smile off Ike’s face, he wasn’t going to, because hurting one’s enemy at the cost of being destroyed is irrational. There are some who claim that we have to invade Iran because they are not "rational" in this sense, which is ludicrous and a topic for another day.
The way the argument gets shifted down to the personal level is that, as Newt Gingrich told me on Saturday morning, essentially, the tragedy in Aurora would have been avoided or significantly lessened if everyone in the theater had an assault weapon on them.
It is probably true. Or half true.
It is likely that the person who decided to attack a sold out crowd of movie-goers would have, himself, been killed before he could inflict as much damage as this man inflicted, but would the high probability of a theater full of armed people have prevented the attack? Of course not. First of all, "rational". Clearly this sort of action is not done by a "rational actor" in any sense of the word. More to the point, the calculus is different when one is weighing their own single life against the desire for revenge or victory or punishment or whatever irrational motivation was behind this action. Imagine if the only person who could suffer from US retaliation for nuclear war was Stalin himself. That’s what we’re talking about.
It is not uncommon for these rampage killers to take their own lives when all’s said and done, and if they are willing to make that move themselves, how can the threat of being shot by someone else discourage them from acting?
So to lessen the damage of these sorts of acts (NOT to stop them or to stop them from costing lives) everyone in the entire country (or perhaps everyone over 18… or perhaps every white man… it’s hard to tell with republicans sometimes) should carry an automatic weapon all the time.
That is the only solution that is being entertained by half the country, apparently. To suggest that it might be better if no one could carry an assault weapon or if no one could carry a gun at all is to suggest something deeply unamerican.
Which makes me feel very unamerican indeed.
