I haven’t done an Open Thread in like a week. Rather than collecting links, I’ve been not doing that, but here goes:
– Too big to jail sounds like a facile little slogan but it appears to be completely accurate
– Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) Signups/Applications (h/t to my friend R)
– Cascadian politics and how we vote in a primary around here
– In a few years when gay marriage is just “marriage”, there’s going to be a reckoning.
– The White Center food bank needs volunteers.
– The Life’s Not Fair doctrine
One thing that has always fascinated me is the absurd “pro-family” label that the NeoFascists have taken on for themselves. Several months ago, I entered a contest for a rifle that was sponsored by the Civilian Marksmanship Program, of which a good friend of mine is a member. I like to shoot, I’m pretty damn good at it and it gets me discounted access to gun ranges and catalogs for shit like bulk ammo sales and whatnot. But the tenor of the emails I receive due to that is rather disturbing:
Theres more of course, little Nazi catchphrases like:
And:
So, somehow, being a “christian” automatically generates the image of a “wholesome family”, but the idea that a family is contained within such a rigid and narrowly-defined structure as to exclude hundreds of millions of people around the world from that definition by mere religious concerns is rather appalling. When one defines marriage by “biblical values”, one would also have to include bride-price, slavery, rape and outright ownership of the institution while deliberately defining any outliers as being borderline criminal in nature, and therefor dangerous to everyone by default.
Thats how pogroms start. Thats how every massacre in history has been rationalized. Define the enemy as an enemy based entirely on the mythical structure that one creates for oneself, without defining for oneself what constitutes a non-enemy except in terms of how others define it for one. It’s couched in religious terms, but it is simple to see that those terms can be created entirely for the purpose of those definitions without any real specificity. Details are left to the individual to work out for themselves.
Anyone can create a rationalization for institutionalized mass-murder if they can manufacture a great enough threat to enough people. That’s what these fuckers are really doing. Setting the foundation for another round of concentration camps, replete with every method of quick disposal of the remains that those institutions are built to create in the first place.
This is a time of year to celebrate wealth. Join me ovr at THE Ave in celebrating Paul Allen’s new helicopter!
Deathfrog
You are an obsessed person. Yes .. CHRISTIANITY and ISLAM have committed mass slaughter in the name of their gods and others have slaughtered millions because their victims had their own gods ,,, Hitler, Pol Pot …
But your thesis begs the veils done by Shaka Zuku, the Incas and Aztecs, the Horde, Ghenghis Khan, and of course the corporations,
What makes Buddhism, Judaism, Confucianism, Jainism, Odin worship, Zeus worship, Zorastrianism so evil in your eyes? Is this a relic of Christianity’s obsession with the devil?
So SJ, I see you still haven’t taken down, from your crappy little blog, my words you both plagiarized from this site and subsequently edited/misrepresented to make them something they weren’t.
Have you no shame? No honor? No honesty?
Or are you an obsessed hack with an axe to grind?
Re: The second half of the linked article about Tommy Chong’s misfortune…
By way of clarification, the “fictional bank in Miami” the drug lords were using with HSBC’s help replaced a non-fictional one they’d previously employed: The Miami branch of the Atlanta Federal Reserve bank.
@3 Ya know what’s worse than all of those? Two currently fashionable forms of idolatry: Nationalism and the worship of money.
I have a confession, we went to Wal-Mart to get a Nintendo 3DS if the price was good. It was an awful experience.
First, the lighting was murky, like they didn’t want to pay the full light bill. Whole sections of shelves were empty or had but one lonely beat up item. We went back to electronics to find one remaining 3DS in a locked case. It had no price listed, but the other electronics were no cheaper than anywhere else. Nobody was available to help. I got in line to get a price check. There was a line five deep and one lone person at checkout, moving slow. After 7 minutes and no movement on the checkout line but three more people behind me, I gave up and they lost the sale.
We went to price boys coats. Apparently no staff was available, or tasked, to pick up as clothes were just dumped on the floor, and not just a single shirt, but over 40.
Summary, It was dim. There was no roaming staff to help. A quarter of the shelves were empty or scrambled. It was messy. Items had no prices. We won’t be shopping there again, any time soon. That place hates it’s workers and customers and the feeling is mutual.
We got our 3DS that night, but not from Wal-Mart.
Our visit to Wal-Mart reminded me of my visit to a Mexican border town next to Texas in 1980. NOT racially but because both Matamoros and Wal-mart felt like being in a poor third world country, that didn’t have resources to water the parks or pay the light bills and stock the shelves. There was not a feeling of pride and optimum in that Wal-Mart, it just felt of flop sweat desperation and seething anger of both the employees and the customers.
Over on Stefan’s sucky little blog, Jim Miller has apologized to Arizona. For what? Calling that state a nest of rattlesnakes and fascists? That’s exactly what it is, a haven for unreconstructed Republicans like Jan Brewer and America’s Most Nauseating Sheriff.
Re the story about Utah’s now-defunct Scout troop, the BSA (Boy Scouts of America) is a private organization, and therefore has every right to be a gang of homophobic bigots. I’m just surprised the Utah Jewish Federation would sponsor a hate group, that’s all.
BSA. They have the right to be homophobic and others have the right to not fund them or give them space.
FYI. My son is in Cub Scouts. In this local troop, they have gone out of their way to make sure everyone knows they do not discriminate. We will see when he transitions to the boy scouts. If they are local bigots, I doubt my son will continue with them.
Capitalism Chose China to be the World’s Manufacturer because they allow companies to pollute at will.
This is what China’s lax to nonexistent environmental regulations look like on the ground. (In pictures.)
http://www.dailykos.com/story/.....tail=email
@12. If one doesn’t have any consequences, I can see why they go to China.
Photos like that are probably going to be illegal soon.
Liberal Scientist
I have no need to respond to your jibe about a post at TA http://handbill.us/?p=25952 . TA is what it is. We get 200-600 hits each day and that goes toward the high end if I send out an email to lout mailing list ..about 1000 names. Your dissing THE Ave has no useful effect.
Now, to more useful comments. We need to the language a but more clear:
First, plagiarism means lack of attribution, The quotes are attributed.
Second, nothing was “subsequently edited/misrepresented.” I assume you understand that HA is a public forum? Under the fair use doctrine, any text that is made public can be quoted as long as the quotation is used to provide a comment. All of the quotes attributed to you are extensive and, as far as I can tell, in context.
The only exception in any way is the subheading, Though that is an accurate quote and is, as far as I can seen an accurate heading for what follows. If you have some other interpretation of the words, just leave a comment. If you do not want the comment posted then say so and I will look at what you send, decide what to do, and not post the comment.
Alternatively, if you have a rebuttal, then just make a comment and it will be there regardless of whether I agree or not
My words:
Your “quote” of my words:
You did not quote me, you edited my original words to have an effect you found somehow useful to you.
You are a dishonest, wheedling little hack.
RRabbit
“I’m just surprised the Utah Jewish Federation would sponsor a hate group, that’s all.”
Sadly that is the fact of life, not just for the UJA but for all the cabal of community funds.
There is, however, another argument. The position that being hay is comparable to being Black is not at all proven. Some people, Jews, other religions, most African Americans do not want to mix with gay people and that … it seems to me … ought tot be a fair choice at least as reasonable as accepting the idea od not wanting atheists or plural marriage in some group.
I believe the freedom of association should be wide enough to include all biological variation and geographic origins. I think, however, that the freedom of association implies a freedom to NOT associate as well and this part of the freedom should operate unless it can be shown that some group s being excluded form a community wide opportunity or that the type of association doe snot harm to the rights of the narrower group.
Put another way… if the YMBA owns the only swimmming pool in town and that pool is a public lace, the thing can not keep gay kids out. But if a bunch of parents want to form the junior he men to teach their kids what fun it is to snap spit balls* using a jock strap, then the parents can exclude a gay kid cuz he does not fit in.
*euphemism
Liberal Scientist
Take a look at the post. This is as close as I can get to in a header to expressing your words,
@17
Your attempt at re-editing your original mangling of my words, with a new version that essentially says the same thing, only serves to highlight the dishonesty you’re (still) trying to perpetrate.
In the quote you’re proceeding from, I was speaking about YOU, not Jews in general. That is patently obvious, but something you would NEVER glean if the only thing one read was your “paraphrasing”.
That’s the point, doofus – I was critiquing YOUR words, and you took that and turned it into an attack on ALL JEWS – which it obviously never was.
That’s the central dishonesty of what you’re doing here. Your “paraphrasing” completely changes the meaning, changes it into another sectarian weapon with which to attack one’s enemies – which is what you’re doing here – which is my recurrent complaint about organized religion and toxic tribalism of all stripes.