Whiskey Fire

The Rear End Times

One of the occupational hazards of this snark-blog lark is that if you have, you know, an occupation, on occasion the snark must balk. And take a walk. And not talk. Anyway, what the Peter Falk am I trying to say...? Oh. That I'm busy.

But also, let's face it: this is an astonishingly dull and stupid and hateful and shitty and gloomy and dull and stupid and shitty and hatefully gloomy moment in American History. Also, it's dull. And gloomy. And shitty:

Stupid well-armed militia dimwits are racists!

Weirdo incredibly wealthy sports-team owners who were always racists turn out to be... racists!

Don't get me wrong. There's lots to say about these appalling but obvious developments. It's just that in times like these, I can offer very little value added comment to the prevailing idiocy: we are well and truly reductioed into absurdemery.

Same as it ever was, so.

Back to form soon.

Red-winged Blackbird, Eastern Redbud

This is a male Red-winged Blackbird. You can hear his song here.





P.S. The mystery flower from my last post has been identified. Grecian windflower, Anemone blanda:


 

Posted by ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© and cross-posted at my place. Mouse over pics for captions, and click them for larger versions.
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Let's Talk Taxes!

I had a sausage burp earlier this afternoon and it made me think that I've been neglecting something --

Oh right.

Do go on, frighteningly vacuous young conservative person.

Female, feisty and unemployed? Fear not! Obama will need to hire IRS Girls Gone Wild to replace Lois Lerner.

Gosh. What?

For openers, is Girls Gone Wild still even a thing? Wikipedia tells me the company went bankrupt in 2013, and it hasn't even been a relevant joke for about a decade. Surely, as a Hip Young Conservative Voice What Can Talk to the Young, you wouldn't go for a reference as stale and confounding as this one --

OK. Sure.

But beyond that strictly comedy-reference criticism, isn't it kind of sexist to jump to the "Girls Gone Wild" thing? Even granted that there's some corruption here, a point I don't grant by the way, what's with the immediate connection between a tawdry commercial enterprise predicated on sexual exploitation, and a government official who happens to be female? How does that make sense? Thoughts?

Ahem. Yes. Moving on.

It’s hard to find a replacement for Lois. Who could possibly replicate her trademark trickery? Or her passion for repression? Who could duplicate her talent for exercising shake down efforts on tea party organizations faster than spring breakers can shake their booties?

Uhh...

As a criticism, could you be encouraged to not write in the voice of the narrator of the 1960s Batman teevee show? Lois Lerner is not The Riddler, despite her "TRADEmark TRICKERY!"

 Oh.

And:

Who could duplicate her talent for exercising shake down efforts on tea party organizations faster than spring breakers can shake their booties?

Yeah, who could do that thing, that is that thing, that WHAT?

Right.

Chaotic Turtles

Carmi's Thematic Photographic 291 is Chaotic.


Technically speaking, these sounds come from the swamp across the road from the lake.

 



Speaking of brightening your day...


P.S. Here's some KAOS from Typepad:


Posted by ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© and cross-posted at my place. Mouse over pics for captions, and click them for larger versions.
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Dumb Wings, Dumb Words

Here is a fun instance of Stupid Administrator Tricks. An art professor at a New Jersey community college gets hauled in to talk to administration and security for posting a social media picture of his young daughter wearing a Game of Thrones t-shirt -- and then he's suspended:

Citing numerous concerns about their president’s commitment to shared governance, the faculty union at Bergen Community College in New Jersey voted “no confidence” in her leadership. They say they are being denied regular access to the president, that changes to the promotion and tenure committee violate their rights, and that at least one of their colleagues was forced into a bizarre situation over a "Game of Thrones" T-shirt....

Francis Schmidt, a professor of art and animation, is one such case.

By all accounts, including his own, Schmidt is a bit of an eccentric. The longtime professor posts cat pictures to social media and loves fantasy stories, especially HBO’s popular “Game of Thrones.”

So it came as no surprise to many of his Google+ contacts that he enthusiastically posted a picture of his young daughter doing yoga in a T-shirt with the new “Game of Thrones” season tagline in January, upon release of the trailer. The T-shirt reads, “I will take what is mine in fire and blood,” and Schmidt’s cat lurks in the photo background.

But one contact -- a dean -- who was notified automatically via Google that the picture had been posted apparently took it as a threat. In an email, Jim Miller, the college’s executive director for human resources, told Schmidt to meet with him and two other administrators immediately in light of the “threatening email.”

Eventually they briefly suspended him and made him talk to a shrink. Before he sicced his direwolf on them, or something.

It's a wild story all around. Professors obviously have a lot more labor protections than do workers in other jobs, but still, you have to be careful about who you make friends with on social media if they have any sort of power over you. You never know what sort of wacky stunt they might pull. Even if you're posting on Google +, where you can have a reasonable expectation that nobody will ever see it.

MAS. I suppose another title for this post could be "The Night Is Derp, And Full of Stupid."

When You Add up the Numbers

The Western Snopes, the Cliven Bundys, have been getting some positive, if ridiculous, wingnut press. It's not easy to explain exactly how taking up arms against your own government over a preposterous grievance is not treason, but that's your American right wing for you.

David French manages to most thoroughly impale himself upon the this pointy triangle that is the fractured result of trying to square this mindless circle:

As government grows ever-larger, majority rule becomes more consequential for minority populations. The regulatory state grows, and rural Americans are left with little recourse. The courts won’t overturn regulatory actions absent a clearly-identified liberty interest (with the law granting wide discretion to federal agencies), in many states legislatures are dominated by urban voting blocs, and — particularly in the West — massive federal ownership of land means the voice of the local farmer or landowner is diluted into meaninglessness within the larger national debate. 

With few options left within conventional politics, rural Americans are beginning to contemplate more dramatic measures, such as the state secession movements building in Colorado, Maryland, California, and elsewhere. The more viable state secession movements aim to limit urban control by literally removing rural counties from their states and forming new states around geographic regions of common interests.

Gosh.

So, explicitly, what "minority rights" means from the National Review perspective, is that if a rich, armed minority is losing elections by virtue of the fact that they are a minority and thus lose elections, it will be understandable if they suddenly decide that democracy no longer works, because they will have lost elections.

You know, historically, that position is basically fascism... oh wait, forgot. Real fascism is to do with vegetarianism or some shit. We regret the error.

Mac Fucknose

A Satire upon this drivel in the American Thinker.

All dinner parties are subject to anecdote,

Wherein Liberal Fools must play the goat:

This Fucknose found, who, like Bromley, dumb,

Was call'd to tell his lib'rul family, young,

That their Brooklyn life was awful, squalid,

Stupid, shallow, not remotely valid:

Did they not know they made six figures?

 

The scene is set, & the action jiggered:

Mac Fucknose, now, he'll describe a meal

Wherein his grasp of family discourse ideal

Is wonderfully revealed: this total tit

Spews a mirthful font of wingnut bullshit:

 

"I know this couple, this Donna and Frank,

Who live in BROOKLYN, NY, & not swank.

They make SIX FIGURES, which in Brooklyn gets

A flat with roaches, hoboes, and no pets.

In BROOKLYN there live hipsters, artsy blokes,

Druggies you just can't find out in Suffolk.

My idea of Brooklyn does not go to and fro,

And fine ladies still talk of Serpico.

 

I had these two up to my Thanksgiving

Over the gravy I did plan a shivving.

I did! I did, most surely seek to dare

To bait these rubes as to Obamacare.

Cover the unemployed? It stands to reason --

This thinking is but the darkest treason!

I put my dogs of Malkin upon 'em,

I did not remotely act like Gollum.

I knew I need do naught but calmly race-bait,

And then I'd win, I'd win the whole debate!

 

Odd, though, my win, nobody thinks will stick.

Why must these cowards still call me a dick?

 

Truth? Even my wife says I'm an asshole,

But she's not read Ayn Rand -- her case? Facile.

After all, during our family meal I WON.

I WON the debate. Holy shit, I'm FUN."

 

Mac Fucknose then sat, and pondered his art,

Which, as Dryden explained, meant the dumb fucker farted HA FUCK THAT FUCKER.

Dryocopus pileatus

They're around here in Berkeley Springs all the time. But the Pileateds do try to avoid the paparazzi.


Here's one of my favorite local beetles:


Get your cameras ready, first in series of rare ‘blood moon’ eclipses begins April 15. This picture is from Saturday:


Posted by ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© and cross-posted at my place. Mouse over pics for captions, and click them for larger versions.
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Wait Hold on Treason

No nation can stand unless the state maintains a monopoly over the use of legitimate violence.

We are no longer a nation of laws.

I link straight to the PowerLine idiots because supposedly they are lawyers?

You can't defy federal law by force of arms. Does this need to be even explained? Apparently so.

Cliven Bundy is a traitor. John Hinderaker is a traitor, in defending him by claiming his case has "merits."

LAW IS LAW, NOT THE BARREL OF A GUN.

Or it's not law.

 

Wrinkled Ghosts

Hey youse. I've been absent this week owing to stuff in real life --  the Job, right.

But whatever. This blog has no patience for this sort of shit, from Frusen Conersdorf.

Those who rely on stigma are tied to a tactic that is employed most when needed least, often against groups already marginalized within a community; no wonder stigma it is correlated more strongly with signaling self-righteousness than effecting change. That isn't to say stigma is never appropriate—just that engagement and persuasion is almost always the better option, as it is on gay marriage. It has succeeded, it will continue to succeed, it is consistent with liberal values, and it reinforces a norm that helps us cooperate in many areas of life even when we disagree about politics. Put all those together and this isn't even a close case.

Again: whatever.

Same-sex marriage exists as a current social norm ONLY because a lot of people said "fuck you." Approximately zero currently married gay couples are thanking Conor Fruberzgolf for his gobshite polite contributions in the Atlantic.

We won. We were impolite.

Ochone.

How it works, yo.