Shaking in Japan

There’s two nuclear power plants with a declared state of emergency now and one has released some radioactive gas. We got the tsunami here but it was more a swell, unless you happened to be in one of the coves that concentrate the force of oncoming swells, like the morons were who gathered on the beach to watch the tsumani and got washed out to sea for their trouble. Incidentally, in a meeting this afternoon I was told that some of the security camera footage from one of the stricken nuclear plants was likely courtesy of a product I worked on. Cool. Not so cool is that our hardware doesn’t work so well once melted into a radioactive lump, which seems like far too much a possibility right now .

Earthquakes scare me. You can prepare for a hurricane — you can stock up on supplies, you can tape or plywood your windows, you can head out for the interior where it’ll just be a strong gale. You know a hurricane’s coming. An earthquake, on the other hand… eep! It happens when it happens, and you're never as prepared as you'd like to be. I’m just glad that I’m 80 feet above sea level now, rather than below sea level like I was for the prior six years (protected by a leaky dike built to protect salt evaporation ponds, not people — eek!), because it should at least mean I won’t drown if an earthquake hits here. Though given the fact that my house was built in 1961 and is about as earthquake-proof as an eggshell, as vs. my below-sea-level-apartment which was built to withstand earthquakes, I don’t know how good that should make me feel.

My boss, who is Japanese, is going to try to contact our people in Japan this evening. Immediately after the earthquake and tsunami was of course hopeless and he didn’t even try. Hopefully they’re all okay, just getting around by bicycle at the moment because the trains are stopped and the streets are closed off.

- Badtux the Shaky Penguin

The bottom line

By now all of you have read or heard about the shootings of a Federal judge and U.S. Congresswoman in Arizona. Federal judge John Roll, who made rulings of law that infuriated right-wing zealots to the point that he had four death threats against him in the past year, is dead, and U.S. Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords is likely to survive but probably is disabled for life due to a bullet that went through her brain.

It appears that this is an act of right-wing terrorism against America. As with most terrorist attacks, from what details have been released about a middle-aged man picking up Jared Lee Loughner at home and driving him to the meeting, it appears that the usual template of the suicide bomber was used here -- find a loser, fill his head up with nonsense about how all his problems are caused by the targets, then set him loose to kill. Given what has been said about Mr. Loughner, it seems unlikely that he himself chose the targets, even the U.S. Army didn't want Loughner due to his lack of intelligence and emotional instability. Somebody loaded him up as a weapon, then set him loose to kill.

One thing this should make clear is the fundamental difference in values between liberals and conservatives. Liberals believe in democracy -- that the people have a right to decide who shall lead them, even when the people choose unwisely. Thus why liberal opposition to the election of George W. Bush focused upon irregularities in Florida and Ohio and the actions of the U.S. Supreme Court and Electoral College, and why there were few threats of violence, explicit or not, against Bush, unlike regular threats of assassination against Obama that have popped up on bumper stickers everywhere in conservitard country. Indeed, Bush's main fear was that he might encounter protesters who were exercising free speech and thus might bespoil his perfectly empty mind with ideas that he didn't want, not fear of people exercising "2nd amendment solutions".

Conservatives, on the other hand, distrust democracy. By and large they do not believe that the people should choose their leaders. They believe that only the *right* people should choose who leads America -- generally white property owners, if you look at conservative "Tea Party" rhetoric surrounding "voter fraud" and their desire to repeal the 17th Amendment (which allowed direct election of Senators). Conservatives fundamentally believe that the majority of Americans are idiots and unqualified to choose who leads our nation, they regularly rant about the "tyranny of the majority" that they claim will destroy the nation. Liberals, on the other hand believe in free and open elections that respect the will of the majority, no matter how delusional or stupid the majority may be. That is because the only way for a minority to impose their rule upon the majority (as vs. persuade the majority to go along with it) is at gunpoint, and tyranny imposed at gunpoint is not a liberal value.

The other fundamental difference this points out between conservative values and liberal values is one of respect for human life. Even radical left-wing groups that advocate violence, such as some of the radical Earth First types and Black Bloc anarchists, advocate violence only against property, not against people. They smash in the windows of Starbucks stores and blow up SUV's, they don't assassinate people. As far as I know the last American left-wing act of political violence against human life was the assassination of President McKinley by an anarchist in 1901, and the revulsion against that led to basically the destruction of the mainstream anarchist movement in America.

Conservatives, however, make no bones about "Second Amendment solutions" when the majority elects politicians that conservatives don't like. They believe democracy is a "tyranny of the majority", i.e., "will of the majority" is "tyranny", and that killing people -- i.e., using their guns to restore themselves to power- - is a proper response to this. Some go further and argue that we in fact live in a tyranny imposed by a minority, utterly ignoring the fact that every single one of the sorry sons of bitches in Congress plus the President were elected by the majority of voters in their respective district, state, or country as a whole rather than imposed by some outside dictatorship, but it's unknown how many conservatives believe in such a thing, and it's irrelevant anyhow to the basic point that violence against human beings is an accepted conservative value. Thus abortion doctors killed, the Oklahoma City federal building bombed, and so forth, all by right-wing terrorists. Once you dispense with the notion of respect for human life, crossing the line and actually killing someone is much easier.

So that's the difference, folks: One side believes in democracy and life, the other believes in dictatorship and death. And on that note, I leave you, because my purring cat deserves my attention more than the despicable bunch of people who committed this act of right-wing terrorism against America.

-- Badtux the No-longer-conservative Penguin

Sarah Failin

I honestly don't care about the demented bitch, but there's an innocent party in all of this who is being harmed by her negligence, stupidity, and ignorance:

I’m sorry but every time I see a picture of Trig on the book tour I cringe. As the mother of a Special Needs child, I know that Trig should be home getting intensive speech, physical and occupational therapy at this point in his young life. He shouldn’t be used as his mother’s prop to boost her favorability with a certain segment of voters who appreciate that she didn’t abort him. Sarah Palin is potentially setting her child’s potential progress back by years. Any parent of a Special Needs child can vouch that early, intensive therapies are key to future development. Every time I see her with him on her hip, instead of with a speech or other therapist, I keep wondering what she’s thinking.

That question, of course, assumes she is thinking at all. Which is a big assumption.

-- Badtux the Thinking Penguin

The situation in Gaza

Israel is pounding a lot of terrorists like the one on the left. I would discuss this further, but any discussion of genocide or ethnic cleansing when a Jew is doing it means you're anti-Semitic. It is only allowable to talk about genocide or ethnic cleansing when non-Jews are doing it.

-- Badtux the "Rules are rules" Penguin

Dead is dead (unless you're in Soviet America)

Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that people dying of cancer could not use unapproved drugs to treat their otherwise-untreatable cancers because the unapproved drugs might... uhm... kill them.

Now, I don't know the difference between being killed by cancer and being killed by an unapproved drug. Seems to me that dead is, well, dead. Regardless of what you call it. Passed on. No more. Ceased to be. Expired and gone to meet its maker. This is a late patient. It's a stiff, bereft of life, resting in peace, pushing up the daisies. Whatever you call it, this patient is, uhm, dead. Yet it appears that the U.S. Supreme Court is intent upon playing out a Monty Python skit...

Remember, in Soviet America, it doesn't matter whether dead is dead, what matters is, uhm... err... what? Oh yeah. What matters is that people must die the way the Party apparatchniks want them to die, not the way that they themselves choose to die. Why, if we let people choose how they wanted to die, they might think they, uhm, lived in a free country or somethin'. Eeep! Can't have that!

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

"Culture of Life" indeedy...

Iraqi children are being terrorized or killed because of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, as thousands of Americans die due to lack of universal health care coverage in the United States. Meanwhile, tighty righties chortle at the notion that the U.S. Supreme Court somehow "protected life" with their muddled decision on late-term abortions, but swiftly change the subject when you start asking, "do post-born children have a right to life", indeed, even delete your messages on their boards when you ask that question. Nevermind that everybody agrees that post-born children are, in fact, people, while not everybody agrees that fetuses are, in fact, people. For some reason, pre-born children have more rights than post-born children in the Brave New World of tighty righty blogs.

Ah yes, the "Christian" Culture of Life. Offer void at birth.

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

The day shelter

In a previous life, I worked as a librarian. Well, make that "Library technical assistant", since I don't have a MLA thus wasn't qualified to be a full-fledged librarian. Nevertheless, I did work the magazine reference desk several afternoons per week.

I'm not going to post much more on that, just go read. I was there when Reagan was kicking the mentally ill out of the mental hospitals, with the complicity of idiot liberals who insisted that the mentally ill were just "misunderstood". Those were the years when we had to hire a security guard for the first time at the library...

-- Badtux the Former Library Penguin

On war

You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out. ... You might as well appeal against the thunder-storm as against these terrible hardships of war. They are inevitable, and the only way the people [...] can hope once more to live in peace and quiet at home, is to stop the war, which can only be done by admitting that it began in error and is perpetuated in pride.

-- William Tecumseh Sherman, 1864

At 9:30pm EST on March 19, 2003, the first bombs dropped on Baghdad, part of a massive bombing campaign that coincided with a military campaign to disarm Saddam's weapons of mass destruction prevent Saddam from harboring al Qaeda terrorists liberate Iraqis like these very well liberated Iraqis:

Before the inevitable objections "but we didn't *intend* to kill little girls!", bullshit. When you choose to go to war, you choose to kill little girls. Period. To quote a man who knew war, "War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it". If you intend to go to war, you intend to kill little girls. Period. If you are not willing to kill little girls, then you are not willing to go to war. Those who chose to go to war -- which was some 65% of the American population in 2003 -- implicitly chose to kill little girls. They might claim that this is not what they chose, but they lie. You might as well appeal against the thunder-storm as against these terrible hardships of war. They are inevitable. Choose war, and you choose to kill little girls.

Four years later, little girls are still dying. As are American soldiers, but they are a tiny, tiny tiny percentage of the dead. Over 650,000 Iraqis have died over the past four years -- or more Iraqis than Saddam managed to kill in his entire 25 year reign. As a people we Americans focus on the dead American soldiers only because we are an ignorant, self-interested people who view anybody who is not American as untermenschen, inhuman, just two-legged cockroaches to be exterminated like vermin. As a people we are cruel and heartless towards anybody who isn't part of our own little enclave of hairless monkeys with delusions of grandeur. We are maliciously vindictive towards anybody who points out that we're just monkeys and no better than any other monkeys on this planet and that we're being cruel and vicious. And little girls still die. And little girls still die.

How many little girls will die before our leaders stop the war, which can only be done by admitting that it began in error and is perpetuated in pride? How many little girls must die before the piteous mewling of self-interest politicians more interested in political gamesmanship and bullshit do what's right instead of what's expedient? How many? And for what purpose?

"Freedom isn't free," the wingnuts cry. But it seems to me that it is the Iraqi people who are paying the price, especially the 50% of the Iraqi population that is below the age of 18. They are dying by the hundreds of thousands. They are paying the price. How dare we say that we should choose their deaths? Should not the price of freedom be one that the Iraqis themselves decide for themselves? But I forget, they are mere untermenchen, mud people, just filthy cockroaches. They cannot liberate themselves. They need fine white ubermenschen American GI's to do that.

And so they die. And so they die. For no purpose that anybody can tell me. Stop civil war? It's happening. Stop al Qaeda from setting up in Iraq? They're there. Stop ethnic cleansing? It's happening. Prevent a refugee crisis? It's happening. Even the "war for oil" reason, in the end, fails. There is no oil in Baghdad. Yet our soldiers fight and kill and die in Baghdad. For what reason, other than for the sake of ignorance and pride? How many more young girls must die, before we admit that the war was begun in error and perpetuated in pride, and bring the soldiers home?

The answer, sadly, is too many. Far too many. And the answer of the wingnuts is... clap louder. Ah yes. Clap louder. But this penguin, for one, is tired of clapping.

- Badtux the War Penguin

Support Our Troops

Until they get wounded, that is. At that point, we fuck'em in every orifice of their body by denying them the 30% disability rating needed to qualify for Tricare (the military health plan for active duty and retirees) rather than the perpetually underfunded VA system.

The next time I see some rat-fucking bastard with one of those yellow ribbons on his fat-assed SUV, I’m going to take printouts of these two stories, smash in the driver’s side window, put these on the front seat, and spray paint on the door “So when are you going to start supporting the troops, motherfucker?!”. Okay, maybe not. But look, us “lefties” (term in quotes, because as a rational Libertarian I’m about as “lefty” as Barry Goldwater, but whatever) have been raising cain for the past four years that the Bush Administration has been shitting on our veterans and the response of the Freeper yellow ribbon crowd? “You’re just being a hypocrit, if you really cared about our troops you’d support dear leader’s war!”

What the fuck does support or not of Dear Leader’s war have to do with it? We ought to be giving these poor kids the best care we can for as long as they need it, fuck the budget, do what’s RIGHT not what’s CHEAP. But the Freepi just whine “you’re trying to make Dear Leader look bad!” whenever you point that out. Excuse me? What does motivation have to do with it? Right is right, and saying “I won’t listen to you because I don’t like what you’re saying or why you’re saying it!” is the act of, well, a fucking MORON.

What’s the Freepi response to all this:

“Dana Priest=traitor.”

For real!

@#$. Dammit, these right wing rat bastards are turning me into a clone of the Rude Pundit and giving me a blood pressure of 240 over 160…

The only good news is that now that Democrats are in charge in Congress, the so-called-liberal “mainstream” press can finally start covering stories that we’ve been covering in the “alternative” press (places like antiwar.com, Raw Story, Capitol Hill Blues, etc.) for literally years. Yeah, we got a free press here in the United States. And somehow, they always seem to report whatever the ruling party wants them to report (SNORT!).

– Badtux the Rude Penguin

Republican Culture of Life at work again

I've been wondering what to say about a 12 year old kid dying because we as a society were too cheap to spend $80 on a basic medical procedure. But then Coyote Angry (going onto my blogroll) pretty much nailed it: This is just the whole Republican Culture of Life thingy in a nutshell.

Remember, Republican Jesus* says, "Suffer the little children, for they are worthless after being born." Republican Jesus says, "Begrudge the poor your money, for the poor are just untermenschen and should be exterminated anyhow." Republican Jesus drives the biggest baddest Cadillac Escalade around to attend anti-abortion ralleys, then goes home to a house that's four times as large as ordinary people's houses to prepare his next speech saying how everybody needs to give Republican Jesus more money while poor people in New Orleans are evicted from their homes after their original homes were destroyed because Republican Jesus has spent the past seventy years preaching that the government should not spend Republican Jesus's money on those levees to make them safe. Republican Jesus loves life, as long as life is unborn. The moment that squalling little pupae makes it out of that woman's glory hole, though, it's every child for itself. Remember: Republican Jesus says selfishness is good, greed is the only moral value, and the only life worth anything is unborn life.

And people just LURRRRVE that Republican Jesus. They can't get enough of him. He's not some wimp Jesus preaching about caring for others. He's not some pussy Jesus saying that we should provide basic universal health care to all Americans because, well, it's the right thing to do, to save people's lives by providing basic health care to all (nevermind the economic arguments for universal healthcare, the very fact that we even have to talk about the economic arguments shows just where Republican Jesus's priorities lie). No, Republican Jesus is the kind of Jesus that a lot of people prefer to worship. Like them, he's shallow, greedy, venal, narcissistic, self-interested, loves money, and otherwise an expression of modern American values.

So remember, boys and girls, let's all give a hip hip hoorah for Republican Jesus and the Republican Culture of Life that he represents. Republican culture of Life: Offer void after birth. Batteries not included. Offer may not be combined with any other offer. Have a happy day, sucker!

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

* Republican Jesus(tm) is an unregistered trademark of Jesus's General