Bitter rain

As I type this, police officers are beating students in Berkeley. At least one student is lying bleeding on the ground and ambulances are being kept away by the police until the situation is "secured", whatever that means. Meanwhile, in Pennsylvania the Penn State students are rioting over the firing of Joe Paterno and the cops are just standing around with their nightsticks stuck up their asses, because hey, it's just kids letting off steam, it's not as if they were threatening the profits of the 1% or anything, right?

To say that I am disgusted beyond belief is an understatement. I cannot blog further on this tonight. So I will give you some bonus music that is all too fitting:

-- Badtux the Sickened Penguin

Some apparently necessary rape prevention tips

Yeah, women are always getting lectured about what *they* should do to prevent rape, but what about rape prevention tips for *guys*? Here's a few tips:

1. If you're walking alone at night and you see a woman walking alone, DON'T RAPE HER
2. If you come across a girl who is too drunk to consent, the safest course of action is to NOT RAPE HER
3. If you see a woman in a short, tight skirt - even if she's not wearing underwear - DON'T RAPE HER
4. Don't put drugs in women's drinks.
5. If you pull over to help a woman who's car is broken down, try to remember to NOT RAPE HER.
6. Carry a rape whistle, so that if you feel as though you are about to rape, you can blow it and call for someone to come stop you.
7. Use the buddy system! If you're unsure you'll be able to keep yourself from raping, go with a friend who can step in and stop you from assaulting women!
8. Just to be safe, never climb through a woman's bedroom window, jump out at her from an alley, or stalk her on a dark street with the intention of raping her.
9. If a woman yells STOP, DON'T, or RAPE, take this as a cue to STOP RAPING HER.

Hopefully this clarifies the situation a bit, yo?

- Badtux the Sadly Snarky Penguin

H/T

Quote of the day

A former police officer says, regarding the Oakland police riot yesterday evening and the video of the Oakland PD taking out former Marine Scott Olsen because, apparently, it's okay only to fight for our freedoms, not to use them:

Seeing those cops standing around while someone is injured, laying in the streets, really pisses me off. That is not how a professional police officer reacts, that is how a gang reacts. The Oakland PD is just another California gang.

-- Badtux the Can't-say-it-better Penguin

The problem with violence as the solution

During the 1970's, a sociopath by the name of Lenny Murphy spent his childhood bullying people and threatening people with knives, as well as likely doing the other activities favored by young sociopaths such as torturing and killing varous neighborhood pets and such. As usually happens with sociopaths of that such, he became a serial killer.

But it was Northern Ireland, and the Troubles, and Lenny Murphy joined a Protestant militia, the UDA. So, for a time, Lenny Murphy's ghastly murders were not only tolerated but condoned, as long as he and his gang of vicious cronies chose Catholics as his target for ghastly murders. The trail of dead bodies left in their wake earned them the moniker "The Shankhill Butchers." It was not until some years later, after Murphy expanded his list of dead bodies to include fellow protestants, that his fellows in the UDA leaked his movements to the IRA, which assassinated him in 1982. But the majority of the rest of his gang still walk the streets of Northern Ireland today, unpunished.

I consider this song by The Decemberists to be as much a warning to the rest of us as a warning to children, a warning that when things turn to violence, it is not ordinary people who come out on top -- it is violent sociopaths like Lenny Murphy who kill without hesitation and with not a qualm afterwards. Something for Libertopians to think about, methinks...

This is "The Shankhill Butchers", off of the Decemberists' album The Crane Wife.

-- Badtux the Music Penguin

No bigotry to see here...

move along.

Because everybody knows that there's no more racism and bigotry left in America, and thus Roger Stockham wasn't really being a racist dick-head when he threatened to blow up a mosque in Dearborn, MI. Because it's not racism and bigotry when your target is Muslims, right? Right?!

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

Angry vs. violent

So the tighty righties as usual are trying to say that the shooter of a liberal judge and a liberal Congresswoman was, err, a liberal, and they probably are going to convince their echo chamber of gullible people who shout "keep your government hands off my Medicare!" of this "fact". So what, nobody outside their echo chamber of morons, cretins, and venal evil sons of bitches gives a shit anyhow.

But our so-called media is really missing the boat when they focus their sights upon "angry" rhetoric. Look. There's plenty of shit that makes me angry. It makes me angry that in the richest land on the planet, the amount of money that Sheriff Joe Arpaio wastes losing lawsuits over violating the civil rights of his prisoners every year would have saved the lives of at least two people murdered by Republican governor Jan Brewer's death panel. I am angry that my tax dollars are used to kill women and children in Afghanistan. I am angry that every effective method of ending the current recession by creating jobs via government action is stymied by a Republican Party that is more focused on scoring political points in some sick game of one-upmanship than upon the good of our nation.

What I am not, however, is violent. I do not state or imply that entire classes of people are vermin who should be exterminated, the way that mainstream Republican pundits on hate radio and Faux News regularly expound. I do not advocate taking up arms against our democratically elected government. I do not advice killing people, which is what the right wing is saying when they talk about "watering the tree of liberty" -- they're talking about murdering people who don't agree with their ideology. I don't "joke" about killing the staff of the New York Times the way that Ann Coulter "joked", I don't advocate violence in any way or form other than as delivered by the justice system after a fair trial before a jury of one's peers in a duly constituted court of law.

And that is the fundamental difference here between right-wing rhetoric and left-wing rhetoric. Left-wing rhetoric is often angry. But for all of Keith Olbermann's angry rhetoric, can you point me to one instance -- even ONE instance -- where he advocated violence? NO. Because lefties simply do not advocate violence. Even the more radical lefties I know, the ones who wanted George W. Bush hanged for treason, were quick to clarify "after a fair trial in a court of law that finds him guilty" when I cornered them on that statement. Can you point me to *one* mainstream left-wing voice that has ever advocated violence? Hello? Hello? Is anybody out there?

-- Badtux the Nonviolent Penguin

Thereby proving the point

The Sheriff of Pima County got a lot of heat from teabaggers about his comments about an environment of eliminationist rhetoric bringing the crazies out of the woodwork to attack and kill people. Other bloggers have noted the same thing -- that the right wing rhetoric has been full of talk about "2nd amendment solutions", "watering the tree of liberty", and other such incitements to commit acts of violence against liberals and others that they dislike (such as judges who rule that swarthy Messicans have rights too). And... gosh darn it, they get threats against them from teabaggers. Thereby proving the point. Not that the teabaggers understand that. Huh, go figure.

-- Badtux the Exasperated Penguin

Attention all thugs and bullies

Get your kicks by beating people with a baseball bat? Love shooting people as they lay on the ground restrained by your fellow thugs? But you're not willing to go to jail to get your woodies on? Don't despair! Join your local police force! Then you can beat anybody you want to beat, anytime you want to beat him, for as long as you want to beat him, and pay no price at all -- as long as you select an appropriate victim such as a mentally ill veteran. Feel like using a high-tech cattle prod to electrocute someone for hopping over a subway gate? Never fear, being a member of your local transit police lets you do that anytime you wish! Beating and cattle prodding people doesn't get your pecker hard enough? Want to actually kill people? Don't worry, as long as the person you kill is black and you practice saying "I thought he had a gun!" and crying on demand for long enough, you'll never see a day in jail.

So, all you thugs and bullies out there: Now you know how to be a thug and bully -- and get away with it! What a deal! For you. Not for the rest of us little people, but hey, we're just the sheep, to be culled by you at will, right? Right?!

-- Badtux the Sovok Penguin

Revolution? Yeah right

So you want a revolution, you say? You say that the inevitable result of these asswipes on Wall Street looting and plundering the nation while millions of Americans are homeless and hungry is going to be these asswipes hanging from the nearest lamp-post? I got three words for you, compadre: Bull fucking shit.

Yeah, you got a lot of genuine rage out there, embodied by the so-called "tea party" movement. But somehow I doubt that a movement dominated by oldsters waving signs around saying "tea bagging for change!" (frisky granny, that!) while chanting “keep your government hands off my Medicare!” has the intellectual heft to connect the dots that we connect about who's to blame for their plight. One thing is clear: “Let them eat cake” is not a viable solution. But my fear is that the solution that the majority arrive at will be the same as the majority arrived at in much of the world as the Great Depression settled in — dictatorship by a “Strong Man” who promises to save them. That rarely turns out well, the streets typically run with blood afterwards, and the villains who created the Great Depression through their greed and stupidity were rarely the ones lined up against the wall, rather, labor unionists, Jews, socialists, etc. were the typical victims, none of whom had any hand in the collapse of the banking system that was the primary cause of the Depression (liquidity trap, y’know).

Reminds me of an old music joke: Q: How can you tell the drum riser is level? A: The drummer is drooling equally out of both sides of his mouth. Replace the word "drummer" with "teabagger", heh. So anyhow, these are the folks who are gonna storm the mansions of Wall Street moguls and pull them all out and string'em up from the nearest lamp post by their neck-ties? I don't think so, mah friend... these folks are so dumb they can't even *find* those friggin' mansions, much less figure out what to do once they get there!

So anyhow, that's my bet on the future of Amurka if we *do* have the "revolution" that some loons are advocating: Strong-man rule by a fascist dictator who promises to put to death all them Messicans, Negros, and soshalists that is bringin' our nation down and bring our nation back to its rightful place in the world glory hallelujah Ayeeee-men! That's the only kind of revolution I see in America's future. And the tea baggers will just run to be the stormtroopers for this asswipe, whoever he turns out to be. Face facts: The average American is dumber than a stump and as easily led to safety by a fascist asswipe as a dog is led on a leash. There just ain't "there" there, insofar as revolutionary capability is concerned.

-- Badtux the Unrevolutionary Penguin

Murder and death

Last year, there were approximately 17,000 murders in the United States. 17,000 people were brutally removed from life via violent force.

Last year, there were approximately 39,800 highway deaths in the United States. 39,800 people were cut out of mangled automobiles and taken to a morgue.

Those are serious problems. But nobody proposes that we give up our fundamental rights as guaranteed by the Constitution in order to address those problems. Well, there's some who propose, but we, the people, dispose (and quite rightly) such notions rapidly.

Less than 3,000 people died on September 11, 2001. Yet the deaths of a mere 3,000 people have caused a massive erosion of civil liberties (a bipartisan erosion, I might add -- President Obama is no less culpable, given his support of the Bush regime's programs of torture, extraordinary rendition, and spying on Americans) and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghans (who of course don't count since Iraqis and Afghans are mere mud peoples and thus not really human, as far as the average American is concerned). And the perpetrator of that mass murder is still on the loose, never brought to justice, while this mass murder is used to justify giving up our fundamental rights and the murders of hundreds of thousands of other people.

Yes, violent death is a tragedy. But I see no reason why the death of a few thousand people in a single act of terrorism should be any more a tragedy, and warrant any more a response or any more of a memorial, than the death of 39,800 people per year in traffic accidents or the death of 17,000 people per year at the hands of violent murderers. Dead is dead, in the end, and the dead care not whether it is Osama bin Laden, or Jeffrey Dahmer, or just some random drunk driver, they are still just as dead in the end.

-- Badtux the Mortality Penguin

Things are getting scary out there

By now you've heard of the attack upon the Holocaust Museum by a crazed right-wing Freeper.

The problem is one that David Neiwert has been sounding the alarm about for over eight years now -- right-wing extremists pumped up by demagogues on the right, who, when fed untruths by people like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck and etc., go even further unhinged until they crack and do bad things like attack the Holocaust Museum, kill an abortion doctor, make two different attempts upon President Obama's life (it has now been revealed), etc. Even Shepherd Smith at Fox (soon to be unemployed) is now sounding the alarm about the craziness out there, even though he doesn't point fingers at his own employer's contributions to it.

The level of rhetoric, of outright hatred, is reaching a level that even the Clinton Derangement Syndrome of the 1990's never reached. Like Neiwert, I've been following this for years, and the failure of all their nutty ideas during the Bush Administration has sent the extremists on the right completely off the ranch to the point where their connection with reality is absolutely non-existent. They really *do* believe that the guy in the phone company van below their tenement window is a FBI agent come to take their guns away on behalf of that Communist Nigerian Muslim secret Soviet mole, Obama Hussein. They've lost it, entirely. And you wonder why I blog as a penguin? Open your eyes, the friggin' crazies are out there and they're scary as hell and I like my fine feathered plumpness far too much to risk getting a beakfull of birdshot when I walk out of church one day!

-- Badtux the "The DHS was right" Penguin

A bad idea still going around

Missouri wants to allow teachers to bring guns to school. A rural school district in Texas encourages teachers to bring guns to school.

This is nuts. First of all, let me say this much: Any teacher who wants to bring a gun to school should be summarily discharged as dispositionally unsuited for the job of teaching -- either that, or a total moron, which similarly disqualifies him from the teaching profession. As I've pointed out before, the logistics don't work. It's impossible to keep a weapon concealed from kids if you have it on your person -- those little bastardsangels are sharp, they'll eventually figure out where you're hiding your weapon, and then the temptation to steal"borrow" the weapon to play with it will happen. Meaning that to keep it safe from the kids, you'd have to put it in a locked drawer where it does fuckall good to protect yourself or your class if Little Johnny snaps and starts shooting up the school.

And even if you can get to the weapon, real teachers simply are not dispositionally suited to effectively use a gun against a student. A gun is only useful if you're willing and able to kill someone with it without flinching and without hesitation. Teachers are teachers because they love working with kids, not because they like killing the little bastardsangels. I mean, it sure the hell isn't because of the astounding pay -- since I left teaching I've never made less than double the amount of money that I made while teaching. While teachers might mutter about how rude, disorderly, and lazy today's little jerksscholars are, the fact of the matter is that most are still teaching because they like the little assholesparagons of virtue. And it's damned hard to kill someone that you like, unless you're a deranged psychopath, and I sure the hell hope we don't have deranged psychopaths working as teachers in our schools. Given that most school shooters are children, the notion of a teacher with a gun being effective against a school shooter doesn't pass the laugh and giggle test -- all that a teacher with a gun is, if faced with an armed student, is a dead body who will provide an additional weapon and additional ammo to the shooter.

Let's face it, a teacher serving as a cop is a stupid idea. The two jobs simply are too different. A cop's job is, amongst other things, to deal with violent threats to public safety. A teacher's job is to educate the little miscreantsangels. If it's decided that anybody within the school should be armed, it should be people who are professionally trained at law enforcement -- not teachers. A teacher's job is to teach, not to kill. 'Nuff said on that.

-- Badtux the Former Teacher Penguin

Outrage junkies

Outrage is the only emotion the tighty righties have. There must be a constant supply of outrages for them to get red-faced and angry about, or otherwise they're not satisfied. So what is the latest thing that the tighty righties are getting outraged about? Well, a brief glance at Google News and World Nut Daily shows that they're getting outraged about... torture.

No, no, not about the fact that torture violates the Geneva Conventions and all human decency. Not about the fact that the Bush Administration tortured Khalid Shaikh Mohammed by waterboarding him 183 times (and if waterboarding is so goddamned effective at getting good information out of a suspect, why the fuck did we have to waterboard this asshole 183 times before deciding we'd gotten everything he knew?). But, rather, because the Obama administration released the torture memos allowing this torture, and therefore clued in the terrorists as to what tactics were allowed (past tense since Obama banned torture), thereby harming national security.

Which is another "WTF?!". We've released poor sods who were tortured this way after determining that they were just harmless cab drivers or whatever who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. They know what was done to them. They've told everybody at home what was done to them. The only thing not known is whether the torturers had legal cover from administration officials, or were doing it all on their own (the "few bad apples" defense). So now we know: the Bush Administration officially had torture as an official policy. How the fuck can that jeopardize national security, when the terrorists already know what's being done?

But wait, I forgot. It's all about tighty righties covering their ass and trying to hide what they did from the American people. It's like Richard Nixon's "secret" bombing of Cambodia. The Cambodians sure the fuck knew they were getting bombed. But it's all about hiding that information from the American public, disappearing it down the memory hole for the next election. And now Obama is shitting on their plan to hide what they did. Well fuck these vicious criminal assholes and the goddamned horses they rode in on. If there was a God, if there was any justice in this world, they'd all be swinging from the ends of ropes like the war criminals that they are, just like the German and Japanese war criminals who tortured our GI's during WWII. Sad to say, they will die rich and happy in their sleep just like that fucking ratbastard Richard Nixon, because there is no justice, and there is no God. But at least we can shit on their graves by releasing these torture memos so that everybody knows just what kind of craven, criminal, inhumane bastards these scum really are. There is no justice, and there is no God, but at least there is some small satisfaction in seeing just how low, just how evil these "people" are. We must take our satisfaction where we can get it, I suppose... no matter how much these war criminals squawk about it.

-- Badtux the Rude Penguin

One flew over the cuckoo's nest

Alabama nutcase goes on shooting spree, kills multiple people. Most probably he was one of those people about which is often said in the aftermath of these things, "he has been crazy for years and nobody would do anything about it."

Of course, the problem is, nobody is allowed to do anything about him until he proves that he’s dangerous to himself and others. That’s the law. Irritated the $%@! out of me back when I had to deal with crazy street people on a regular basis, but the rights of crazy people apparently are more important than getting them the help they need. Nevermind that a crazy person is in no condition to make a judgement as to whether to accept help or not — I mean, he has a chemical imbalance in his brain, it’s not as if he’s operating in sound mind and body. The law says we can’t help the poor slob unless he wants the help. And of course because his brain is befogged, he can’t want the help, because, well, his brain can’t go there.

I blame Jack Nicholson and Ken Kesey, myself. They popularized the view that crazy people weren’t sick, they were just misunderstood, a view promptly embraced by brain-dead left-wing stupidity and by right-wingers eager to dump the crazies on the street so that they could lower their own taxes. Bah humbug,any of us who have ever dealt with crazy people know different, they're sick, not misunderstood, but the law doesn’t. Sigh.

- Badtux the Crazy-recognizin’ Penguin

A scenario

Someone, let's call him Sam Goldberg, fires a bullet that kills my daughter. So here is the question: Who is responsible for the death of my daughter?

1. Me, for not protecting her from Sam.
2. Me, for not doing anything to reduce crime in my apartment complex.
3. Me, for living in the same apartment complex as criminals, one of whom shot at Sam last week and now Sam is trying to get his revenge on the criminals by shooting through the windows of what he thinks is the criminals' apartment.
4. Sam Goldberg.

Hint: It isn't me that the cops will haul off for the death of my daughter. It is Sam Goldberg.

Unless, of course, Sam Goldberg is an IDF soldier, in which case he's just a patriotic citizen and I'm to blame for my daughter's death. Because Israel works via Israeli rules, not the rules of civilization. In civilization rules it is the person who fires the bullet (and anyone who orders the bullet fired) who is responsible for the death caused by that bullet. In Israeli rules, it's the dead child's parents' fault.

Alrighty, then!

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

You should be ashamed, not insulted

In another forum, I made fun of someone who was making fun of a South American for using the European convention for specifying numbers ( 4,301kg is the same thing as 4.301kg expressed the American way). I said "Just another ugly American mistreating foreigners and showing his ignorance of the world again, thinking that his own second-rate country that tortures prisoners and isn't even the largest economy in the world anymore is the entire world."

Needless to say, I got some feedback :-). But the most interesting feedback was regarding two words: "tortures prisoners". This person said, "I did not vote for Bush and I had nothing to do with setting up the secret prisons where people are tortured. You shouldn't tar all Americans just because some Americans are ugly."

The thing is, we are all tarred by this fact. Rather than being insulted, this person should have been ashamed of the fact that America tortures its prisoners. This is a disgrace and a blot upon the whole country, and we should all be ashamed. I know I am.

-- Badtux the Ashamed Penguin

Someone needs to introduce this dipshit to Mr. Hand

First, Officer Robert Melia Jr. raped three girls. Then he went on and raped four cows. Uhm, someone needs to introduce this dipshit to this thing dangling off the end of his arm called Mr. Hand.

Except, of course, as always rape is not about sex. Masturbation is free, after all. Rather, rape is about power -- the same reason that Mr. Melia became a cop. Because it gives him power over other people. A reason why all too many of today's cops become cops. They have Stormtrooper Syndrome. They like the guns. They like the uniform. They like the power they have over people. And nobody seems to care.

So now Officer Melia is going to spend a long, long time as a guest of the state. I wonder, then, whether he's going to end up raping other prisoners while he's in prison the same way he raped those young girls and those cows? Let's take a look at Mr. Melia and see just how scary and intimidating he looks: Err. Looks to me that Mr. Melia is going to spend a long time in solitary. Or else have a bunghole the size of a friggin' culvert.

Alrighty, then!

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

We are a kind and helping people

I'm sure that the 1,000,000 Iraqis killed by our war in Iraq and the 3,000,000 Iraqis rendered homeless in Iraq (note -- this is as if 10,000,000 Americans were dead and 30,000,000 Americans had their homes destroyed) are glad that we are a nation of helping. Why, I bet they give us thanks every day from their shallow graves or their tent shanties with raw sewage flowing by that we're such a kind and helping nation, yessiree!

Oh wait, they're darkies, so they don't count... alrighty, then!

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

It's NIU every day in Iraq

Okay, so horrible things happened at NIU. So many that Google News reports 4,522 stories on it this morning. Thing is, every day in Iraq is an NIU. Far more than nine young people die in Iraq every day in Iraq from the ongoing violence there -- violence either perpetrated with your tax money and mine, or violence that would not be happening if your tax money and mine had not been used to invade the place. Google News reports that there are exactly... uhm... 31 stories total about yesterday's atrocities in Iraq.

But of course, those Iraqis are just darkies. Sand niggers. Arabs. It's not like they were real people, God's chosen people, white people. So that's why the death of each of these young people in Iraq is not news-worthy complete with their names and photos and a bit of life story, while the death of many fewer young people in the United States *is* news-worthy. Our society has no problem with violence, as long as it's violence happening to those people, who, like, aren't like us. There's no racism in America, nosirre. Alrighty, then!

-- Badtux the Disgusted Penguin

Those people are violent, you know

There's this race of people that is really violent. Like, they have this habit of exploding bombs outside of crowded nurseries(1), and going into places packed with people and shooting the place up(2), and sneaking up behind people at night and killing them in horrible and vicious ways(3), and things like that. These people have no respect for life. They are clear supporters of terrorism who enjoy doing things like blowing up restaurants(4) and water treatment plants(5) and the occasional Chinese embassy(6), and they're well known world-wide for their violence and viciousness(7).

The question is, what do we do about those people? I'm wondering if Michelle Malkin maybe had a good point about the necessity of internment. After all, those people are just cockroaches. Scum. You can't reason with them or treat them like human beings, because all that those people understand is violence. People who say we should treat those people as if they were normal human beings rather than as if they were animals are deluding themselves and are dangerous because they keep us normal sane people from dealing with those people the way they need to be dealt with.

The only question is, how do we handle the logistics of interning all these white people?

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

1. Birmingham church bombing, Oklahoma City bombing, ...
2. Columbine, Virginia Tech, Northern Illinois University, ...
3. Jeffery Dahmer, Gary Gilmore, Charles Manson, ...
4. Baghdad restaurant bombed by U.S. jets, dead women and children pulled from the rubble.
5. Deliberate targeting of Iraq's water treatment plants in 1991 by U.S. bombs. The U.S. Air Force repeated this strategy of bombing civilian water treatment plants in Serbia in the spring of 1999.
6. Oops! Sorry about that, China! You didn't really want that embassy anyhow, did you?
7. Pew surveys of world public opinion.