Sunday Funnies

“I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody
and I wouldn’t lose any votes.”

The Daily Jackass: "A vote for..."

"Repeat after me..." (and remember: every time you say it, an angel gets its wings).

Some people are comparing it to rape.  That's an overreach, but "bullying, badgering, shaming, scaremongering, insulting, belittling, mocking, and abuse of all varieties" isn't.  What I have been persuaded of is that Hillbots think that Berners are just as shallow and intellectually corrupt as they are, and thus will respond to these playground taunts.

They won't (not if they're as smart as I believe they are, that is).  And if it is you that is saying "a vote for the greater good is worse than a vote for the lesser evil", then it is YOU that has become the Jackass.

The best response to bullying has always been a punch to the bully's nose.

Since we're shaming bullies on the playground these days, it certainly seems appropriate to do the same to the grownups online.  And offline, as necessary.

Capitalism's psychopathy

The Green Party, at their Houston convention last week, passed an amendment to the platform that replaced the words "responsible stakeholder capitalism" with "an alternative economic system" based on "workplace and community democracy."

Because capitalism has demonstrated that it cannot function properly without socialism to rein in its rapacious greed.  Here's how Bill Maher -- who gets it wrong on the "chicken or fish" choice in this election -- gets it right here.

"Someone needs to explain to the free-market crowd that when it comes to socialism, you’re soaking in it.” So many Americans hate the word ‘socialism’ but love the concept: Medicare, unemployment, disability, farm subsidies...."

"America’s real religion is capitalism. And like any religion, it needs a devil. And that devil has always been socialism."

"... (T)he unfounded fear of socialism spreading out of control is nothing compared to how we've let capitalism spread out of control. It's eaten our democracy. It's eaten our middle class. It's eaten our health care system, our prison system, our news media. It's even eaten our food system so thoroughly that a lot of our food is no longer something that should be eaten."

In the common unacknowledged ground rule of negotiations, you can't get a little if you don't ask -- or demand -- a lot.

One of Maher's main targets in the kind of capitalism most often seen corporate in America, and the way it leaks into every part of our culture. Recently, the National Parks system decided it would allow naming rights as a solution to it's $11 million debt problem, which Maher thinks of as the last brick in the fall of America. "Get ready to see the bison roaming at Yellowstone with the Nike swoosh shaved into their ass."

In the end, Maher doesn't say socialism is a replacement for capitalism, but that he thinks of it as "capitalism's lap band." 

I can settle for some if we can't have it all.  And if Clinton's Democrats are afraid to ask for any... then I suppose we'll be back here in four years.  And Bernie Sanders, the guy who lit the socialism fire that burns so brightly this year, is probably going to be lying on the dock in back of his new summer home, on the lake in Vermont.

Harris County GOP fails: Anderson, Hickman, Radack

Throughout the year I've left the wild tales of incompetence of DA Devon Henderson and Sheriff Ron Hickman by the wayside in spending time blogging about the presidentials.  In the local contest to see which Republican can be the biggest ass, Precinct 3 county commissioner Steve Radack elbowed his way to the top of the dung pile with his "Enjoy your flood!" remarks over the weekend, videotaped and in heavy rotation on social media.

He's not backing away from them, either, presumably because he's getting some support from commenters on and offline.

So... suppose I was one of those "some people" who wanted a new car, my house redone, but wanted my insurance company to pay for it all?  How would I go about summoning a deluge in order to get my upgrade?  Prayer? Rain dance?  What if my insurance company short-sheets me and I don't get enough for my flooded car or home to replace it or make it like new?  Steve Radack doesn't mention how much I'll like that.

I could write at length about these three public servants who have lost focus on the meaning of their jobs, but I really shouldn't have to.  Everybody knows what you're getting when you vote for a Republican these days, and it's the farthest thing from good governance that your mind can imagine.  I'll just point out that Anderson, Hickman, and Radack all have election opponents, worthy challengers who are better choices for these county executive responsibilities, in November.

Kim Ogg is running to defeat the DA, Ed Gonzales is going to take out the current appointed sheriff, and Jenifer Rene Pool is the Democratic candidate aiming to replace the odious and insensitive county commissioner.

In a wave election -- which 2016 is portending to be -- where Democrats and Republicans of the establishment variety throng the polls to cast votes against Donald Trump, Ogg and Gonzalez should be able to ride Hillary Clinton's coattails to victory.  Pool is going to need a little more help to get there, and you can assist in a least a couple of ways.

(Who said I was a lousy Democrat this cycle?)

Daily Jackasses new and old

-- John Aravosis of AMERICAblog is today's Burro Pendejo, in what is becoming a spirited contest of "Can You Top This?".  He's got a running feud with Sputnik News going over his outlandish 'Russian sympathizer' accusations, which he's stoking in his own comments (deleting most of the ones he disagrees with, leaving his customized juvenile insults in response).

It appears that I’m the subject of a blistering article in the Russian state propaganda organ, Sputnik, over my recent criticism of Green party presidential candidate Jill Stein’s visit to Moscow last winter.

Let's just hope he's not the object of a Russian spy with a poison pen, a la James Bond.

Red-scaring is the most popular of the latest tactics of fever-dream Clinton Dems.  They're madly conflating Trump and Stein in a mashup of distractions from the disastrous Wikileaked DNC emails, which have detailed an unprecedented depth of corruption within the party's politburo, resulting in the firings of several top party operatives, the suspicious death of one staffer and even the Republicans' own harebrained concoctions of the assassination of an Iranian nuclear scientist by that country's government.

Joe McCarthy would be so proud.

Update: Mint Press News with the most thorough dismantling of this latest smear attempt.

I honestly cannot understand what drives these rants beyond a seething hostility of the left that is mostly contained within the ranks of those still involved -- or deeply self-identifying -- as Democratic apparatchiks.  In effect, we now have three conservative political parties in the United States, and that's not counting the Constitutions.  This unrequited rage goes way past a 16-year misplaced grudge against Ralph Nader, and has even swept up once-rational Texas state representatives in its contagion.

I'm going to quit trying to explain it any further because it doesn't make any sense.  I'm just going to document their atrocities and crown the king jacks and queen jennets when I discover the vilest of their tirades online.

-- Original DJ Chris Hooks got busy getting paid over the weekend with pieces in the Observerer again and in Politico.  He was calmer, but still somewhat unbalanced, with "kooks" replacing "cranks" and "dead-enders" and his animosity substituted for the most part with snarling contempt and reeking condescension.

This qualifies as progress.

Hooks even managed to rile the normally placid Kuffner with his sneering about the HD-146 special election.  Hooks is not going to be invited to anybody's house for beers and lawn darts at the rate he's expelling these noxious, prosaic gases.

Many more Jackasses on deck!  Competition is stiff!