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Year: 2015

Thanks Homophobic Pizza Hillbillies!

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If you follow me on social media, you know that I never bought the idea that the pizza place in Indiana who proudly stated that they would refuse to cater a gay wedding raised $842,000. Everything about that GoFundMe campaign looked fishy. First of all, the donations were nearly entirely anonymous with no messages of support. Who the hell makes a political statement donation without making a political statement? On any other funding campaign, the majority of donations have a name and a comment from most of the contributors. This one had virtually none. The next thing was the dollar amount. Something happens after a while in fundraising campaigns; people will go to contribute and after a certain amount has been raised, they don’t end up contributing. Wouldn’t you think that at (say) 200k, contributors would tell themselves that the pizza hillbillies don’t need their money because they’ve raised plenty?

My suspicion is that they were getting robodonations from a big anti-gay group like Focus On The Family, Brian Fisher, or any other group that has the nerve to use the word ‘family to push their family busting agenda forward.

But this post isn’t about that. This post is about thanking the pizza hillbillies and their allies. Because they allegedly made so much money letting their bigoted freak flags fly, other bigots felt empowered to let let their hate rip. Their really stupid strategy to grab some short term headlines, has really put one of the last remaining nails in the homophobe coffin. The most predictable thing in the world happened, when the pizza hillbillies appeared to get rich because of their hate. Another homophobe boldly came out, thinking that he would mine him some of that hate gold from them thar hills.

Enter Brian Klawiter, a car repair shop owner who has been victimized enough, and he’s going to use the few literacy skills he possesses to let everyone know:

Enough is enough.

Our rights as conservative Americans are being squashed more and more everyday. Apparently if you are white (or close to it), you have a job, go to church, and own a gun… T , that translates into racists, privileged, bigoted, conspiracy theorist. Too many of us say nothing. Well, freedom of speech isn’t just for Liberals,. THEY are the ones that need to learn to "co-exist", coexist. THEY are the ones who need to WORK to be "equal" equal.

Therefore, in the spirit of freedom (whats left of it) and MY right to operate MY business as I see fit:

Guns ARE allowed at DIESELTEC, so much so in fact that we will offer a discount if you bring in your gun. ("On duty" cops are excluded because that‘s not their gun,. That‘s my gun bought with my money,. off duty absolutely! Armed off duty officers are welcome to take advantage of this offer)

I am a Christian. My company will be run in a way that reflects that. Dishonesty, thievery, immoral behavior, etc. will not be welcomed at MY place of business. (I would not hesitate to refuse service to an openly gay person or persons. Homosexuality is wrong, period. If you want to argue this fact with me then I will put your vehicle together with all bolts and no nuts and you can see how that works.)

We, as a team, work hard for whats ours. We are not protected by unions or contracts. We absolutely MUST provide our customers with a service level that would make them come back or tell their friends about us. We don’t have a "right", and we are not "entitled" to our pay. We must EARN it.

I am not racists,. You are for assuming I am, however, I am really quick to judge... if it acts like a duck, and quacks like a duck…

It IS a free country and I support your right to your opinion,. That being said, if you don’t like what I have to say, I reserve that same right to tell you to go cry to your momma (cause your daddy would probably smack ya’,. Better yet, yes, go tell your dad.)

I took the liberty of grading it, although I did leave the colloquialisms in for fun. I hope you don’t mind.

Naturally, a GoFundMe page went up because….he was anticipating losing business? Felt he deserved to get paid for extra effort in doing a racist/ homophobic/ ammosexual/ Christian victimhood quadruple axel? Apparently, just saying something stupid and hateful is reason enough to panhandle the world. No actual cause or need is necessary. Just allowing fellow haters the satisfaction of throwing a dollar in the hate jar is justification in itself. GoFundMe ended up taking the page down after a few hours. I couldn’t find a cache of the page, but it apparently only raised five bucks from a married lesbian mother of three who commented, “Will you except [sic] my money? Or is it too gay for you?”

The single five dollar contribution in the form of a bitch slap is awesome. It actually demonstrates the opposite of what the pizza hillbillies’ page supposedly demonstrated (and it makes that page that much more suspicious, thereby adding credibility to my theory). I hope that more people try this because I am certain that they will get the same result; virtually no public support. By the way, I don’t agree with GoFundMe taking down pages. If your website is a conduit for people to raise money for a cause, you shouldn’t censor those causes. Let the murdering cop raise money. Let that cop’s victim’s family raise money to civilly sue the fuck out of the cop. Let the hateful hillbillies raise money. Let anyone donate to anything. You don’t get to act as a moral compass for a small but vocal segment of the country. The easiest way to let people judge their own morality, as well as the courage of their convictions, is to not allow anonymous donations. I wouldn’t be opposed to GoFundMe doing that, but I don’t feel comfortable with their selective removal of fundraising campaigns. I guess that’s just me. I believe that over time, my views will prevail because they’re the morally correct ones. If a loathsome person raises a few hundred thousand dollars along the way, that doesn’t bother me because it’s a nice reality check on where the country is on issues. I promise you that there won’t be a nickel in donations for homophobic, "Christian" pizzeria owners (who nonetheless serve sausage) ten years from now. Let them raise as much money as they can, until they can’t anymore.

That five dollar protest donation isn’t the only response the illiterate, homophobic car repair guy got. Cummins Inc, a huge car engine manufacturer contacted Deiseltec and told them not to use their logo in their store window. That happened a day after the illiterate and homophobic rant.

But my favorite response (so far) came from Jeffrey Mapes, a bankruptcy lawyer in Grand Rapids, MI. He posted the following letter on his practices’ website;

Dear Dieseltec:

Allow me to introduce myself, my name is Jeffrey Mapes, and I specialize in bankruptcy law — helping individuals and corporations when things go wrong. I noticed your post on Facebook where you decided to alienate most of the general public by stating that you will refuse service to openly homosexual people. This is certainly an unorthodox business strategy, and perhaps it will work for you, but I get the feeling you will need a bankruptcy attorney pretty soon and I wanted to offer my services. Like you, I am white, male, Christian, a business owner, and a gun owner. Unlike you, I provide services to everyone regardless of their sexual orientation because it doesn’t matter to me — I hope this won’t be a deal breaker for you.

If that upsets you, let me tell you a little bit more about our office to try and persuade you. The first thing you will notice is how friendly and compassionate the office staff is. Despite your inane, incoherent and just plain dumb comments, we know that everyone makes mistakes and we want to help you overcome them. They will also be more than willing to help you with some basic grammar that you seem to struggle with.

If you still need more convincing, let me assure you that we will make certain that your bankruptcy petition is filed correctly and there are no errors. You stated in your post that you would incorrectly assemble a vehicle in order to prove a point. I want to let you know that despite the fact that I would love to prove a point to you about tolerance, I won’t compromise my standards of quality to do so. After all, I have to look in the mirror at the end of the day and if I didn’t do my best for everyone, I would have trouble sleeping. Perhaps you could give me pointers on how you sleep at night?

Just a few other housekeeping items. While I certainly don’t encourage people to bring guns into my office, so long as you have the proper permit and handle it responsibly, you can bring your gun along. I would only ask that you refrain from menacingly stroking your weapon while you quietly sing David Allen Coe songs to yourself. I also think you have a deep and fundamental misunderstanding of the First Amendment and how it works, but that is a long discussion and we should save that for when we meet in person.

Well Dieseltec, I hope I’ve convinced you that Mapes Law Offices is the right place for you to file your bankruptcy. I would like to leave you with some words of inspiration from the dramatic film Billy Madison and I hope that you will take them to heart:

"What you’ve just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul."

Sincerely,

Jeffrey D. Mapes

I like it. I think that people should be able to speak their minds (unless their mind is full of death threats or any threat for that matter), whether that’s with their words or with their contributions. Why? Because I’m not worried about opposing views. I’m confident that mine will win in the long run.

So please, homophobes, racists, anti semites, lay here on the word’s couch and tell us how you feel. And everyone else, feel free to reply. But for fucks sake, can we cut the crap with the threats? How fucking insecure are you, about your point of view, that you have to resort to threats of violence?   

     

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Never Forget That NBC Is Owned By GE

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The New York Times broke a giant story yesterday that was largely unnoticed. This story is huge because it’s about our media and how much propaganda we’re being fed. 

The story took place in Syria. Two years ago in December 2012, Richard Engel was reporting on the civil war in Syria when he and four other journalists were kidnapped. They were (ostensibly) forced to record a video urging their governments to help them get home. Engel was one of two journalists from the US in that video so his plea included urging the US to "cease its activities in Syria". Watch:

Remember, that was about the time the US was deciding to which extent it was going to help the rebels in Syria. So the implication of the video was that the kidnappers were pro-Assad forces. The writing on the wall behind the hostages was comprised of pro-Assad messages and well known Shite references. That is in fact, how Engel reported the event. In several interviews, he plainly stated that the kidnappers were aligned with Assad, and that they were rescued by rebels.

Here’s how Glenn Greenwald reports Engel’s recounts;

As but one of many appearances, Engel appeared on The Rachel Maddow Show on December 21 and recounted in detail what happened. He described how he was in “a very rebel-friendly area,” traveling with a “rebel commander” and his team, when they were “ambushed” by “government people”: pro-Assad forces. “We knew it was government by what they were saying,” Engel explained.

Engel then described how the rebel commander heroically tried to sacrifice his own life to save the journalists, but to no avail: the “pro-government forces” brutalized, tortured and threatened the reporters and even executed some of the rebels:

"And so, we knew we were with pro-government forces. The rebel commander was saying to them, kill me, these guys are journalists, they have nothing to do with it. Kill me, I’m a rebel commander. Let them go …

They drive from there to one of their safe houses, don’t know exactly where, but roughly in this area up here. So it is a farm house. They take the guard, the rebel commander’s guard out of the truck. Kill him. Execute him …

And then they took all of us, including the rebel commander, in the safe house. He continually said let them go. … We were here, they wanted to move us here, to Fou’a. And Fou’a is a place that is very hard core Shia, very loyal to the government. It’s mostly surrounded by the rebels, it is being air-supplied by the Syrian government. … So this is a hand-in-glove relationship between the government and this very nasty militia group.

The ordeal ended, Engel said, only when his pro-government captors accidentally ran into a rebel checkpoint, where the rebels heroically killed some of Assad’s forces and freed the journalists, treating them with great compassion:

I don’t know who are these guys and we talk to them a little bit and it was quite clear they were from the rebel group and they couldn’t have been nicer to us. They were hard fighters, clearly good shots. … And then they brought us back to the headquarters, gave us food and water, let us make a phone call. And then they escorted us personally to the border.

Three days earlier, in a December 18th appearance on Maddow’s show, Engel — after describing how brutal and inhumane his captors were — actually linked them to both Iran and Hezbollah in response to a question from David Gregory:

I think I have a very good idea of who they were. This was a group known as the Shabiha. This is a government militia. These are people who are loyal to President Bashar al Assad. They are Shiite.

They were talking openly about their loyalty to the government, openly expressing their Shia faith. They are trained by Iranian revolutionary guard. They are allied with Hezbollah.

  To be clear, there’s no reason to think that Engel was lying or that he didn’t believe what he was saying but that doesn’t mean that other people didn’t have doubts. As Greenwald points out;

There were ample reasons at the time to be suspicious that this was a scam (perpetrated on (not by) Engel and his fellow captives) to blame Assad for the abduction. There was skepticism expressed by some independent analysts — although not on NBC News. The truly brilliant political science professor and blogger As’ad AbuKhalil (who I cannot recommend enough be read every day) was highly skeptical from the start about the identity of Engel’s captors, just as he was about the pro-intervention case in Syria and the nature of the “Free Syrian Army” generally (in August 2012 he told me: “Syria is one of the biggest propaganda schemes of our time. When the dust settles, if it does, it will be revealed”).

On December 18 — the day the Engel story became public — Professor AbuKhalil published an email from “a knowledgeable Western journalist” pointing out numerous reasons to doubt that the kidnappers were aligned with Assad, including the fact that prior kidnappings had been falsely attributed to pro-Assad forces. He argued that the Engel abduction “seems very much like a setup, like the kidnappers wanted him to think he was taken by Shiites.” AbuKhalil himself examined the video and wrote:

I looked at the video and it is so clearly a set up and the slogans are so clearly fake and they intend to show that they were clearly Shi’ites and that they are savages.  If this one is believable, I am posing as a dentist.

Of course, I am not saying that Engel was [in] on this plot. I think that they were really kidnapped but that the kidnappers of the Free Syrian Army typically lied to them about their identity, which has happened before.

Greenwald also links to other people who expressed doubts (you should read his article, linked above). Let me repeat that no one, not Glenn Greenwald nor the Times is suggesting that Engel knew, although I do find it curious that he would be certain of what he was saying, given the plausibility and veracity of what others were saying.

But what Engel knew isn’t all that relevant since NBC executives knew enough to doubt the story. From the Times article;

Interviews by The Times with several dozen people — including many of those involved in the search for NBC’s team, rebel fighters and activists in Syria and current and former NBC News employees — suggested that Mr. Engel’s team was almost certainly taken by a Sunni criminal element affiliated with the Free Syrian Army, the loose alliance of rebels opposed to Mr. Assad.

The group, known as the North Idlib Falcons Brigade, was led by two men, Azzo Qassab and Shukri Ajouj, who had a history of smuggling and other crimes. The kidnapping ended, the people involved in the search said, when the team was freed by another rebel group, Ahrar al-Sham, which had a relationship with Mr. Qassab and Mr. Ajouj.

NBC executives were informed of Mr. Ajouj and Mr. Qassab’s possible involvement during and after Mr. Engels’s captivity, according to current and former NBC employees and others who helped search for Mr. Engel, including political activists and security professionals. Still, the network moved quickly to put Mr. Engel on the air with an account blaming Shiite captors and did not present the other possible version of events.

NBC’s own assessment during the kidnapping had focused on Mr. Qassab and Mr. Ajouj, according to a half-dozen people involved in the recovery effort. NBC had received GPS data from the team’s emergency beacon that showed it had been held early in the abduction at a chicken farm widely known by local residents and other rebels to be controlled by the Sunni criminal group.

NBC had sent an Arab envoy into Syria to drive past the farm, according to three people involved in the efforts to locate Mr. Engel, and engaged in outreach to local commanders for help in obtaining the team’s release. These three people declined to be identified, citing safety considerations.

Ali Bakran, a rebel commander who assisted in the search, said in an interview that when he confronted Mr. Qassab and Mr. Ajouj with the GPS map, “Azzo and Shukri both acknowledged having the NBC reporters.”

Several rebels and others with detailed knowledge of the episode said that the safe release of NBC’s team was staged after consultation with rebel leaders when it became clear that holding them might imperil the rebel efforts to court Western support.

So the network had more than just suspicions about who the kidnappers really were and yet, they hustled Engel on every freaking show they had, to tell of his harrowing ordeal with Shiite kidnappers.

Why? Because NBC is the propaganda apparatus for GE, whose primary source of revenue comes from war. It doesn’t matter which war, or who is involved. GE makes money supplying war toys to people who need them. And the best way to get them to buy war toys is to convince them that they need to buy war toys.

Some people in the US deride media outlets like RT or Al Jazeera because they’re state owned (by Russia and Qatar, respectfully). That’s a perfectly legitimate reason to deride a media outlet, but at least we know what RT and Al Jazeera are. We know who they’re speaking for, and we know what the underlying agenda is here. I am not among those who dismiss these two outlets. I find that Al Jazeera does some great reporting, and I’ve seen interesting articles on RT that prompted me to look for more information. To be clear, I wouldn’t turn to Al Jazeera for unbiased reporting on any oil rich Middle Eastern country. Nor would I turn to RT to find out what the hell Putin is up to in Ukraine. But that’s because I know what they are and I can weigh credibility armed with that knowledge. Likewise with Fox or MSNBC. I know what they are, and I can weigh credibility accordingly.

Unfortunately, most Americans use that information to pick the network that will give them maximum confirmation bias. They pick the propaganda they find most yummy for their tummies. MSNBC viewers know that they’re tuning in to hear about republican malfeasance. Fox viewers turn to Fox so that they can hear sweet little lies about the political team whose jersey they wear. I say lies because not even a Fox news viewer can name something the republican party has done for them in the past thirty years. The lies aren’t so much about polishing the unpolishable turd that is the GOP. The lies are about keeping the lemmings on board with voting against their own self interest.

But most Americans turn to network news, and think that they’re getting news that doesn’t play for a team. That’s partially true; network news doesn’t play for a political party team. ABC and CBS play on their advertisers’ team. Did you ever wonder why you were seeing commercials for products you can’t buy? Like the ‘YAY Bechtel’ or the ‘YAY fracking’ ads? Those ads aren’t there to drum up business. That’s not what the millions of dollars of airtime are being bought to do. The point is to make sure that ABC never does a segment on flaming water in Pennsylvania. NBC’s ovarall agenda is GE, but that doesn’t mean that they can’t be rented by Koch industries.

Network news is just as shitty as cable news. Figuring out what the hell is going on in the world is getting harder and harder, but it still can be done. I don’t get my news on tv because I don’t have time to waste on watching stories I may or may not be interested in, that were selected for me. I can’t sit through a 3 minute piece on how my dryer lint may be killing me. I get my news online. I don’t dismiss very many media outlets. I do go to the network sites and to Fox, but not as a primary source of information. The only way to get remotely close to the truth is to read a myriad of different sources from several different countries, reporting on the same topic. You start to see patterns in where information overlaps, and what the outlier "facts" are. If you do this for long enough, you start to develop a sixth sense and can smell the bullshit right away. Once you’re able to do that, debunking the bullshit part of the story becomes really easy.

But I digress. The primary point of this piece is to remind you that our media is not much better than Russia or North Korea’s. Yes, we feel like we have a free press, but we don’t. That said, you can still find the truth if you apply yourself. I always say that if you can’t find a story in a newspaper, it’s probably not true. But the fact that it’s in a newspaper doesn’t make it entirely true. You have to read the same story in several credible outlets before you can feel reasonably sure you got the truth. There’s no such thing as a 100% credible outlet. The easiest way to tell if you should put a modicum of faith in a media source, is to see if they’ve ever apologized for getting something horribly wrong. Getting stories wrong happens, but how the mistakes are handled is what’s important. The New York Times admitted that Judith Miller wrote hack propaganda pieces about Iraq at Dick Cheney’s behest. They apologized and fired her. Rolling Stone just openly acknowledged and apologized for a bogus rape story they published.

It is possible to sift through the massive amount of information we now have access to. You just need to approach it critically and with an open mind.    

 

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All Bootstraps Are Not Created Equal

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That should seem like an obvious statement, but it’s one that doesn’t seem obvious at all to republican voters. The "pick yourself up by your bootstraps" crowd simply refuse to acknowledge that bootstraps come in different shapes, sizes, and are made of vastly different materials.

Republicans and libertarians live in a utopia where everyone starts off equal, so there’s no reason for any attempt at leveling the playing field in order to ensure that some of us don’t fall off. Actually, that’s not true. Republican operatives and politicians know. The clueless ones are their voters, who are being played and bootstrapped into voting against their own self interest. They need their Horatio Alger fantasy more than they need a living wage and an opportunity to get an affordable education.

How unequal is the playing field? There was an interesting piece in the New York Times that took a closer look at how the circumstances of your birth affect the outcome of your success.

Here are some of the statistics they came up with. The author only looked at male baby boomers, and the probability that they would achieve the same level of success as their fathers. The sexism made looking at just the men seem like the most accurate way to examine the situation. He looked at the presidency and calculated that the son of a president is 1.4 times more likely to become a president, than others in his peer group. That’s obviously based on too small a sample size, but it’s a fun fact nonetheless. The more statistically sound thing to look at is governors. He estimated that one in fifty sons of governors became governors themselves. That’s a rate 6,000 times higher than that of non-gubernatorial bootstrap owners. But if you really want a career in government, you need to make sure that your bootstraps are born to a senator, which would make your odds of becoming a senator 8,500 times more likely than sons with non-senatorial bootstraps. Here are some more statistics;

  • The son of a basketball player in the NBA has a 1 in 45 chance of getting into the NBA. That’s an 800x advantage over the non-NBA bootstrap. He didn’t provide numbers, but he said that they were much lower for baseball and football players (probably because of the height factor in basketball).
  • The son of an army general is 4,582 times more likely to become a general. So much for the military being a true meritocracy.
  • The son of a CEO is 1,895 times more likely to become a CEO.
  • The son of a Pulitzer Prize winner is 1,639 times more likely to become a Pulitzer Prize winner.
  • The son of a Grammy winner is 1,497 times more likely to become a Grammy winner.
  • The son of an Oscar winner is 1,361 times more likely to become an Oscar winner.
  • The son of a billionaire is 28,000 times more likely to become a billionaire.

People think of the US as the land of opportunity. Those people would be wrong. Compared to other large economy, developed countries, the US second to last in upward mobility, after the UK. If you want the best shot at upward mobility, that filthy bastion of socialism, Denmark is where you want to be. Your next best bet is Norway, where the socialism also runs rampant. The next most desirable place to live if you want a chance at upward mobility is Finland. Wanna guess what it costs to get higher education in Finland? Yep, just like Denmark and Norway, Finland’s higher education system is plagued with socialism.

Seventy percent of the people born into the lower economic quintile in the US, don’t make it to the middle class. The good news is that upward mobility hasn’t gotten worse in the past 30 years. It’s just always been shitty.  

Huh. It almost seems like giving everyone an equal opportunity at an education creates more opportunity for upward mobility. Weird. Could it be that the most common use of bootstraps are to bitch slap poor people into staying in their economic lane?   


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Both Parties Are Exactly The Same, Part I

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I hear this nonsense a lot, so I thought I would start a series of posts highlighting how completely untrue this mantra is. "Both parties are exactly the same" is truly the view of someone who doesn’t like to think, but enjoys having an opinion nonetheless.

By the way, correcting that fallacy does not mean that the person who is doing the correcting is doing anything other than correcting the fallacy. That leap to, "you’re crazy if you think democrats are awesome" isn’t well reasoned. Telling you you’re wrong about the false equivalency isn’t the same as saying that democrats are eighteen flavors of awesome. That would be the leap of a lazy thinker. I’m aware that neither party is laser focused in the poor and the middle class. I’m aware that democrats aren’t fabulous. But pointing out that every decade or so, democrats do something meaningful to help you is a fact. It’s a fact that isn’t true of republicans. Do I think that throwing me a crumb every ten years is sufficient? Not even remotely, but it’s a difference that makes the "they’re exactly the same" argument a lie.

No one I’ve ever gotten into this conversation with has ever been able to come up with a single thing that republicans have done to improve their lives. That should be a clear indication that the "exactly the same" argument isn’t true. And yet, the person who makes the claim usually soldiers on with their losing opinion.

So I’m going to highlight differences as they come up. Part one starts in Texas. Oh Texas, how I love you.

We have all seen copious amounts of footage of cops behaving badly in the past year. As a result, we’ve all spent the past year or two talking about outfitting these cops with body cameras to ensure that we have video of every incident involving any cop. The public seems to be in agreement that body cameras are a good idea. Everyone doesn’t necessarily agree that the body cams alone will solve the problems we’ve been seeing, but everyone agrees that they need to be more widely used. There are a small minority of people who don’t agree with putting body cams on cops.

That small minority includes cops, their unions, and a handful of legislators. One of these legislators is state representative Jason Villalba of Dallas, who introduced house bill 2918. This bill makes recording a cop a class B misdemeanor. You can’t record from within 25 feet, or 100 feet if you’re armed. Let’s be honest here, this is Texas. Who isn’t armed (don’t email me, I’m kidding)? Anyway, he’s getting lots of shit for this bill from freedom loving Texans (and Americans at large).

He claims that the bill is designed to prevent videographer from "interfering" with law enforcement. I guess he’s concerned about citizens interfering with incidents of misconduct, police brutality, and murder by a police officer.

Did I mention he’s a republican? YAY small government conservatism!

At virtually the same moment that freedom loving Jason Villalba is attempting to make taping cops a crime, state representative Ron Reynolds from Missouri City filed a bill that would require all police officers who come in contact with the public to wear body cameras. Reynolds introduced his bill a week after the video of Walter Scott’s murder came out and completely contradicted the murdering cop’s fanciful account.

Did I mention that Representative Reynolds is a democrat? 

His bill didn’t make it out of committee, by the way. Killing it appears to be a joint effort by both republicans and democrats.

But still, Reynold’s bill was a natural (and widely held) reaction to the Walter Scott video. What was Villalba’s bill a reaction to? 

Villalba got so much shit for his bill, that he’s retracted it for now. If you think he learned something from the reaction, think again. He’s going back to rewrite it. The Dallas Morning News spoke with him. What he had to say them was interesting. From the article;

The Dallas Republican conceded flaws in the bill, written by outside police groups, and he takes responsibility for not properly vetting it before filing.

So he got a bill from an interest group (police union) and just filed it without reading it? Okay that’s not unusual even though it’s always outrageous, but republicans really are much more comfortable with this process. They’re used to just putting a bill out there, as it was written by a special interest. They’ve been selling out for much longer than democrats have.

But wait, listen to what he thinks the problem was with his bill;

Villalba said he’ll fix the biggest problem — that the legislation would subject a citizen to arrest if the citizen photographed his own encounter with police……….Of course, he said, a person should be able to video his own detainment. He said the bill should have made clear the proposed 25-foot cordon around a police scene pertained only to third-party onlookers.

Oh, well that solves the problem and preserves freedom. So if you’re witnessing a cop beating the shit out of a homeless man, you would still be committing a crime by taping the incident. But if you’re the one who’s being beaten, by all means, get out your iPhone and tape away. Is this asshole serious? 

Does this new version sound more "conservative" to anyone? Does this bill sound like it’s aim is to serve anyone other than dirty cops?

Please spare me the "they’re all the same" mantra. While I’m at it, I’m also tired of that "republicans want smaller government" bullshit too. Can we finally put that to rest once and for all?

As I said earlier, I will be posting more examples of the differences as they come up. I wanted to write about these two bills because they were both introduced within three weeks of each other. The bill protecting the public isn’t going to go anywhere because members of both parties have been paid off by police unions. But at least someone (a democrat) tried to protect the public.

Republicans are always in 100% lockstep with throwing the public over in favor of the special interests that serve them. Okay that’s not actually true. There are a handful of republicans on a local level that aren’t 100% corporate shills, but on the national level, my 100% figure is entirely accurate.

Wanna prove me wrong? Awesome. Show me something republicans have done for you in the past forty years. Until then, stop telling me they’re exactly the same.  

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The Inevitability Of Hillary

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I posted this stupid piece yesterday with a long commentary, but the piece is so stupid that I have more to say. The offensively stupid piece is titled, There’s A Reality About Hillary Clinton That Many Liberals Need To Face. So at this point I’m already a little irritated because of the condescending tone, but I thought that maybe the writer had something substantive, thoughtful, and new to say.

Nope. He starts off by listing the ages of four Supreme Court justices. Cause the "you’re voting for the supreme court" point is on that has never been made before. Genius! Oh, wait. Yawn.

The next point he makes in mounting this great case for Hillary, is that he points out that Elizabeth Warren isn’t running. He actually tells us this three times. When you’re making a case for why people should show up to vote for the candidate your piece is about, perhaps pointing out that the candidate many people really want isn’t going to run isn’t the best way to start. Your opening salvo is, "your first choice isn’t running, so get yourself used to the idea of settling for what you’re going to get." Weak. Seriously, that’s so weak. If you’re going to write a piece outlining why people need to turn out for Hillary, perhaps you should make a case for Hillary. 

He never makes a case for Hillary. Not once in the whole condescending piece in which he lectures everyone who isn’t bright enough to have thought of his hackneyed points before. He lists precisely no accomplishments and no qualifications.

But the most galling part of this ridiculous piece, is that he’s talking to liberals who have assessed Hillary to be too far right for us. In other words, he’s talking down to people who have been paying attention. I find this notion that liberals (real liberals, for whom Hillary isn’t all that) are going to stay home and let republicans take the white house, completely ludicrous. We’re not stupid. If we were stupid, we would be excited by Hillary and rooting for her to raise every penny of that 2.5 billion dollars she’s aiming for, cause how could that possibly not be awesome for us? I mean, it’s not like the corporations and banks giving her the money don’t have the interests of the middle class and poor on the forefront of their minds, right? I mean, Monsanto and Goldman Sachs obviously want her elected so that she can finish what Occupy Wall Street started, don’t they? 

We’re not stupid, and we’re going to hold our noses when the time comes. But until that time comes, we’re going to push her left. Why? Cause we’re smarter than the buffoon who lectured me in this stupid piece of his. Did anyone actually watch Rahm Emanuel’s campaign after he failed to fend off Chuy Garcia’s primary challenge? Here. watch Jon Stewart show you;

 

Has anyone ever seen Rahm as humble as he was in those campaign commercials? You know why that happened? Cause we didn’t accept the inevitable, went for a progressive, and made a statement.

The writer of this piece thinks it’s smarter, and more forward thinking to just suck it up. We know better because we just saw it. We know better because neither Elizabeth Warren nor Bill de Blasio should be serving as senator and mayor (respectively) right now. The liberals this author he’s talking to are more sophisticated than the average voter. We don’t need lectures on short term strategy to motivate us to do what needs to be done and accept that which must be accepted, when it needs to be accepted. 

In fact, some of us are so politically sophisticated, that we’ve really thought this through and concluded that even huge supporters of Hillary Clinton should be very concerned about what’s going on here. The coronation it looks like we’re about to have should make no one happy.

What’s happening in the democratic primary process is all that is wrong with Citizen’s United. Republicans have always had their coronations. It was always going to be McCain in 2008 because he was next in line (and owed after what Bush did to him in 2000).  It was always going to be Romney in 2012 because the corporate overlords had already picked him four years earlier. The next republican in line always gets the nomination, but at least they put on a show with primary opponents. They still invest the time in building the theater and putting on a show for republican voters.
 
Democrats just leapfrogged to the next inevitable phase of post Citizen’s United elections. They’re not going to bother with a primary, and idiots like the guy who wrote that piece are telling us to just embrace the new coronation process. I mean honestly, no thinking person can be happy with this.

Let’s get into what else this writer failed to think forward about: the vice president. Primaries are how VP candidates are vetted and chosen. We’re going to have none of that. No vetting of a candidate, and no strengthening of the ticket  by adding the primary opponent that can help carry a few more states. I’m not worried about Hillary, since she’s the most vetted candidate in the history of vetting. But who is her VP going to be, and how is this person going to be chosen? We’re supposed to just suck it up and trust that Hillary is wisely going to choose the person who is ostensibly going to be the democratic heir to the White House? What if she misses something in her vetting process and her pick gets chewed up and thrown out by republicans over something in their past that she missed?

This whole thing stinks and everyone, regardless of their views on Hillary should agree with me.

 
But enduring these ridiculous articles that assume that the not-happy-with-Hillary-crowd aren’t happy with her cause we’re dolts is ridiculous. We’re not overjoyed because we’re the opposite of dolts. We pay more attention than most.
 
There’s A Reality About Hillary Clinton That Many Liberals Need To Face

Read more at: http://www.forwardprogressives.com/reality-hillary-clinton-liberals-need-face/

There’s A Reality About Hillary Clinton That Many Liberals Need To Face

Read more at: http://www.forwardprogressives.com/reality-hillary-clinton-liberals-need-face/

There’s A Reality About Hillary Clinton That Many Liberals Need To Face

Read more at: http://www.forwardprogressives.com/reality-hillary-clinton-liberals-need-face/

 

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North Charleston PD: Another Ferguson?

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Just like with Ferguson, we’re starting to see some systemic issues with North Charleston PD. We’re also learning that the racial makeup of the police force doesn’t much resemble the racial makeup of the community.

Let’s start with demographics and city data:

  • 49% of North Charleston residents are black
  • 39% of North Charleston residents are white
  • 11% of North Charleston residents are Hispanic
  • The estimated median household income is $38,258, compared to $43,107 in South Carolina
  • The median house or condo value in North Charleston is 122,300 compared to $135, 500

So North Charleston is the poor part of town, just like Ferguson. The racial demographics in North Charleston PD are even more lopsided than they are in Ferguson, where 67% of the police are white. In N Charleston PD, 80% of the police are white. So N Charleston PD is worse than Ferguson is, in terms of hiring police officers that look like and come from the community they’re charged with policing. Let that sink in for a minute.

Now on to Michael Slager, the cop who murdered Walter Scott. Just like that piece of crap, Daniel Pantaleo who murdered Eric Garner, Slanger has a previous complaint against him. Pantaleo had three, two of which taxpayers of NYC paid settlements on (the third one is still going through the system). That number of course, does not include Eric Garner.

The previous complaint against Slanger was filed in 2013, has yet to go to court. Here’s what happened in that incident. Slanger and his partner showed up at the home where Mario Givens was living with his mother and brother at 4 am one morning in September 2013. Mario Givens answered the door. According to Givens, Slanger demanded to be let inside the house, but never gave a reason for what he was looking for or what he was doing there at all. Slanger then pushed the door and told Givens that if he didn’t come outside, he (Slanger) was going to tase him (seems like Slanger loves him some hot taser action). Givens complied because he didn’t want to be tased. Slanger tased him in the stomach anyway.

It turns out that they were there because a woman named Maleah Kiara Brown called the police to report that Mario’s brother, Matthew (her ex boyfriend) had shown up in her bedroom uninvited. She gave the police a description of Matthew, where she stated that Matthew is 5 foot 5 inches tall. Mario is over 6 feet tall. Slanger and his partner didn’t just have a description, they had Maleah and her friend with them when they pounded on the Givens’ door. She corroborates Marios story entirely. Right after Slanger tased Mario and pulled him out of the house and onto the porch, Maleah claims that she was yelling at the officers, telling them that they had the wrong man. Here’s what else she said,

"He [Slanger] was cocky. It looked like he wanted to hurt him [Mario]. There was no need to tase him. No reason. He was no threat – and we told him he had the wrong man."

There were other neighbors who witnessed the incident and corroborated Mario’s story. You won’t be surprised to learn that Slanger’s version of events don’t much resemble anyone else’s. From a HuffPo story about the incident:

Slager wrote that he could not see one of Givens’ hands and feared he might be holding a weapon. He wrote that he observed sweat on Givens’ shirt, which he perceived as evidence that he could have run from Brown’s home, and then ordered him to exit several times.

When Givens didn’t comply, Slager said he entered the home to prevent him from fleeing and was then forced to use his stun gun when Givens struggled with him. The officers’ report describes the Givens brothers as looking "just alike."

To be clear, no one else supports Sanger’s claim that Givens was struggling or resisting in any way. So an internal investigation ensued. Naturally, when there are several witnesses agreeing on one version of events and a cop telling another story, the cop should clearly be exonerated. Did I forget to mention that the investigation was conducted without contacting any of the witnesses?

I mentioned that Slanger and a partner knocked on the Givens’ door in that last incident. That partner’s name is Clarence Habersham. You should be familiar with that name by now, but you aren’t because of the systemic problems in this police department that I mentioned earlier. You should know his name because he’s the same partner who was present for the murder of Walter Scott. You should know his name because he’s the second cop you see in the video when Slanger comes back with the taser and plants it next to Scott. If the video was too fast for you to spot that, don’t worry. ABC news was kind enough to publish still frames of the video to help us see what happened.

Here’s the planting-of-the-taser frame:

Screen Shot 2015-04-10 at 10.49.30 AM

We can safely assume that Clarence Habersham’s statement about the incident supported Slanger’s since the department originally spewed all that bullshit about Scott going for the taser, and that he ended up dying despite the attempts at CPR. You know, all that stuff that we categorically didn’t see in the video. Yet we haven’t heard a peep about any disciplinary action taken against Habersham. Well that’s weird. It almost seems like the department took the bare minimum action they could, in firing Slanger after the video came out.

The fact that Habersham hasn’t been sanctioned in any way is an indication of a major systemic problem with this police department, just like there is with Ferguson. And just like Ferguson, I promise you that we’re going to be hearing more incidents of corruption, police brutality, and inaction to correct problems within the department.

I just hope that the Department Of Justice goes into North Charleston PD just like they did in Ferguson.    

 

 

 

 

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Another Cop Wins Another Epic Battle

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So we had an ever elusive incident of a cop being charged with murder, for murdering a person who was unarmed. I literally can’t remember the last time this happened so I was stunned by disbelief for a couple of days. You know the story by now. The murdering cop, Michael Slager killed Walter Scott during an incident that started with a traffic stop for a broken tail light.

The incident happened on Saturday, and unfolded in the usual way. The cop claims that he was in an epic battle for his life and had no choice but to shoot to kill. It’s fascinating how many epic battles cops get into. They seem to emerge victorious the in the vast majority of these incidents. Weird.

According to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, a total of 127 cops were killed in the line of duty last year. I don’t have numbers from any other source from last year, but I can tell you that they had the highest number of cops killed for 2013. In other words, no other source had a higher number than they did. So 127 is the maximum number of cops who were killed in the line of duty last year. Of those, 50 were death by gun. So let’s assume that all 50 were of the epic battle nature. I don’t have the 2014 numbers on how many justifiable homicides by cop from the FBI, but I have the 2013 figures. The FBI recorded 461 justifiable homicides committed by cops. These must nearly all have been of the epic battle variety since they were justified, right?

That 50 to 461 ratio is unfathomably imbalanced. It simply defies explanation. We don’t know how many of those 461 were unarmed, and that’s by design. No one is counting. Speaking of counting, that 461 number seems to be off by at least a factor of 2. Some think that the number of people killed by cops is closer to 1,100 per year. You know how anal I am about data, and presenting credible data but I can’t in this case. I don’t know how many of the estimated 1,100 cop killings were of unarmed victims. But I know that it would have to be no more than 5% in order to create parity with the number of cops killed in the line of duty.

If you go back to that FBI link, you’ll see that the police are justifiably murdering more people every year, while the murders of police officers are trending downward every year. There’s something seriously wrong here.

I’m not prone to believe the account of the lone survivor in a struggle, particularly when the one who died wasn’t armed. I’m not prone to believe a cop who won an epic battle for his or her life against someone who wasn’t armed. I’m not inclined to believe any cop whose story includes the word "waistband". I’m sorry, but I have no benefit of the doubt left for them anymore. Especially when they all seem to be telling virtually the same story.

Unfortunately, forensics in the real world is nothing like CSI. It never tells us exactly what happened. Darren Wilson’s story was very similar to Slager’s story. The victim reached for the cop’s weapon…..epic struggle….shoot to kill. In the Michael Brown case, forensics told us that Brown did have contact with Wilson’s gun, but it can’t tell us the circumstances. Was the gun being pulled out when he instinctively grabbed at it before it was aimed at him? We don’t know. We know that all of the bullets except one entered Michael Brown’s body from the front. What about the one we’re not sure of? That was one that went through his raised arm, which could have come in from either the back or the front. We know that Wilson missed half of the shots he took. Were these the shots he fired when they were both running? That would seem to be the most likely circumstances under which to miss, but we don’t know.

But Wilson gets a pass because we don’t know, and he’s the only one left alive to tell a story. The Michael Slager situation was on course to play out the same way as Wilson’s. He told basically the same story, and his department was standing behind it. This autopsy is going to have the benefit of a video tape showing it what happened, but there’s no telling how murky the results would have been without the tape. Based on that horribly imbalanced ratio of shootings, I think it’s safe to assume that the results were going to be too unclear to put a murderer in prison.

The only good thing that happened here, is that the video didn’t come to light until after the murderer told his lies. He’s going to have an impossible time explaining the disparity between his version and the video.

I am not prone to believe any cop’s story that isn’t accompanied by video evidence. You think I’m biased? We’re doing exactly the opposite now. We believe everything the surviving cop says unless there’s a video to prove otherwise. That benefit of the doubt given to the cops is unfounded. My bias comes from the data. Where does the reverse bias come from?         

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Journalism By Way Of Comedian

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Anyone who is paying attention knows that Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are far more informative than cable or network news. We have several polls and studies to prove it. I think it’s funny that they’re perceived as partisan liberals. They may be liberals, but they’re not partisan. They’re comedians, so neither of them has ever left a joke on the table because of loyalty to democrats. They’re perceived as partisan because republicans are batshit crazy, and therefore more funny. Democrats are not batshit crazy. They’re also not quite as corrupt as republicans (yet). So when Colbert said that "the facts have a well known liberal bias", he was being earnest.

Picking on republicans more isn’t partisanship. It’s sentience. The funny thing is that Jon Stewart, who owns both Daily Show and Colbert never set out to change the world. He never had an agenda, and never intended to play a partisan role in politics. In fact, he actively worked at staying in his comedian lane until he took the path of media watch dog.

I think Colbert is more inclined to use his influence to affect change. That whole thing he did with his PAC was genius. But by and large, Colbert also stayed in his comedian lane. Oh, except for that one time when he said everything that I’ve always wanted to say to George W Bush at the Correspondent’s Dinner. That was awesome. That was also (I’m not kidding) the first time republicans realized he wasn’t one of them.  

Here comes John Oliver. He really does seem intent on changing the world. From dropping millions of people on the FCC to going after big tobacco, it’s clear that he doesn’t plan on just being funny. He’s an activist.

I felt that on Sunday, he went even beyond activist and became a journalist. He did an interview with Edward Snowden. Everyone is talking about the ‘dick pic’ part of the interview, where Oliver figured out that the only way to get Americans to give a shit about their privacy, was to frame the issue around their dick and said dick’s privacy. That was hysterical and clever, but that wasn’t the part of the interview that struck me.

The part that I found fascinating (and awesome) was the ten minutes that preceded the dick pic bit. The interview starts at about the 15:00 mark;

At the 19:40 minute mark, Oliver starts to ask Snowden some seriously tough questions. He asks Snowden if he’s read all the documents before he turned them over to the press. Snowden replied by saying, "I have evaluated all the documents that are in the archive". Oliver comes back with, "You’ve read every single one?" Snowden replies with, "Well, I do understand what I’ve turned over." And then Oliver shoots back with, "There’s a difference between understanding what’s in the documents and reading the documents." And then he punches Snowden hard with a sarcastic, "Right cause when you’re handing over thousands of NSA documents, the last thing you want to do is read them."

This interview was outstanding, and it was conducted by a comedian. I’m going to let you watch it because it gets even better from where I left off in relaying it to you.

To be clear, my position is that Edward Snowden is an American hero. He is a patriot who did what true patriots do; tried to make the country better by exposing something the government was doing in total secrecy.

That said, John Oliver is the first person to ever hold his (Snowden’s) feet to the fire on how he did what he did. He held Snowden accountable for a New York Times fuck up (watch the interview) in improperly redacting something that was actually harmful to national security. I loved that. I loved watching Snowden consider his own culpability for the unintended consequences of his actions.

Why did I love that? Because I’m a supporter of Snowden and what he did, and watching him being challenged helps me to reassess my support with more information. I am so sick to death of the stenography that happens in our "news". When a journalist actually challenges a politician on something they said, that’s the news. Everyone was talking about how George Stephanopoulos challenged Mike Pence over his hateful attempt at legalizing discrimination. It’s like everyone wanted to give Stephanopoulos a cookie for doing his job.

Our media sucks at this, and some of them are proud of the poop they sling every day. Chuck Todd proclaimed that it’s not his job to correct falsehoods. He also said that if he challenges guests on his show, they won’t come back. I have news for you Chuckie; you’re an overpaid stenographer, and if you can’t do an entertaining and informative show without having guests on, you’re a shitty broadcaster with no talent. Remember when Lara Logan was outraged that Michael Hastings committed the crime of journalism by reporting on what he saw when he was embedded with General McChrystal? When she told me she was a hack, I believed her so when her entirely unbelievable Benghazi propaganda piece came out in 60 Minutes, I wasn’t at all surprised.

Since we clearly can’t have journalists that do journalism in America, I hope we get more political comedian-journalists. Here, watch everyone on freaking Morning Joe, completely in awe of Oliver’s journalism. No really, click on that link and watch it.

Yeah, that happened totally unironically.

Here’s the thing about John Oliver – he’s also a flaming liberal who doesn’t do his job through a partisan lens. When a right wing hackneyed douchebag like Scarborough heaps praise on Oliver, that’s proof that you can be strongly politically oriented without being a partisan hack.

Media Matters is a partisan website. That doesn’t mean they’re not reputable and that they lie. Lying means they lie and unless you can prove that a media outlet lies, you can’t dismiss them because they’re partisan. Fox News lies. It’s the lies that make them unreliable, not the partisanship. Wanna know how I know they lie? Cause Media Matters and Right Wing Watch post videos of them lying every day. The fact that I don’t like Fox doesn’t make them liars. The fact that I can demonstrate they lie, makes them liars. "Partisan" does not mean "unreliable.  

I’m going to side track for a minute. You know that whole, "liberal media" crap we’ve been hearing about for twenty years? Well that was all started by Roger Ailes whose head exploded over the coverage of the civil rights movement and MLK in the 60s. He was pissed off that the media aired events like the brutal beatings on the Edmund Pettis bridge in Selma on Bloody Sunday. In Ailes’ twisted and bigoted mind, showing America what segregation and bigotry looked like was liberal. Reporting on the endless and pointlessness that was going on in Vietnam was liberal. Never mind the fact that it was endless and pointless. Never mind the fact that discrimination is abhorrent. Both of those "liberal" positions were the correct positions morally and historically. But they were liberal, and Ailes didn’t agree with either position. And that’s when the words "liberal media" were foisted on America for the purpose of making journalists afraid of presenting the facts. Facts don’t have two sides. They’re facts. Evolution and creationism are not two sides of an issue. One is science, and the other is purely faith. There is no "side" there. There are no "sides" to the issue of climate change. 99% of scientists are telling us what they’ve found, and Exxon has a handful of "scientists" they’ve paid to say that it’s all a fiction. Those are not two equally valid and compelling "sides". So now we have a media who creates false equivalencies so as not to seem like they’re too liberal when they’re on the right sides of issues like showing you what happened in Selma. But I digress.     

John Oliver is the best journalist we’ve seen since Walter Cronkite. I say that as someone who wants to see my heroes challenged. How the fuck else am I supposed to know if they’re worthy of my respect if no one ever challenges them? Anyone who uses the phrase, "gotcha question" needs to stop talking. Seriously, shut up and stop talking now. There’s no such thing as a gotcha question, since there’s an easy way to avoid them; don’t get got. And if you’re a lemming who doesn’t want to see your government officials "gotchaed", I urge you to stop spending time on politics. Perhaps sports is more your speed?

You should want your position challenged as often as it can be. You should learn to address someone who opposes you directly with facts and citations to the facts you base your opinion on. You shouldn’t talk past people. Someone brings up a point, you should address that point before introducing one you like better. That’s how you form sound opinions; by testing your beliefs. Now that journalists aren’t doing that, we’ve all forgotten how legitimate disagreement and debate is done. Don’t point somewhere else in order to distract from something someone said. Address it head on. If you can’t do that, you need to reassess your position.

I’m hoping that John Oliver will bring back the antiquated notion of critically looking at issues. I’m hoping that more comedians take his lead and fill the void left by our media.                  

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Rand Paul 2016

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Rand Paul has officially stepped into the republican primary clown car. Believe it or not, I think he’s the most viable candidate among those who have already announced or have made it clear they’re running.

He’s come a long way in his efforts to learn how not to sound like an idiot. I don’t think he’s said anything idiotic in the past (at least) six months. I think he’s going to appeal to millenials with republican parents since they’re predisposed to veer right. His father’s libertarian schtick will appeal to young white men (libertarians are 96% white and 68% men) who aren’t interested in more wars, but love the myth that more freedom will allow the free market to solve all the problems in the world.

I say his father’s schtick because Rand appears to literally have no mind of his own. There is not a single policy position he believes in that didn’t come directly from daddy. I’m always suspicious of people who entirely agree with a parent. It demonstrates a lack of independent thought and in the case of the Paul’s, also critical thinking. My father and I were not politically in agreement in a damned thing. He was an immigrant, blue collar Reagan republican. I thought he was out of his damned mind.

There’s a decent chance that he’s going to win the Koch primary he auditioned for. They haven’t announced a winner yet. But the fact that he auditioned should tell you all you need to know about his "libertarianism". He’s a corporatist, just like the rest of the republican party.

The only question is, how long can he maintain not sounding stupid for? In my opinion, it’s just a matter of time before he says or does something really, really stupid like plagiarize from an unreliable source like Wikipedia.

Rand Paul is a dimwit who has never had an independent thought in his life. That’s not going to change, no matter how many people have worked with him to de-dumb him. You can’t undo a lifetime’s worth of not using one’s brain.

He’s going to run into more racism because he’s a racist. But things like his Southern Avenger associations won’t hurt him with republicans who don’t much mind racists. Rand is racist because his father is racist and, as I pointed out earlier, Rand appears never to have had an independent thought in his life.

His entry into the race will definitely liven things up because he’s a shifty street fighter. We’ve seen him get into kerfuffles with Chris Christie, and Marco Rubio (who’s even dumber than little Rand) and he told us that he fights dirty. Rand Paul will definitely make things more interesting and depending on where the Kochs decide to put their money, he may make the republican primaries an actual race (unlike democrats, who seem to be fine with a coronation).        

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Ben Carson, Idiot Savant

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So GQ magazine did a profile on Ben Carson that they very aptly named, "What If Sarah Palin Were A Brain Surgeon?"

I say that it’s aptly titled because it’s hard not to notice that the brain surgeon is a complete idiot. I know what you’re thinking; "Come on Bitchy, the man is a brain surgeon so your political bias is clearly clouding your judgment in assessing his intelligence." 

 
Let’s judge together, shall we?
 
So Carson made the (now) requisite fact finding trip to Israel, where he was provided with a guide to show him around and answer his questions.
 
From the article;
 
[His first question] "In the United States, we have Republicans, Democrats, and independents. What do you have?"
 
Ummmm. Don’t you think that he would have done some rudimentary internet searches to learn the basics? I mean, seriously. Who goes to a foreign country and expects someone to school them, starting at a 2nd grade level? But let’s continue with the article;
 
 
The woman answered Carson’s question about political parties, telling him that there were Labor and Likud and a host of other factions in the Knesset. "And what is the role of the Knesset?" he interjected.
 
"What is the Knesset?" Are you fucking kidding me? How clueless and uninformed are you? If you think I’m being harsh, let’s get back to the article;
 
This prompted a tutorial on Israel’s legislature….. As he tried to concentrate on his Hebrew Schoolhouse Rock primer, he seemed even more fatigued. "It sounds complex," he finally said. "Why don’t they just adopt the system we have?"’
 
"Why don’t they just adopt the system we have?"

So this is the first time Ben Carson has been exposed to the mechanics of a parliamentary system, which is far more common in the first world than our one-of-a-kind representative democracy? This goes beyond stupid and ignorant. This demonstrates the same disinterest in the world that George W Bush demonstrated when he was a primary candidate. Republicans didn’t think that level of ignorance was going to be a problem. Turns out that not knowing what "Sunni" and "Shia" are was a giant problem.

 
So at some point during Carson’s trip, he was given three IDF (Israeli defense force, but you knew that because you’re not freaking Ben Carson!) tutors. From the article;
 
"….. to discuss the nearby Syrian civil war. He [the IDF member] claimed that most of the Islamist fighters weren’t Syrian but came from Morocco and Europe. "It’s just like the troublemakers in Ferguson," Carson said, betraying a habit of wedging the unfamiliar into a context he understands.
 
The man is a child, trying to distill everything he hears down to information that he can fit (incorrectly) into buckets of situations he’s (or so he thinks) familiar with. No, Ben Carson, there is no possible way to correlate the Syrian revolution with Ferguson Missouri, you unmitigated dolt.
 
At another point on his trip, he asks, "Is this area right here protected by the Iron Dome?" I’m still shaking my head, and I’ve been digesting that morsel of stupid for a couple of hours now.
 
Here’s another part of the article I found interesting;

Even among Carson’s political team, though, there’s some recognition that he could benefit from a little more polish. The day of the president’s State of the Union, Carson had spent five hours getting briefed on domestic and foreign policy at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington think tank; the next morning, he would travel to Texas for two days of media training. But on the night of Obama’s speech, the task of getting Carson ready for the White House fell to Williams alone. He’d arranged for Carson to appear on cable news to offer some post-speech commentary and was busily prepping the doctor.

 
The ‘Williams’ referenced there, is Armstrong Williams. Another know-nothing radio talk show host that Barack Obama annihilated in his campaign to win the Illinois senate seat he held before he became president.

 

As Sam Seder (majority.fm) put it, Ben Carson will forever change the implication of the statement, "well, he’s no brain surgeon".

 

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