Sadly, No!

I am very disappointed. I wrote, what I thought was a stirring and insightful blog post, and here we are two weeks later, and the world is still gripped by a refugee crisis. It’s almost like the most powerful minds in the world don’t hang on my every word. In any case, now that I have a little more time, I was hoping to include a little more actual data with my invective.

But first, an example. One hundred fifty years ago a country crushed by oppression and wracked by famine, lost a million people to hunger and sent a further million out into the world to make their way as best as they could in the face of the rest of the world’s hostility and indifference. That country was Ireland, and my three-greats-grandfather came here to the United states, put on a blue uniform and fought for the union in the civil war. He’s buried today in a soldier’s cemetery in Milwaukee Wisconsin. And it is because of his service and the service of thousands more immigrants like him that there is a United states of America today. Even in the the 1840s 50s and 60s in a country far more dependent on immigration than the America of today, the Irish were not welcomed with open arms. As a group they were called ignorant drunken violent and worse, Catholic. But where there was a railroad to be built or a mine to be dug, or a fight to be fought, the Irish were right there in the thick of it.

And that’s why we need immigrants today. To help us face the challenges we don’t even see coming. To help us actually be the country we have claimed to be all along, a shelter for the oppressed and an example of freedom to inspire the world.

So, I’m not a reporter, and I am probably no better at searching google than any of you. But here’s a few informative links that show the scale and context of the problem right now:

Some quality reporting from the Guardian: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/04/syrian-refugee-crisis-why-has-it-become-so-bad

CNN if you must (warning, video may auto-play): http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/07/europe/europe-migrant-crisis/

Here’s a person that wants to defeat both Assad and ISIS as a military “solution” that would be similar in magnitude to the previous two gulf wars I included this because another war on the scale of the second Gulf War would cost another $6 Trillion. Which makes the $8 billion price tag the UN puts on dealing with the refugee crisis a bargain by anyone’s accounting.

And given that Carly Fiorina has been wrong on every issue in her professional career, the fact that she wants us to highly restrict the number of Syrian refugees we accept is a convincing argument for throwing the gates open: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/09/06/fiorina-warns-us-be-very-careful-about-keeping-out-terrorist-while-allow-in/

And here’s the ever more useless New York Times focusing on the difficulties of accepting more refugees instead of making the case for accepting more refugees: ttp://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/05/us/many-obstacles-are-seen-to-us-taking-in-large-number-of-syrian-refugees.html?_r=0

And lastly, here’s what Mercycorps has to say, and how you can help.

Even if it’s just five or ten dollars, that buys more grain or rice than you’d think when you’re buying in bulk. Think of it as picking up lunch for a friend you haven’t met yet.

The need to feel productive for a minute, because reason, is the germative inspiration for this post.

Was hanging out at Edroso’s basement and ran into a kid who left a link written by one of his favorite writer of sports It’s a piece in the Hill and squeals of “let me in the fucking club already.” Accompanied by the pounding of fists on the door.

Anyway I gave the piece a graph to capture my attention before deciding that the only reason to read more would be to deride the fucking everlasting shit out of it. My initial reaction follows:

Barack Begat Donald

Thats the title of the piece, now granted, he may not have come up with the quip, but that nearly stopped me at the gate.

First Graph:

Barack Obama was in a bad mood.

It was early April 2008 when I
took my 7-year-old daughter to see presidential candidate, and then-Sen.
Obama (D-Ill.), in downtown San Antonio. The election was months away,
but there was a palpable sense of inevitability in the air and I wanted
my daughter to soak in the evening’s historical significance perched
atop my shoulders while we listened to Obama speak.

Perfect, right out of the gate with an unprovable assertion, pivot to daddy’s little darling on the shoulder, which really is all about me, me, me.

So admitting to not having read past the first graph which proves to some of our favored trolls, something…I have the piece in another tab and we shall begin the eviscerations….

Graph the second:

Perhaps it was his loss to Hillary Clinton in the state primaries contested on that warm April evening, but there was very little inspiration in his words. Instead I felt a baritone anger booming from the giant speakers. In that moment, the “change” so often promised morphed from hope into something darker for me; something more ominous.

Damn, straight in we have busted out the Foghorn whistles ala Leghorn. “Angy Assed, Sore Loosing, Uppity, Fucking Nigger, is harshing my buzz.” Tarted up nicely for polite company, but damn, if I can’t smell the desperation to get off of the sports beat and into some wingnut sinecure.

Shaking head, I have to admit on some level to being impressed with the bravado…Any way on to graph three:

Snipers were perched atop the courthouse in the distance while upbeat music from Stevie Wonder and Curtis Mayfield wailed. It all served as a fitting sensory contradiction and the diversity in the crowd was a sight to behold: young, old, brown, black and white, all together, all surging toward the stage.

OK, It is gonna take a minute or two for my eyes to adjust to this trainwreck of a, um, not even fucking sure what to call…I mean word salad seems a bit kind…I’ll leave “…fitting sensory contradiction….” to our resident genii.

The surreality of the evening were prelude to his delivery, which was more Willie Stark than John Kennedy. I noticed the contrast of his slow-burning, elegantly coiffed power, pitted against the crowd’s unadulterated joy for him.

“…were prelude…” “…slow-burning, elegantly coiffed…” WTF? If gifted/afflicted with synesthesia, this shit might make sense.

On to the fourth, where hopefully the train re-rails:

It has been seven years and many miles, but as I consider Obama’s presidency, I think about that night. My optimism dissipated while listening to raucous chants of “Yes We Can!” and I left with the inescapable sense that Obama, soon to be the most powerful man in the world, wasn’t speaking to me. In fact, he had no interest whatsoever in winning me over. He knew already that he could succeed without me.

Would somebody please hand this wank a Fleshlight™, a fucking mirror in which to indulge his inner Narcissus, and a fucking Ham sandwhich to replenish his Me-ness after finishing.

I deeply wish every election, every referenda, every decision made was always and forever about Me. Then, only then, would the world be set right. I am beginning to feel the gordian knot closing around me as if I stumbled into a nest of hungry Pythons.

Five:

Gonna skip that one and I’ll just leave my impression:
Aside from the lies, fanfic, and projection, there is an odd coherence to the bit.

Six, nearing the point:

And now, here we are, hurtling along with our hair on fire in the summer of Donald Trump. I’m captivated by his speeches — not for his eloquence or oratory, but more for his inability to explain anything beyond how rich and smart he believes himself to be.

And…The let’s see if I can justify my thesis, or is there anything left in the gaping hole of my tortured ass that I can grab…:

On the surface, attempting to compare the two is a fool’s errand. Trump is the chainsaw to Obama’s scalpel, but dig deeper and the similarities are there: both rhetorical methods serve their purpose, both get the job done. The vacuousness of Obama’s — “this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal” — has been trumped by Trump’s clumsy “whatever it is, I know how to do things. I just want to make this country so great, and that’s what’s going to happen.”

Jesus…Next stop, a fine toothed comb and a dingleberry harvest….

And, ironically, most of those who chose to sit out the last two presidential elections — thereby accelerating Obama’s ascension — are responsible now for the rise of Trump. In this tragic comedy, Obama’s narcissism, his polite classlessness, his ruthless pursuit of largely unpopular ends that so fueled his supporters for the better of the last decade, have all comically transformed into the vehicle driving Trump’s summer success. All things considered and rhetorical prowess aside, there is little separating the abiding philosophies of Obama and Trump. Strangely, Trump unequivocally owes his early campaign success to Obama.

Sorry folks, this is where I start dreaming of sitting in my chair watching a documentary, or putting a bullet through my fucking skull knowing that this shithead lives in my world and got paid to write the last bit that I will share:

As a conservative, I can reconcile my disconnect with Obama and those that support him. And while not pleasant, knowing that the current president never attempted to persuade me is understandable.

Sure it is dude-bro, sure it is…
…

I’m upset about the so called “immigration debate”. The conservative position seems to be various shades of “no”, “fuck no!” and “launch them all over the Rio Grande via catapult”. Rod Dreher recently wrote a column that Roy at Alicublog tore apart with extreme prejudice. Trump makes ever more outrageous claims of deporting millions, and the rest of the Republican nominees trip over themselves trying to catch up. The US is built on the ruins of dozens of Native American nations, and on the graveyards of millions of Native American dead. It is a country born of conquest, extermination, subjugation and slavery. So to me at least, we as a country have a duty to make restitution as far as we can for the ugly crimes of our nation’s founding and continued existence. If we don’t we are no better than the bad old empires of Europe that so many of our ancestors fled to come here. There’s nothing unique about American resistance to immigration, certainly Mexico and Europe are no picnic for immigrants that show up without a loaded bank account, but we are a nation of immigrants. Immigration built this country for good or ill, and if we turn our backs on immigrants, we turn our backs on one of the few ways our country really can lay claim to “American Exceptionalism”. Here’s an example of a country that’s doing it right: Iceland.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/more-than-11000-icelanders-offer-to-house-syrian-refugees-to-help-european-crisis-10480505.html

Those immigrants also represent our responsibility. Our responsibility to do something to help the people our foreign policy has victimized in the name of fighting communism, or in the pursuit of ever higher profits. They represent our responsibility because climate change is caused by burning hydrocarbons, and we’ve been burning more for longer than any country on earth. They represent our responsibility to prevent or at least minimize the potential for disease and war and genocide. We can’t go back in time and stop the Rwandan genocide, we can’t go back in time and prevent the Armenian genocide, we can’t go back in time and save the Jews, the Roma and the gays from the holocaust. But we can do our best to shelter the people who need our help and are dying without it right freaking now.

Climate change keeps me up nights. Climate change is already redrawing the map of the world. According to a quick google search, over 3 million Syrians have fled the country, and over 6.5 million are internally displaced. That’s just one country. A decade of drought, and a civil war, and 9.5 million people pick up and move. 9.5 million people who want to eat 3000 calories a day. 9.5 million people who want to buy food, feed their families, sleep indoors, and work to build their dreams. 9.5 million people that have left everything behind because they had to, and now they need every bit of help they can get. That’s only a problem for a country that can’t harness that energy for constructive ends.

Yes, it could be said that thousands of immigrants are a problem. But they also represent an opportunity. They are thousands more customers for businesses, thousands more potential employees, thousands more soldiers if it comes to that. I keep thinking that it would be a great idea to restart the CCC and employ not just immigrants, but anyone who wants to work at park maintenance, trail building, erosion prevention and similar tasks And not just in parks, anywhere a person with a shovel is useful an immigrant would be useful too. And it would just be in parks and forests. How many new miles of dykes are we going to have to build to keep New York City or Boston or Miami dry? If we as a country can start being proactive with regard to the challenges we face in the next ten years, I think we could find a place to stay and a job for every American, and every refugee and or immigrant we can find.

John Cole who happens to be an ex republican that I can respect put the following up:

I know for many of you, there has never been a time that the Republican party was not fully evil. With my current political feelings, I can look back and understand your perspective. At the same time, I still think that the Republican party has become demonstrably worse in the past decade to the point that I don’t even recognize them. People who were too fringe to be the fringe are now elected Senators, and the whole thing party is just a freak show.

It was at around that time that the scales fell from his eyes, and I say good for him. Another BJ front pager Anne Laurie follows up in the comments thusly:

Hate to break it to you, but: I’ve been keeping an eye on the Repubs for more than fifty years, Cole, and during that period they’ve always been more venal than not.

You & the rest of the Sane GOP Minority had the chance to take back “your” party during Watergate, but you chickened out & let the CREEPsters sacrifice Tricky Dick while scuttled into the darkness. (Hi, Cheney… Rumsfeld… Wolfowitz… ) “You” still could’ve carved out the rot when Reagan bumbled onto the stage, but noooo, Jimmy Carter was a wussy peacenik who wore cardigans. By the time Dubya’s handlers staged the Brooks Brothers riot and Poppy’s hand-picked SCOTUS decreed that the popular vote only mattered when the “right” people were popular, anyone with an IQ over room temperature and a soul not thoroughly corrupt was hunting for the exits.

We all did stupid shit when we were young & angry, and I’m glad you grew up and refudiated the whole GOP crime cartel. But saying that the rot started recently is like insisting that your friend didn’t die of AIDS, he died of Karposi’s sarcoma or pneumocystic pneumonia — those may have been the proximate causes, but they wouldn’t have gotten a foothold if the HIV virus hadn’t destroyed his immune system already.

The current batch of GOP office-holders and office-seekers are every one the political equivalent of an opportunistic infection.

I was happy to see this as I had showed up too late to the party to make any realtime contributions to the thread in question. And it sums up nicely my feelings on the matter.

I’ll have to admit that I find it a bit difficult to understand the willful disregard of the obvious among people like Cole, who finally came round on their personal “Road trip to Damascus.”

I was always predisposed to be a raging lefty. Getting chased around the playground, during every recess, by a group of rednecks calling me a nigger probably had something to do with my political persuasion. As a result, I can smell hate from a mile away, and the republicans have always had that reek about them.a quick and

I’ll posit my thesis; a quick and dirty short trip through about the last century. We should be approaching or have just passed the centennial of “Birth of a Nation.”

The KKK was rebranded in the ’50′s and became the John Birch Society, which rode Goldwater to crushing defeat in ’64, but by playing the long game they slowly took over the GOP. Now they are the GOP.

…

Posting this from Windows, which I abhor with the fire of a thousand suns. Near as I can tell the thing is riddled with malware out of the box, and while I have managed to get a couple of linux distros going, the last one did not want to play and the muse is speaking and you have to roll with it.

A couple of days ago a post attracted the attention of a visionary with whom I was familiar, one of the founding fathers of the Mountain bike, one I have referred in passing as the Jefferson of the concept.

This post is gonna include a great deal of inside baseball, and if you are completely uninterested in the subject feel free to wander to more comfortable climes.

Speaking of climes, here in south central Indiana, Bloomington to be exact we are having a most magnificent day. It is around 70 degrees (freedom), low humidity with wisps of clouds painted upon a robins egg blue sky. A day that one would design for every day of the year if one had the power.

OK, now begins the part where regulars might not find an Interest.

Mr. Kelly,

Since you asked for a trading of stories, I will begin with the development and design of my first bicycle frame.

I had purchased my first, a mid range Nishiki in 1983. Later a top end fillet brazed Ross (a model whose name I have forgotten.).

I started work in a bike shop, in fact I was recruited by the owner of said shop in ’85, but I had known the dude within a week of opening his shop because as a teen, when I was not riding I visited every shop in town nearly every day.

Fast forward to the fall of ’87. we had a torch, and the boss showed the man I consider my best friend and a phenomenal mechanic to boot, how to use it. We also had a supply of thin walled tubes on which to practice, from that point on it was off to the races.

My fighting/raciong weight was 140 lbs. we tore up everything resembling a trail we could find, mostly singletrack, went on the equivalent of raiding parties all over the county to discover more places to ride, It may have taken nearly a decade to discover the wonders of fat tires and hill bombing (as is usual in this state before the internet, the lag time of cool things that is.)

Point being is that I suspected that the commercial offerings vis a vis Mountain bikes were heavier than necessary. So I set out to see if that was in fact the case.

My primary ride at the time was a Holdsworth Professional, a High end British road bike. It occurred to me upon close examination that I could fit 26 x 1.5 inch mountain bike tires on both ends, and so I had the platform of discovery. A lightweight road bike built with Reynolds 531, and a torch.

I fired up said torch to solve the primary problem, brakes. I brazed cantilever bosses on the fork and seatstays, knew that drop would be an issue, but one that I could work around. I beat the shit out of that mongrel contraption on many of our discovered trails and to my satisfaction the road, cum mountain bike performed admirably. I did plant a pedal in a few tight corners, but hell you gotta roll with what’s at hand.

Satisfied with the durability of 531 road tubing (at least for a guy of my size) an order was placed, and a box of gleaming silver tubing arrived. I also ordered the two investment cast lugs and fork crown, that would work with my design, from Henry James, a lugless bottom bracket from Quality Bicycles.

For those who might still be following and know not so much we will cover wheels.

The front wheel on nearly every bike on the planet is dishless. What that means is that the rim is centered between the flanges of the hub and thus symmetrical. Like an arch in architecture it is a very strong and stable structure. The rear wheel on most geared bicycles on the other hand is asymmetrical. The spoke tension on the geared, or freewheel side is considerably higher than on the other side. Generally speaking it is not a problem, but I had an Idea.

I am designing and building my first frame and the idea of a dishless rear wheel creeped into my brain. While it would have been easier to recreate a standard frame, I just can’t help myself. I wanted to try something no one else had. At least to my knowledge of the state of the art at the time.

The problem with the offset rear triangle involves bottem bracket width, q factor, and crank clearence, but after a couple of drawings it seemed that I could manage with a rear hub spacing of 126 millimeters with an 8 speed cassette.

During the spring of ’88 my best friend and I both launched into our unique designs. As he was a bigger guy, 6’2″ 200 lbs, and also very bright in the amateur engineering department, had different needs and opted for different parameters to serve his needs.

Forty hours later two new bikes were properly kitted and ready to roll. We had spent an all nighter at the shop and managed the initial parking lot tests abt 20 minutes before we were supposed to open the shop.

To my amazement, the fillet brazed bottom bracket did not fall off, and around mid day, after getting another dose of needed cafiene from a shop across the way, I witnessed one of my co-workers on my newly minted machine executing a perfect Rockford maneuver (a full on tailslide with the front wheel at 90 degrees to the rest of the frame) with horror. I had not had a chance to do anything but a ride around the parking lot, was not still convinced of the soundness of my design and felt that I should have been the first to pull that move. At the same time I have to admit that the Horror was accompanied with a bit of pride.

At the end of the day, I pounded the shit out of that ride for nearly a decade, only had to touch up the rear wheel with a spoke wrench on two occasions, set the big ring hill record (a really short, really steep traverse of a ridge around a tree with a very short run, in short, an extremely technical exercise) with a 48×14.

The thing worked, and well. One of these days you might hear of the heartbreaking collision into the back of a parked car at speed, cratering the front end, and of the means that resurrected the sled.

If anyone has a copy of the January ’93 issue of Winning Magazine, you will find a picture of me riding that steed at full speed in my last race. You will find it in the weekend warrior section.

And if anyone has a copy…I no longer have one of my own…I would love a scan….

To the regulars, thanks for your forbearance, I’ll be back to mocking wingnuts soon enough.

To Mr Kelly, thanks for the inspiration.

OBS Edit:

If you haven’t checked it out yet, you need to look at Mr. Kelly’s website to get a true feel for what kind of legend we have here. This dude was there at the beginning of the revolution. We’re extremely happy to have you here good sir.

I was going to post this stuff on my personal blog, but with my esteemed co-blogger’s recent post I figured what the hell. Not every post can be a complaint. Nor should it. I have a confession to make. I dig steampunk. I don’t play dress up, I don’t hot glue gears on stuff, and I don’t sport luxurious muttonchop whiskers. But I like the aesthetic. I dig brass and leather and the idea of having goggles close at hand just in case one might want to braze something. I like steam engines but I understand why belching coal smoke has made them passe. I understand the shocking inequality of victorian england and don’t miss the sexism, classism, racism, and pandemic levels of venereal disease one bit.

What I’m getting to in my roundabout fashion is I’d like to build and ride a pennyfarthing bike. I’m broke as a very broke thing so it won’t happen anytime soon, but it’s been a minor obessession of mine for months. And here’s why. Dorian Schlupf of Schlumpf innovations has invented a geared unicycle hub, that can be shifted with a tap of the heel while riding a unicycle. That same geared hub would work just as well on a pennyfarthing (or “ordinary” to the purists) bicycle to add either a low gear for climbing or an overdrive for high speed biking. It might even be possible to design a hub with more than two speeds for even more pedaling options. Imagine it, a five speed geared hub, the size of a dinner plate, on a brass and steel 48″ pennyfarthing wheel, with (as long as I’m dreaming) big cushy pneumatic mountain bike tires. It would be awesome. Awesome and absurd and expensive and impractical and pointless and not one iota safer than a vintage Victorian boneshaker, due to still having the same tippy rider catapult ejecting geometry as it’s less advanced forbears.

Better yet, imagine founding Helmut J. Monotreme’s bespoke velocipedes, selling geared hub pennyfarthing bicycles to discerning enthusiasts. Like all 5 other people in the world who’d ever want one, and ideally not getting sued by their estates when they break their neck trying to ride them.

Anyway, here’s a bunch of links that inspired me on this daydream.
Schlumpf Innovations
crazyguyonabike’s explanation of bicycle gearing
bikefourm.net discussion on building a pennyfarthing
explanation of a Schlumpf geared hub
The one schlumpf-hubbed bike I could find on the internet
All the ways to change the drive ratios of a pedal-hub drive

Because I consider myself a “Rider” first and a “Writer” second, we’ll start with this guy: His name is Graeme Obree, and he came literally out of nowhere Scotland in 1993 to set a new record for the hour and win the world pursuit championship, setting two new world records in the process.

As admirable as these accomplishments are he managed it all on on his own, with an unorthodox position on a bike he designed and constructed on his own.

Let us take a look at a clip, shall we…

I became aware of this character a month or so before when he broke Francesco Moser’s eight year old hour record. You have an hour, cover as much distance as you can within that time. The difference from a time trial is that a time trial covers a specific distance, and the person with the fasted time wins. The event above covers 4 kilometers, and the amount of time it takes the top notch athletes puts it within the realm of the mile in track and field.

Having myself been, generally speaking, an out of the box thinking type of guy, a person who came somewhat out of nowhere to qualify for the national championships in only my fourth race, and ending the season with an invitation to try out for the National team in my first year as a Junior, I kind of identify with Obree, Oh and I built bicycle frames and raced them. This is where we intersect. A bit (I never got to the world championships, let alone won one.)

However, there are very few people in the world that can say they have a reason to be members of the club.

The first frame I built was revolutionary on a couple of accounts and built 4 and a half years before I had heard of the flying Scotsman. It had a fillet brazed bottom bracket (not revolutionary) and an offset rear triangle and dish-less rear wheel (revolutionary, still so, as I have yet to hear of anyone else doing anything like it.)

Graeme’s bike was even more so, given that its design also incorporated his new and more aerodynamic position, his bike was not just revolutionary, but a revelation. In any event, I had found a new hero.

Here is a shitty copy of a documentary on the breakthrough year including preperation for the hour record, Graeme at the torch, and the compitition with his compatriot Chris Boardman who was the Gold medalist in the pursuit in Barcelona the previous year and the guy who set a new record in the Hour about a week after Obree had set the new standard.

Here is part one of of eight:

For those so inclined, the rest should not be difficult to find.

In 1994 he returned to the World Championships only to find that his position and bike had been disqualified, literally minutes before qualifying, because a fucking asshole was running the UCI (world cycling body) at the time. I happened to get within punching distance of said asshole at the 1996 Tour du Pont, bit my tongue, unclenched my fist and walked on by. The same asshole would basically allow Lance Armstrong (another person with whom I have been within punching distance) get away with his lies.

In 1995 Obree made sure his bike and position were within the “rules and won his second World Championship. His new position was dubbed the “Superman” and became the standard position for all races against the clock, Until asshole decided to ban that as well.

In any event I was amazed at the time 22 years ago, and recently came across the videos above so here we are…

The second part of this piece is inspired because I like to call myself a simulacrum of a Writer, and have the following video interview of this master-craftsman and innovator on one of my puting devices: Rod Serling with Mike Wallace:

I’ll let the man speak for himself. and just note that he filled my curious childhood full of dreams good and bad, and I wouldn’t change anything.

An amazing person, a visionary, genius. He also penned the screenplay for one of my favorite movies, “Seven Days in May”

I hope you are doing well.

I miss a bunch of others as well.

Personally been processing, or more accurately, attempting to process the variety of a many splendored bullshit sandwitch.

I keep looking north, and have some shit in the pipeline.

Thank you Helmut. You have done a wonderful job.

Those with keys feel free to use them.

I will get over the current blok, I will reintice my muse.

Love all that bother to visit.

…

You know, I thought I couldn’t possibly have less respect for this fuck… I thought wrong.

Jack Cashill, American Morality:
Would you let your 12-year-old daughter sleep in a tent with an 18-year-old boy?

*

As the demonic hordes have scourged the lands swallowing the once mighty Christian masses with their mighty rainbow powers in the wake of national legalization of gay marriage, professional homophobes have belatedly started to take down the victory bunting and shift the fundraising apparatuses to whining about the evils of those dastardly trannies out there.

Perhaps it was the indomitable power of Satan’s victory yell or the marriage-crushing reality that was some long-standing couples finally getting legal rights for that or maybe just the fact that now that the magic 50% mark in public approval has passed, all the mushy middle has jumped ship on the hate train and so there’s just no money slipping into the anus of history.

Who would ever be able to tell?

Well, whatever the cause of the exodus of the righteous, it nonetheless fell hardest on the true believers. Those who steadfastedly have kept the fires of outrage lit in their hopes to signal to all the bigots of the world that they at least are willing to stand proudly as anachronistic as ever, still yelling about that golram gay marriage that is ruining the soil, donchaknow, forever.

And while it would be simplicity itself as a heartless God-despising demonic entity to simply laugh at their “suffering” and continue on my merry rampage, sometimes you just have to take the time to witness the sheer level of what the fuck is possible when only the dumbest bigots are left to mind the hate shop.

Shorter (or the last port before Jungle):

• Listen, you don’t understand. The reason we can’t let gay men serve as Scout Leaders isn’t because gay men are pedophiles. It’s because every man is a pedophile. Man, if I could have gotten away with molesting some pre-teens at a summer camp, you bet your damn ass I would have done it! Ahh, memories.

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If you read the news, and I can’t really recommend it given the dullards who are writing it, the quota of advertiser-vetted bilge they are asked to write, and the richer dullards who edit them, you may have noticed that people are getting shot and otherwise killed at the hands of the police. This has lots of people upset. Some people are upset that their family members and neighbors are being killed faster than innocent bystanders are when Blackwater goons get rowdy, others apparently are upset that people object to what until now was apparently a fine and ancient American tradition with as honored and venerable a history as stealing Native American land. Some people want to blame the victims of these police killings as if anyone who wasn’t bulletproof with an uncrushable trachea and an unbreakable spine is basically begging everyone they meet to kill them as soon and as brutally as possible. And that upsets me. I get upset that public employees are spending their time on the public payroll assassinating members of the public. It seems counterproductive. As a taxpayer, I object to paying the salary of someone who might return the favor by giving me (or, to be more accurate, an African American) a few new interesting holes through which to breathe, or to drown in blood as the case may be. Perhaps I am limited in my horizons, perhaps I lack perspective, perhaps I am too distracted by blood on the pavement, and grieving family members and the nauseating spectacle of yet another remorseless stormtrooper defending their butchery as just another tough task they dutifully perform with no expectation of recognition than a modest paycheck and a pension, except they totally do want to be seen as a thin blue line of heroes valiantly defending a soft and innocent (or decadent and naive) public from the savagery of an African American’s failure to affix a front license plate to their bumper. And the police have no shortage of defenders who seem to think the penalty for not displaying instant obsequious obedience to the police ought to be summary execution.

And I don’t get that. I get that we think a civilization needs rules to keep from descending into anarchy. I get that a group of people is necessary to enforce those rules. What I don’t get is why so many people think breaking a small rule (like a missing front license plate) justifies breaking one of the most fundamental rules in all of human civilization (don’t kill people). Why do so many people think there’s an “unless…” after “thou shalt not kill”?

I was going to highlight Jonah Goldberg’s nauseating call for calm in the face of summary police executions… but he didn’t write one. Good for him. He also doesn’t seem to think the murder of another black man by police in Cincinnati is worth writing about, maybe because he has nothing to say about what appears to be an open and shut case of murder caught on tape. But that is perhaps mean spirited of me, and an unfair criticism, given that I have spent time explaining that it is possible to care about multiple issues, and that silence on one issue doesn’t necessarily mean indifference. Lord knows there are plenty of issues Jonah cares enough about to write his special type of glurge, opposing the minimum wage increase, tantrums that people are supporting Trump for having the nerve to use a foghorn while other republicans were still farting about with racist dog whistles, criticism of Obama for not being bipartisan enough, as if there was anyone with an (R) after their names in congress who didn’t campaign on a platform of opposing everything Obama stands for. It’s kind of refreshing to hear Jonah’s silence on an issue he’d only get wrong. So here’s a rare congratulations and a job well done (so far) for mister Goldberg of the National Review. If only you could bring your new found reticence to bear on every other issue you know nothing about.

One of my personal favorites Victor Davis Hanson also has insightful commentary on this incident. Which is to say, he hasn’t written a damn thing about it. Good for him, and again, well done.

You know who else hasn’t written about it? George Will. John Hinderaker, normally the loudest of loudmouths hasn’t touched it with a ten foot pole. I was going to go looking for more, but I really don’t want to. If conservatives don’t have anything to say about this incident, maybe just maybe, it indicates they aren’t the complete moral vacuums they so often appear to be. I’m going to assume they’ve heard of the incident (I was going to write “are not ignorant of the incident” but stopped myself, because seriously is there any subject they aren’t ignorant of?) It’s nice to think they have a line. It’s nice to think there are some actions by police that are so egregiously evil, that they will not find defenders among the talking heads of the right.

And so on that happy thought I will conclude. Start your weekend early, if you need me to, I will write you a note to get out of work.