Retirement

with nutella deciding to move on and M. having been called up to triple A by Thers, this place is gonna be quiet. Megan sucks, and smarter, more capable people like Susan, TBogg, and half of Balloon Juice are on it. If I played any role in her getting recognized as a hack by the liberal blogosphere, awesome, but it was known before I started, and it's time to move on. I'm not going to delete anything here, but there probably won't be too many new posts to come, if any.
I'd been thinking of starting a more serious blog, but then I'd have to be more serious, and I don't want to be. However I have made a new place to rant and be random, not that I've made much use of it yet. It's here, maybe it'll turn into something, maybe not. In any case, thanks for reading. That anyone did was a surprise in the beginning, and our commenters were the best part of all this along the way. Come on by the new place if you for some reason like where I'm coming from, I'd be glad for the encouragement.

Random Twitter Fact

if you take out the vowels in Reince Priebus, you get RNC PR BS. Uncanny, innit.

N yeah, I noticed too. Oh well.

Let's Get Back To Being Human

this is always a good start at that.

Since the world began, we have gone about our work quietly, resisting the urge to generalize, valuing the individual over the group, the actual over the conceptual, the inherent sweetness of the present moment over the theoretically peaceful future to be obtained via murder. Many of us have trouble sleeping and lie awake at night, worrying about something catastrophic befalling someone we love. We rise in the morning with no plans to convert anyone via beating, humiliation, or invasion. To tell the truth, we are tired. We work. We would just like some peace and quiet. When wrong, we think about it awhile, then apologize. We stand under awnings during urban thunderstorms, moved to thoughtfulness by the troubled, umbrella-tinged faces rushing by. In moments of crisis, we pat one another awkwardly on the back, mumbling shy truisms. Rushing to an appointment, remembering a friend who has passed away, our eyes well with tears and we think: Well, my God, he could be a pain, but still I'm lucky to have known him.

This is PRKA. To those who would oppose us, I would simply say: We are many. We are worldwide. We, in fact, outnumber you. Though you are louder, though you create a momentary ripple on the water of life, we will endure, and prevail.

Join us.

Just For The Record

since Nutella seems pissed I thought I'd dot some i's and cross some t's.
Insofar as extreme right wing politics and the accompanying rhetoric were, at most, a secondary factor in Loughner's motives, well behind being fucking crazy, sure, I overreacted a little. The idea that I had partisan gain in mind behind pointing to Palin's use of violent rhetoric against the future victim of violence is itself an overreaction, but to whatever degree I was blaming Palin in an attempt to make sense of a difficult event to process I was wrong. This probably wasn't eliminationist violence, at least not in any coherent sense.
That doesn't mean the ability of Palin, along with Beck and Limbaugh and many other lesser lights, to shape the tone and topics of national discourse isn't toxic and worth combating or that gun violence such as we saw can't be made less likely with some attempt to rationally approach how to decide who to entrust with the ability to murder others simply by squeezing a finger. And it doesn't mean the sheer coincidence of the nature of the poster naming Giffords and the events that occurred shouldn't give Sarah Palin reason to pause and consider the consequences of how she's playing the game. But maybe it does mean I don't have to jump in on it right away.

*Update*

Oh, wait. Blood libel, and her critics "purport" to condemn this violence. Geh. I take it back. She wants people who disagree with her to die. Regardless of whether Loughner was directly influenced by her, this blood is on her hands.

Yup

For the most part.

How Zombie Lies Are Born

Loughner was an Obama supporter, or not.
My boy Hawkins repeated this lie this afternoon on Twitter, after Hoft had pulled the post and admitted his error. Didn't respond to my tweet to him about it either, the pansy.

Concern Troll Is Confused

Tragedy in Arizona:

I'm not sure why it is so necessary that we identify a culprit in all of this. What good does it do us to know that he is, say, a paranoid schizophrenic? It may matter in his sentencing, of course. But it's far from clear that this knowledge would let us do what we want, which is to prevent this sort of thing from happening again. We are not going to prophylactically [!] lock people up, and there is no "seems a little, well, off" list to which we can add people we don't want to have guns. Even extended magazine bans wouldn't have done much good, as he was carrying lots of spares. As I understand it, he was essentially stopped because one of his spare magazines malfunctioned, something which may be more likely to happen on larger capacity magazines. Anyone who practices a little can swap magazines faster than others can notice and decide to tackle them.

Nothing to see here, nothing to be done, no way to have prevented it. Move along folks. Officer McArdle needs you to clear the area.
In a way, it's like it didn't actually happen, he was too crazy to have been stopped, but not crazy enough to violate his sacred second amendment right to possess the capacity to murder 6 people and seriously injure another 12. In no way does this suggest Arizona's gun laws are too lax, it's not even worth considering. Why are we even talking about it?

Blame is a way of simulating control: if we can just identify who was at fault, we can stop it. The problem is, when we can't identify any very plausible target, we too readily go after implausible ones: Freemasons poisoning the wells, or Federal Reserve bankers plotting to monetize the national debt. At worst, this tendency is dangerous, corrosive; at best, it leads us to make unproductive policy choices.

Yes, we might end up falling for crazy conspiracy theories like allowing the mentally ill to possess the means to murder others is a bad thing that should be addressed, or that using violent rhetoric against political adversaries can create a climate in which crazy people act out violently against their political adversaries.

A terrible thing happened. We live in a universe in which terrible things happen. That's no one's fault--or maybe, everyone's fault. Either way, I don't see much in the way of solutions coming out of this--only terrible, terrible sadness.

There's no human agency involved here, no context, nothing to be learned, no reason to examine. Might as well have been a meteor that fell into the crowd, for all we can learn or do about it, and I don't see any of you lefties blaming NASA, despite the fact that her husband and brother in law are both astronauts.

Many of the people who rushed to blame this on their political opponents made themselves look like first class jerks, an impression that was not improved when we got more information, and they doubled down rather than simply admit that they had perhaps jumped to conclusions.

Noting the context and asking whether it is proper for national figures to use violent rhetoric and imagery is the real mistake here, especially because it lowers Megan's opinion of you. Palin didn't pull the trigger, and Loughner probably wasn't directly influenced by her. That makes everything ok, the end, lalalalalalaMegancan'theaaaaaaryooooouuuuuu, you jerk.

Why Do I Love This Shit So?

Oh, right, because when they whine it means sanity is winning.

Unforgiven

Unforgivable.

The Debate Rages On

Talk about out foxing the foxes. This one has more gold in it than the Ormus article...

... as humans and mother Earth gradually increase our base vibratory frequency and ascend into the fourth dimension (a process that began in 1987 and will likely reach completion somewhere between 2018 and 2025)