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Comic Strip of the Day

CSotD: Dinna toss your heads

Published: June 15, 2014 1 minute 5 comments

O Jenny, dinna toss your head, 
An' set your beauties a' abread! 
You little ken what cursed speed 
The blastie's makin! 
Thae winks an' finger-ends, I dread, 
Are notice takin'!

O wad some Power the giftie gie us 
To see oursels as ithers see us! 
It wad frae monie a blunder free us, 
An' foolish notion: 
What airs in dress an' gait wad lea'e us, 
An' ev'n devotion!

 

I Can Quit Any Time I Want To

6-rodriguez_605
(Garrincha)

Possibly the most vomitous discussions of all contemptible rhetoric coming from the blind, "We're #1"-shouting American supremacists are the recent arguments over just how many school shootings there have actually been since Newtown, and just what constitutes a "school shooting."

I would like these strainers of gnats to set a number of murdered children that they think is an acceptable level, that they feel is okay, and then let's debate that.

Oh, but they should volunteer at least one of their own children to be included in the body count.

And then explain why only we have to live like this, why the people of no other nation not embroiled in an active war have to live with this level of random slaughter and ceaseless violence.

Got into a pointless Facebook debate (is that redundant?) with a fellow who cited a Pew Research Report that showed firearms-related homicides were way down over the past 20 years, which it does, but it actually shows that the reduction happened as part of a general decline in violent crime in the 1990s, most likely as a statistical bulge of males aged past the young-and-stupid demographic.

The debate — such as it was — ended when I noted that the rate of deaths by gunfire hasn't appreciably changed in the past 14 years and he accused me of cherry-picking the data.

I'm used to people hearing what they want to hear and seeing what they want to see and only believing what they want to believe, but the fact that the rate of malaria is down in Africa doesn't mean we stop vaccination programs and quit looking for a cure, does it?

And if it dropped off over a decade only to then plateau for 14 years, wouldn't intelligent people become concerned and ask why?

Well, that's easy: Intelligent people would.

But here's the more troubling thing: Robbie Burns' vain lady, tossing her head in pride because she thinks everyone is staring at her beauty, only has that one louse crawling around on her bonnet attracting their gaze.

Imagine if her bonnet were swarming with them?

 

Another louse heard from:

Wpbcl140615
(Barney and Clyde)

The joke here is that no pharmaceutical executive would actually be agonizing over this, except perhaps for fear of backlash from EU trading partners.

In fact, the whole notion of "roasting in Hell" is curiously absent from any discussions led by the same extremists who declare this a Christian nation and are anxious to place Scripture in our public buildings and to bring Christian prayer into our public schools. 

Well, except that everyone who isn't Christian will roast in Hell, and a lot of Christians who don't parrot the politically correct line will also roast in Hell and isn't it awful that they've thrown the Pledge of Allegiance out of our schools? (No, don't try to tell them it's legally mandated in all but four states. Like Bluto, they're on a roll.)

Again, can they not look around and realize other civilized nations do not execute their citizens? It's one thing not to speak other languages, but can they not at least see a list of nations that allow executions and recognize that it's not a list we should want to be on?

Of course, there is a larger issue here, and that is the move away from justice to vengeance.

We created a legal system thousands of years ago in order to control vendettas, but the cry for "victims rights" is a disguised call for vengeance, and "victim statements" simply help to accentuate and preserve the inequities of the system, if sentences rise or fall on whether the person you killed was homeless and forgotten or poor and under-represented or came from an articulate middleclass family.

Again, the Christian seekers of vengeance cite Old Testament law on that topic but ignore New Testament updates, nor do they hold to the other regulations in those Biblical passages in which they find Scriptural justification for the death penalty. 

Nor would they want anyone to point out that those parts of the Bible sound a lot like "sharia law" and not coincidentally.

 

And now this

Payn140613
(Henry Payne)

Actually, Henry Payne doesn't illustrate the point so much as the pointlessness.

Immigration reform is hardly the only element of Reagan's politics that would be — and are — soundly rejected by the extremists today, even as they continue to worship St. Ronald the Divine.

Posting the cartoons that do illustrate my point on this latest topic, however, would violate the Prime Directive, because there are some horrible, toxic cartoons out there attacking Obama for his handling of the increasing waves of children being brought to the border and dumped off by coyotes.

His approach? For the many kids whose parents are already here, rather than holding the children in prisons, they are being reunited with their families pending the processing of that family's status, at which time the family is likely to be deported.

Horrors! Intact families!

(Parenthically, while the head of the Border Patrol was recently replaced for failure to adequately address abusive behavior, the message may not have filtered all the way down.)

Even Fox hosted a commentary on the injustice of it all, though perhaps only to attract the yahoo comments that were sure to follow.

Granted, there is some consistency in this, coming from a right wing that is pro-life-until-birth, but then does not want poor children fed, educated or given health care, and is just itching for them to get old enough to send overseas to be killed or maimed in another pointless war.

But we want that border sealed, dammit, totally sealed. Just so long as our taxes don't go up and it doesn't increase the deficit.

Which would be a lovely time to note that, all in all, kids, you're just another brick in the wall, but I'm more concerned with how many lice can dance on a lady's bonnet before she notices it.

Apparently, the rule is that the more lice you pile on, the less each one stands out.

So no Pink Floyd, but instead, here's your moment of zen:

(Oh, wait. Damned autoplay. Okay, click here instead.
It's short, heartbreaking and illustrates the line
between those who yap about problems
and those who actually face them.)

 

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Comments 5

  1. Some days, I hate technology. People try to get fancy and just F* it all up: the Houston Chronicle won’t actually show the news on my iPhone, just its “features.” And the speakers aren’t connected to my computer, so I can’t hear the posted link.
    Mr. Peterson, we are so close and so far from each other’s viewpoints. I can agree that disemboweling person is a cruel punishment; I cannot agree that killing him is also a cruel punishment. Some day, when I have some free time, I’m going to have to find out how those civilized countries protect themselves. Or even if they do. (We aren’t the only country with gang-rapes, or murders, or drug abuse. OK; I’d prefer treatment to incarceration for that last.) I do agree that victim’s statements, except of the facts of the crime, should not be admitted. Criminal sentences are not about vengeance. (Does “justice” have any meaning other than “vengeance”? (Don’t look it up; think about how the word is used.))
    I think you are reading “families” too narrowly: from the links you’ve posted, the children’s parents are still in The Ould Country. Note that I am NOT saying that that the children should not be sent on to live with aunts, uncles, cousins or older siblings already here. (And I will refrain from quoting old Ebenezer. 😉
    The problem with front-line Customs and Border Patrol officers speaking to the press is that they won’t have the full story. They may not even be very sympathetic to the children’s plight. (I have to admit to a certain discomfort calling a seventeen year old a “child,” but she is, legally, an infant, so “children” works as well as any other term.) Yes, it would be really great if the people on the front-line could be informed of the policies, procedures and practices on the back end, but they don’t have the time to keep up. Even the White House Press Secretary can’t keep up, all the time. (If she could, the White House press corps would have a lot less fun catching him off base, now wouldn’t they? Didn’t you used to have such fun, now and again?)

  2. Seems like if you actually wanted fewer illegals, you would want to prevent them from being hired.

  3. And who is going to bell the cat?
    Hiring illegal aliens is Good Business: you don’t have to pay them minimum wage, you don’t have to pay Social Security, and you don’t have to pay unemployment. There aren’t enough cops to track down who is doing the hiring. Unless someone is running for office, of course. But even then, it’s the reporters who look into the tax records to uncover the dirt. Or “opposition investigators.” Even if you do get caught, there will be enough layers between you and the illegals that you can claim not to know that they were illegal.

  4. Indeed, the only time gov’t has interfered with sweat shops in any meaningful fashion was during the Reform Era, and we need to remember that TR was only made president because the fat cats wanted him out of the governor’s mansion in Albany, where he was, yes, interfering with their ability to conduct business without a conscience. And not even the wildest of conspiracy buffs has ever suggested that big business was behind the McKinley assassination.
    And, by the way, I resent having to present my Social Security card to a prospective employer, because I object to carrying a “national ID,” which is what the John Birchers assured us we’d have to do if we didn’t go fight them Commie Russians. Which we didn’t and so I guess they were right.
    As for the death penalty, that’s an opinion and we’re all entitled to our opinion. It doesn’t deter crime, it puts us in a category with some really non-nice fellow citizen-killing nations and Jesus Christ specifically came out against it, but those are only reasons for my opinion, they aren’t reasons we shouldn’t kill people.
    Though I should note that the reason it doesn’t deter crime is that we apply it to crimes committed by people who are slightly insane, certainly to the point where they act largely out of passion rather than careful planning.
    By contrast, things like hiring illegal aliens and blocking fire exits are carefully planned by people who are simply trying to make a boatload of money before they get caught. Lop off a few of THEIR heads and the rest might reconsider their plan of cashing out and retiring before the INS, OSHA or other inspectors show up at the door.

  5. See? We can agree on appropriate uses of the death penalty. 🙂

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