So much for "free speech"

Free speech, as guaranteed by the 1st Amendment, is apparently OK until you criticize or scare someone with power they probably shouldn't have.

Marine Veteran Brandon Raub Sentenced To Up To 30 Days In Psych Ward Over Facebook Posts

The former Marine who was detained in connection with Facebook posts critical of the government is being held in a psychiatric ward, Peter Bacqué of the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports.
...

Both the FBI and Secret Service said Raub was not arrested or charged, but the Rutherford Institute statement points out that "if the police have put handcuffs on you and you’re being held against your will, that qualifies as an arrest."

Word. Been there, done that. They sent this kid to the "flight deck" because they had no excuse to put him in jail.

John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute, said the following: “For government officials to not only arrest Brandon Raub for doing nothing more than exercising his First Amendment rights but to actually force him to undergo psychological evaluations and detain him against his will goes against every constitutional principle this country was founded upon. This should be a wake-up call to Americans that the police state is here.”

We've seen more and more "police state" actions trending through two administrations now thanks to the blatantly unconstitutional Patriot Act and overzealous petty officialdom and/or the Ruling Elite abusing its perceived power when it pisses its pants over...almost anything it doesn't like. That's fucked up and needs to be stopped. Period.

Also see:

Marine Veteran Admitted To Psych Ward Over Facebook Posts Doesn't Know Why He Was Singled Out

Bad luck and the Patriot Act. The local sheriffs interviewed this guy and then left him alone. Then the feds stepped in and stepped right on his free speech rights because he was...scary to someone.

How about the FBI and Secret Service go arrest Ted Nugent or Rush Limbaugh or Pat Robertson or any number of wingnut rabble rousers, politicians, wannabe militias, neo-Nazis, etc., etc.? They say shit all the time that oughta scare 'em worse than whatever this Jarhead said. Oh, I remember now, any semblance of influence they may have, whatever it may be, excuses them. Much easier to walk all over the little guy who has none.

I may not like whatever Mr. Raub said but our system is supposed to let you say any damfool thing you want, no matter how false or crazy or obnoxious, short of actually threatening harm to someone. There are lots of deranged people saying all sorts of deranged things and they don't get arrested for it. I'd much rather someone just slap the shit out of 'em, and that only because it's impossible to slap any sense into 'em.

In Russia, you can get two years in prison for criticizing Putin. That's not supposed to happen here.

We will hear more about this, I am sure.

Rape Fatigue and You: When There’s Just No Anger Left

Great rant at Jezebel!

Since around 2pm on Monday, I've felt like a contestant on a sadistic Japanese game show, donning an American flag bikini and a blindfold, covered in glue and standing in a phone booth, trying to catch dollar bills with my flailing arms as an industrial strength blower propels cash around me at high speeds. But instead of cash, I'm trying to process and react to a veritable blizzard of ignorant, rape-related bullshit flowing unabated from the mouths of conservative lawmakers in America. Reading story after story of how, say, a cranky old coot of a doctor peddling medically dangerous misinformation has somehow informed half of the American public's views on women's health care, or how, say, another dude — always a fucking dude — is saying that he doesn't think that pregnancy from statutory rape or incest is really A Thing since he personally doesn't know any pregnant kids or how, say, the GOP is condemning this sort of Wingnut Real Talk while quietly inserting a mandatory ultrasound hat tip/constitutional amendment that would force all rape victims to carry their assailant's child to term into their official party platform has worn me down.

I am at full rape capacity. I am officially in the throes of rape fatigue.
...

Akin, King, and the rest of the GOP that supported a WIRE HANGERS ALWAYS! constitutional amendment aren't simply destructive assholes — they're actively harmful, ill-intentioned. Evil. And before you condemn me for being overdramatic and premenstrual for choosing the word "evil" to describe guys who wear suits and America flag pins, consider what that word means — profoundly immoral and malevolent. People who truly believe that rape cannot lead to pregnancy because of *~uTeRuS mAgIc~* or that women who become pregnant under any circumstances must stay pregnant are using information that they know to be wrong in order to promote laws that cause bodily harm, physical punishment, and distress to women. Doesn't get much eviler than that without getting weapons and uniforms involved.
...

Eventually a person gets to the point where they can longer withstand the constant blitzkrieg of bullshit. So, Steve King, Todd Akin, and shouty Twitter conservatives: you win. Rape outrage limit reached. I have given this all of my fucks, and the fucks I have given are still not enough fucks. So many more fucks need to be given, and I have exhausted my fuck supply. The fucks are on backorder. Employees are working overtime to restock my fucks, but in the meantime, please accept this 10% off coupon while we wait for the fucks to arrive via FedEx. I'll be over here, drinking wine from a Pac Man mug and watching cartoons.

Don't worry, lady, take a break. I've got enough fucks for all of us. I've got refill fucks in pint, quart, gallon, 5 gallon, and 55 gallon cans, and spray cans and travel sizes. And a rifle and bayonet. They WILL NOT win.

What the G.O.P. Platform Represents

NYT op-ed

Over the years, the major parties’ election-year platforms have been regarded as Kabuki theater scripts for convention week. The presidential candidates blithely ignored them or openly dismissed the most extreme planks with a knowing wink as merely a gesture to pacify the noisiest activists in the party.

That cannot be said of the draft of the Republican platform circulating ahead of the convention in Tampa, Fla. The Republican Party has moved so far to the right that the extreme is now the mainstream. The mean-spirited and intolerant platform represents the face of Republican politics in 2012. And unless he makes changes, it is the current face of the shape-shifting Mitt Romney.
...

Over all, it is farther out on the party’s fringe than Mr. Romney ventured in the primaries, when he repudiated a career’s worth of centrist views on issues like abortion and gay marriage. But the planks hew closely to the views of his running mate, Paul Ryan, and the powerful right-wing. Mr. Romney has a chance to move back in the direction of the center by amending this extremist platform. It will be interesting to see if he seizes it.

Willard ain't got the balls.

Hey, Repugs - whatcha gonna do when God comes for you?

Dana Milbank on God's retribution for their sins by Hurricane Isaac (hopefully) blasting the Repug convention to smithereens next week.

Has God forsaken the Republican Party?

Well, sit in judgment of what’s happened in the past few days:

Heh...more popcorn!

Coincidence? Or part of some Intelligent Design?

By their own logic, Republicans and their conservative allies should be concerned that Isaac is a form of divine retribution. Last year, Rep. Michele Bachmann, then a Republican presidential candidate, said that the East Coast earthquake and Hurricane Irene — another “I” storm, but not an Old Testament one — were attempts by God “to get the attention of the politicians.” In remarks later termed a “joke,” she said: “It’s time for an act of God and we’re getting it.”

About fuckin' time! Let's see 'em spin this one and blame it on Libruls. I know they'll twist up some "logic" to that end like they do. When it comes to making up bullshit and sticking to their story no matter the facts, they have no equal.

Naturally we hope no one gets hurt and I for one will pray for the safety of the strippers, each and every one of whom does more for mankind than all the convention goers put together.

Packing list for dirty pagan nirvana

If it's Wednesday it must be Morford with a helpful guide to the upcoming Burning Man (Wiki). We know about this around here. The survivors straggle back home right through my town and a happy, dishevelled, burnt-out lot they are too, with faraway looks in their eyes like they've seen something nobody else has seen! That's because it was only in their heads but maybe not.

Water? Do not even talk to me about water. You will need so much water out there that your bladder will be having a non-stop make-out session with your kidneys. You want to consume so much water you rinse all toxins away and “piss clear.” This is the mantra of Burning Man. This is the requirement. (It was also the name of a scrappy, playa-only newspaper back in the day, printed every morning right there in camp and delivered around the entire site by beglittered women in leather and tasseled nipples. But never mind that now).

Out on the playa, you will need to hydrate more than you ever have in your life, because your body is working overtime to keep you alive as the leering sun whisks away moisture like the GOP whisks away hope. Also, all those hallucinogens and MDMA can make you a little thirsty. Goodness, did I say that out loud? Go ahead, pretend to be all shocked.

Speaking of hallucinating, no one will believe what you’ve seen out there. No one back home – particularly your nervous relatives, particularly those friends who won’t even see R-rated movies much less venture anywhere near nipple-pierced, flame-throwing festivals, particularly those Americans who sleep with Bibles or guns (or both) under their pillow for fear of attack by zombie Mexican drug rapist liberal dubstep DJs – no one will understand what the hell you mean when you say you’ve seen a 10-ton neon cruise ship carrying 200 revelers float across the desert floor at 3:00AM, lit up by 4,000 LEDs and shooting fire twenty stories high and bouncing lasers off the moon.
...

Here’s a tip: Plan your Burning Man vices like you would a very classy, very debauched wedding. At Charlie Sheen’s house. On Mars.

And you thought "Green Goddess" was just a salad dressing, eh?

Go read. Enjoy. Scroll down for the "comments" too.

How it'll work ...

If you listen to Todd Akins' "science".

Thanks to our pal Montag for the toon.

Romney-Ryan Republicans pray to Jesus but bow to Ayn Rand

Repug hypocrisy at its most visible. I hope there's a good signal at the strip clubs...

Thanks to the LATimes.

Man U follows Facebook...

...down the shitter after Soros buys in.

After an underwhelming initial public offering on August 10, shares in the club finished Monday at $13.06, down 6.7 percent from the IPO price of $14.

Heh.

Romney, Ryan and Rape: A Todd Akin Special Delivery

William Rivers Pitt

Ah, yes, a Tea Party mask, in the person of one Paul Ryan from Wisconsin. An amiable sociopath if ever there was one, Mr. Ryan brings to the campaign fourteen years of far-right baggage, which is just what a Republican candidate desperate to secure his leery base needs right now. "Nail down the 'Baggers and figure out the rest later" appears to be the newest GOP campaign battle plan...
...
Who the what the where the when the why the how the what the hell?

Yeah, that happened. In the odd, demented, windy spaces that pass for the mind of Mr. Akin, if you are raped and become pregnant, you weren't really raped, because "the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down." That sound you hear is the heads of a million OBGYN's exploding simultaneously. Before the sun came up on Monday, Akin's campaign had rushed out a he-misspoke-we-hate-rape retraction, but the horse was already out of the barn. Akin's words were not a mistake, but a closely-held belief within the Anti-Choice-at-all-costs crowd, and now the Romney/Ryan campaign has a whole new problem to contend with.

The crux of the biscuit: it's not what Akin said, it's what him and Ryan and the 'bagger base believe. Akin committed a gaffe by letting the cat out of the bag. The Repugs are doing this little bit by little bit on all sorts of issues, most notably voter suppression.

Mitt Romney chose Paul Ryan as his running mate to shore up his standing with the GOP base. Fine and good, but now that he has donned the Tea Party mask, he owns everything Ryan brings with him, including Ryan's appalling partnership with Todd Akin, and their despicable attempt to legislate a new definition of rape as something other than rape.

Keep talking, Repugs, and stay in the race, Akin. Please. As far as I'm concerned it's the gift that keeps on giving to the nation's future well-being. Unless there are more of them and less of us who vote. If the reverse is true, or even if it's not but the Repugs have re-honed their vote suppression/stealing tactics, we're screwed and let the chips fall where they will. This ain't yer grandfather's America which never was anyway but which they want a return to.

Oh, and rape is rape. It's a sexual and/or power trip over women against their will through violence or other means by sexually repressed criminals. Repug "men" are the only ones who don't believe or refuse to accept that. Rapists and their Repug enablers should be nutted so they won't do that again. Period.

A (Not So) Serious, (Not So) Honest Running Mate

Paul Krugman on Ryan:

What I do know is that anyone who believes in Mr. Ryan's carefully cultivated image as a brave, honest policy wonk has been snookered. Mr. Ryan is, in fact, a big fraud who doesn't care at all about fiscal responsibility, and whose policy proposals are sloppy as well as dishonest. Of course, this means that he'll fit into the Romney campaign just fine.

As I said, I have no idea how this will play politically. But it does look like a move from weakness, rather than from strength; Romney obviously felt he needed a V.P. who will get people to stop talking about him.

The Real Target

Let me clarify what I believe is really going on in the choice of Paul Ryan as a vice presidential nominee. It is not about satisfying the conservative base, which was motivated anyway by Obama-hatred; it is not about refocusing on the issues, because Mr. Ryan and Mr. Romney are both determined to avoid providing any of the crucial specifics about their plans. It is about exploiting the gullibility and vanity of the news media, in much the same way that President George W. Bush did in 2000.
...

So that's the constituency Mr. Romney is targeting: not a large segment of the electorate, but a few hundred at most — editors, reporters, programmers and pundits. His hope is that Mr. Ryan's unjustified reputation for honest wonkery will transfer to the ticket as a whole.

So, a memo to the news media: you have now become players in this campaign, not just reporters. Mitt Romney isn't seeking a debate on the issues; on the contrary, he's betting that your gullibility and vanity will let him avoid a debate on the issues, including the issue of his own fitness for the presidency.

I guess we'll see if it works.

I guess we're going to see once and for all if stupidity reigns in this country or not. A chilling prospect if "the media" doesn't wise up toot de sweet.

Piss me off ...

I'm really sick of everybody being offended by everything.

A high school principal in Oklahoma refused this week to turn over a straight-A student’s diploma because she used the word “hell” in her graduation speech.

...

Fuck him with the school's mascot, whatever that may be.

Seems legit ...

I know I was Carson Kressley in a previous life. Packing for Amsterdam:

And yes, those are silk camo skivvies ...

FWFS ...

I've been remiss in this and it kills me but better late than never. About a week ago, I learned from our good friend CAFKIA that a good friend of this blog, author, blogger (Pen and Sword), officer and gentleman, Commander Jeff Huber (USN), passed away several months back. Our deepest condolences to his close friends, family, and 'brothers on the bridge'. Fair winds and following seas, sir. We salute you.

Quote of the Day

Blanche Beecham @ The Daily Bleach:

The uterus is a magical female organ. Unlike the penis, you can’t step on it during an interview talking about legitimate rape.

On Akin's Bugfuck Crazy "Legitimate Rape" Comment

The Rude Pundit, links at site.

So completely bugnuts cocktard Todd Akin, who really has been elected repeatedly to the House of Representatives by idiots in Missouri and really is the Republican candidate for Senate against incumbent Claire McCaskill, really winning a primary in Missouri, the "Show-You-How-Fucking-Dumb-We-Are" state, really said in an interview yesterday regarding pregnancy from rape, "First of all, from what I understand from doctors it is really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down." He also said that, even if the pussy's laser beam of justice misses and the woman gets pregnant, she should not be allowed to get an abortion.

When everyone picked their jaws off the floor, Akin's profoundly, demonstrably, scientifically wrong statement was met with a DefCon Katrina level of outrage. At what point is low too low? At a time that demanded true leadership, Mitt Romney's campaign's response was so milquetoast that Fire Island twinks would tell him to butch up. And, like a good little conservative spoogebucket, Akin didn't apologize for his beliefs. He merely said he "misspoke."

So it seems to leave us with a question: What the fuck did Akin mean to say?

1. "I meant to say that rape sperm is too angry to inseminate an egg."

2. "I meant to say that vaginas are like snapping turtles that will bite off a rapist's penis."
...

5. "By 'legitimate rape," I meant a rape that happens because of Obamacare, which is raping the future for our children...That probably didn't help, did it?"
...

Update: Apparently, Mitt Romney discovered that the wind was blowing in a safe enough direction, and his condemnation of Akin has become stronger.

Akin is probably one of those ignorant male dominionists who believe women "invite" rape by their dress, or maybe a smile, so that makes it OK.

Note to Missourians: Vote for this asshole and you deserve whatever you get. On the plus side, you'll be able to light the whole state from Harry Truman spinning in his grave.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

FACEBOOK SHARES TUMBLE
Mark Zuckerberg moves back in with parents.

Heh.

Obama to Romney: Release Just Five Years of Tax Returns
Or at least show us your sacred underpants.

Holy shit stains and all...

Porn Star Jenna Jameson Pleads Guilty to DUI
Apparently endorsed Romney while intoxicated.

The same condition in which she became a star, no doubt.

REMINDER
Ask your grandkids how their private social security accounts are doing.

We need to build more bridges so they'll have a place to live.

City Sunday ...

We took a walk down the High Line on NYC's West Side.

Me'n Fixer's next excellent adventure!

On our way to Charlotte to deliver an important guest to the Democratic convention. Fixer always gets to hold the donkey, drat the luck. Pic stolen from somewhere on Facebook.

Gotta Give Me Some...Ragtime!

Tuba Skinny (Facebook) Performing Gotta Give Me Some @ French Quarter Fest 2012 :)

The washboard player's off the hook! He's the only one I've ever seen who can honk to pass!

Thanks to EagleNationRules.

Rising Star

The Tuttles (Facebook) are a family band out of the Bay Area. I'm kinda taken with AJ Lee (no, not the wrestler!). For a young girl she's got a set o' pipes! How young? Listen to the intro. Heh. I think if she keeps at it she'll be a star. She's well on her way.

The bass player is the most important member of this group. He's the one with the driver's license...:-)

The Tuttles with AJ Lee* at the Gettysburg Bluegrass Festival on Saturday, May 19, 2012 held in Granite Hill Camping Resort near Gettysburg, PA.

Molly Tuttle - Vocal, Banjo, Guitar
AJ Lee - Lead Vocal, Mandolin
Michael Tuttle - Mandolin
Sullivan Tuttle - Guitar
Jack Tuttle - Vocal, Upright Bass, Fiddle

*Be sure to click on the "The Tuttles with AJ Lee -- Rising Stars" link.

Thanks to randomfarm (AJ Lee's channel, more good stuff).