Political Violence Up-Date

Lest we forget:

In the comments on the roundup of recent political murders by right-wingers, reader Andrew Bockover points out that I missed a big one. In July of 2008, unemployed truck driver Jim Adkisson opened fire with a shotgun during a performance of "Annie" at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church, killing two people and wounding several others. 

Adkisson attacked the church because he identified it as liberal, and he had specifically planned to go out and assassinate liberals. "This was a symbolic killing," he wrote in a four-page manifesto. "Who I wanted to kill was every Democrat in the Senate, + House, the 100 people in Bernard Goldberg's book. I'd like to kill everyone in the Mainstream Media. But I knew these people were inaccessible to me." 
Bernard Goldberg's book. It's hard to imagine a more straightforward case. Adkisson was, by his own description, angry, broke, and frustrated, looking for something to give shape to his rage and meaning to his life:

I know my life is going downhill fast from here. The future looks bleak. I'm sick + tired of being sick + tired, I'm absolutely fed up.

So he decided to take it out on liberals:

The worst problem America faces today is Liberalism. They have dumbed down education, they have defined deviancy down. Liberals have attack'd every major institution that made America great. From the Boy Scouts to the military, from education to Religion. The major News outlets have become the propaganda arm of the Democrat Party. Liberals are evil, they embrace the tents of Karl Marx, they're Marxist, socialist, communists.

The reason Adkisson's anti-liberal message sounded like he borrowed it from talk radio and Fox News is that he was borrowing it from talk radio and Fox News: 

Inside the house, officers found "Liberalism is a Mental Health Disorder" by radio talk show host Michael Savage, "Let Freedom Ring" by talk show host Sean Hannity, and "The O'Reilly Factor," by television talk show host Bill O'Reilly.

There are probably some reasonable explanations for why we keep forgetting about cases like the Tennessee shooting—and the Pittsburgh shooting, and the Bay Area shooting, and the Tiller assassination. Adkisson explicitly wrote that he wanted "to encourage other like-minded people to do what I've done." Paying attention to domestic political terrorists gives them the meaning and coherence they're looking for. By treating every attack as an unexpected aberration, maybe we keep more people from believing it's a normal thing to do. 

Nevertheless, about once a year, it happens. Someone like Glenn Beck or Bill O'Reilly or Michael Savage goes on television or radio and names the names of people or groups who are treacherously subverting and destroying America. And some angry man gets a gun and sets off to kill some of those people—not out of some fractured, idiosyncratic crazy-person logic, but because the TV and the radio told him that these people were the enemy. 

Yes, vigorous dispute is essential to a free society. The idea that disagreements have to be polite, or that really deep down we don't disagree at all, is oppressive and is an instrument of oppression. And Jared Loughner does seem to belong to the older, more complicated tradition of political murder in America, rather than this contemporary wave of liberal-hating paranoid anger. 

But, again, Rush Limbaugh's claim that there has never been any evidence connecting the American right wing to violence is a brazen, ridiculous lie. Adkisson wrote four pages of evidence. This is not a gotcha in some game of partisan blamesmanship. This is what an actual person put down on paper to explain why he was about to go out and kill people with a shotgun in a church. Then he went out and killed them.

Liberals were targeted for murder because they were liberals. The question about the Gabrielle Giffords shooting isn't whether this particular incident proves that the right-wing Two Minutes' Hate approach to politics can move people to violence. The question is how or why anyone can pretend that was still a question. 

Filed under: right-wing violence, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, Bill O'Reilly, assassination, Jim Adkisson, Bernard Goldberg

Every reactionary out there had better shut his/her fucking mouth, if they know what's good for them. Sadly, they don't know, or they wouldn't be pathetic fucking losers who lives were turned to shit by the policies of the same clowns for whom they vote, nor would they be influenced by the bullshit artists of the right.

Police Murder Naked Man

Did he have an "object" in his "waistband?"

Punk-ass pigs couldn't even subdue him, so they plugged him.

A witness said she heard screaming and commotion outside her window as police chased after the naked suspect. At some point, the suspect put on boxers.

"I heard them try to detain him and he would not comply; and there was a fight, a physical fight," she said.

She then heard two gunshots.

Off the cowardly pigs! And off the culture of police violence that's been a stain on this nation & all other nations since the dawn of the nation-state.

We so hate violence we will kill anyone else who engages in it. (And their children. We have to put an absolute stop to fascism.)

Bowl (1-5)

Neon*

*If you think that's dull/clichéd, imagine how lame/clichéd everything we tried w/ more than one word was. Slipping fast here.

Nations Of Sheep

Once again we must protest loudly that Americans & Canadians are sitting on their lardy asses while the rest of the world is in the streets. Even Tuvalu, a "tiny South Pacific country."

The one naval patrol boat owned by the country of about 12,000 people was guarding the coastline near the homes of the governor general, Iakopa Itaeli Taeia, and the prime minister, Willy Telavi and police were protecting the two compounds.

Emergency rule prevents more than 10 people gathering together. About 50 joined the protest demanding the resignation of the finance minister, Lotoala Metia, and marched around the main atoll, Funafuti, carrying placards.

Natano said the resignation demand was creating instability.

"We're trying to put a stop to it and get things stable again," he said, adding that Metia was placed under police guard after threats to his safety.

Tuvalu held general elections in September, but parliament was dissolved three months later after a successful no-confidence vote. Telavi was elected prime minister on 24 December.

Come on, people!

Demonstrators throw stones at police officers in Sidi Bouzid, Tunisia, Monday Jan. 10, 2011. Tunisia's Interior Ministry said Monday that 14 people were killed in weekend rioting in three towns in the deadliest episodes in more than three weeks of unusual unrest in this popular tourist destination. (AP Photo)

Moron Martial Arts

"Bring it on!"-mania!

In the wake of the mass shooting in Arizona that left six dead and Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in critical condition, UFC fighter Jacob Volkmann regrets saying he would like to "knock some sense into that idiot" President Barack Obama.

"I would never make that comment if that shooting happened first," Volkmann told theHuffington Post. "I can't imagine what it's like for the parents. I got a 4-year-old girl and 2-year-old boy."

Volkmann said in a recent interview that he would next like to fight Obama, adding that the president is "not too bright."

As a result of Volkmann's inflammatory remarks, the Secret Service visited his home in Minnesota. Volkmann, a chiropractor by day, also criticized Obama's health care reform policy in that original interview.

Here's Volkmann's original interview:

Fun at (3:00). Chiropractors. Honestly.

Debris

Only thing of interest between the bunker & the 7-Eleven®.

Anti-Theism Round-Up

Rabbi sez:

Judaism rejects the idea of collective responsibility for murder, as the Hebrew Bible condemns accusations of collective guilt against Jew and non-Jew alike. "The soul who sins is the one who will die. The son will not share the guilt of the father, nor will the father share the guilt of the son. The righteousness of the righteous man will be credited to him, and the wickedness of the wicked will be charged against him" (Ezekiel 18).

Or you could believe this report of hot tribe-on-tribe genocide:

Saul "fought valiantly and defeated the Amalekites, delivering Israel from the hands of those who had plundered them." (1 Samuel 14:48) After this, God commands Saul to exterminate the Amalekites entirely:

I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys. (1 Samuel 15:2-3)

Collective animal guilt? Even the cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys must die for their sins?

Thy will be done.

Media Village Idiots

If this seems famiiar, it is.Good get, Rachel Maddow Show producers. You're as clever as an unpaid blogger who is mental! Happy w/ yourselves?

That's Sort-Of Governor Palin

++Creepy

Thugs Real, "Tyranny," Not So Much

More importantly: We have not focused at all on how the militarized rhetoric on the right is tightly connected to our national failure to enact the gun regulations that might have saved lives in Arizona.

The descriptions of President Barack Obama as a “tyrant,” the intimations that he is “alien” and the suggestions that his presidency is illegitimate are essential to the core rationale for resisting any restrictions on firearms. The conversation of American conservatism is being shaped by the assumptions of the gun lobby to a much greater degree than mainstream conservatives should wish.

[...]

But in part from e-mail exchanges with ardent foes of gun control over the years, I came to realize that the real passion for a let-anything-go approach to guns has little to do with culture or hunting. It is rooted in a very peculiar view of how America has maintained its freedom. Rep. Ron Paul, as is his wont, expressed it as plainly as anyone.

“The Second Amendment is not about hunting deer or keeping a pistol in your nightstand,” the Texas Republican declared in 2006. “It is not about protecting oneself against common criminals. It is about preventing tyranny. The Founders knew that unarmed citizens would never be able to overthrow a tyrannical government as they did. ... The muskets they used against the British army were the assault rifles of that time.”

And at a Washington rally last year on the anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, Rep. Paul Broun, R-Ga., linked this view to the current occupant of the White House.

“Fellow patriots, we have a lot of domestic enemies of the Constitution, and they’re right down the Mall, in the Congress of the United States—and right down Independence Avenue in the White House that belongs to us,” he declared. “It’s not about my ability to hunt, which I love to do. It’s not about the ability for me to protect my family and my property against criminals, which we have the right to do. But it’s all about us protecting ourselves from a tyrannical government of the United States.”

Is it any wonder that the gun lobby argues that restricting high-capacity magazines is just one step down the road to dictatorship?

[...]

Of course most conservatives don’t subscribe to Broun’s theory. What I don’t understand is why the highest priority of so many who are not Brounites has been to resist any questioning of far-right rhetoric by pretending that doing so is the equivalent of holding those who speak that way responsible for what someone else did.

No. Jared Loughner, the accused killer, is accountable for his own actions. His politics are confused at best and he clearly has mental health problems. That is what most liberals are saying.

But, yes, this is the time to acknowledge that there is something deeply wrong with the militarization of American conservative rhetoric. Doing so is not—and there are many problems with the term—what Sarah Palin has called a “blood libel.” The approach to guns, violence and “tyranny” promoted by loud voices on the right has been instrumental in blocking measures that could at least have contained the casualties in Tucson—or at Virginia Tech or Columbine. Extremism in defense of feeble gun laws is no virtue.

By E.J. Dionne, Jr.

Another Media Villager cops out. Really, E.J., it's perfectly fine to reach the conclusion that "the approach to guns, violence and 'tyranny' promoted by loud voices on the right" clearly demonstrates the essential anti-democratic thuggishness of these bastards. And that there are, at minimum, two potentially violent thugs (both M.D.s, heh) sitting in the House of Representatives.

Additionally:

But there is one habit of conservative rhetoric that is relevant to the events in Tucson, and it would be helpful to single it out for condemnation instead of indulging in broad discussions about the “climate of hate.” It’s the suggestion that Americans have an inherent “right of revolution” which entitles them to deploy violence when they are convinced that government officials are trammeling on their liberties, and that we are at a stage of history where such fears are legitimate.

This is the nasty underlying implication of Sharron Angle’s remark last year that “Second Amendment remedies” might be necessary to deal with policies supported by her Senate opponent, Harry Reid. And it’s been the subtext of many years of conservative rhetoric about how the Second Amendment is the crown jewel of the Constitution because it ensures a heavily armed citizenry that can take matters into its own hands if government goes too far. In combination with Tea Party militants’ open assertions that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 and marginal increases in the marginal tax rate represent an intolerable tyranny, reminiscent of the British oppression that made the American Revolution necessary, this belief that Americans should be stockpiling weapons in case they have to stop voting against government officials and start shooting them is extremely dangerous. And yes, this is the sort of thing that could help motivate a nutjob like Jared Lee Loughner to exercise his own right to revolution against the socialist tyrant Gabby Giffords.

Andy, Leave Sarah Alone!

Breitbart's tweets get farther & farther out. Man.

Chic or chick? Either way, what hideous mutant amalgam is he on about now?

Leave Sarah Alooooone

Please Do

Time to dial up the rhetoric

The right should be commended for responding vigorously to the baseless accusations that the Tea Party, Sarah Palin, and conservatives in general inspired Jared Loughner to go on a shooting rampage that left six people dead and fourteen wounded. Yet the fact that this defense of conservatives had to occur at all is beyond disturbing.

There were two critical points that immediately sprang to my mind when I saw the left predictably blame the right for Loughner’s murderous rampage. I know that Rush Limbaugh has touched on these points and others may have as well. However, I want to offer my own take and explain why these points are so critical, and why it should be clear now that the differences between the left and right are irreconcilable.

[...]

The second critical point follows on the heels of the first. If the response to Loughner’s bloodbath is the kind of two-minute hate that the left drums up against the right when a leftist goes on a murderous rampage, what is going to happen once someone who truly can be identified with the right actually does do something violent that captures national attention? The answer is that the left will set in motion the process of complete criminalization of any opposition to the left.

These critical points combine to underscore the absolute danger that faces our nation. The mainstream left has become so insane that it now can have one of its own go on a murderous rampage, then shamelessly blame the right for it in the face of overwhelming evidence, and then use that obvious lie to call for an end to any opposition to leftism. The left is so far gone that it is even willing to outright make up “hate” in order to “prove” how bad the right is. This is frightening stuff.

Oh my, we're a bit frightened. By this paranoid. Overwhelming evidence, you say?

And off come the gloves.

Some may note that it is unfair to call Loughner a leftist. People have pointed out that while Loughner can more easily be identified as on the left than the right, he is better described as being on neither side; he simply appears to be crazy. I would agree that this would be a perfectly acceptable response if we lived in a civilized nation. However, we no longer do; the left has seen to that. This should be clear from the way that Mayor Michael Bloomberg gladly speculated that a conservative likely perpetuated an attempted attack on Times Square. Yet once he learned that the would-be attacker was a Muslim, Bloomberg immediately announced that, “. . . I want to make clear that we will not tolerate any bias or backlash against Pakistani or Muslim New Yorkers.”

So the point is that this is no longer a civilized nation (A civilized nation would, what, encourage bias & backlash?) & therefore anything goes, including, what?

And so, since we no longer live in a civilized society, those who still care can no longer be satisfied with noting that Loughner is merely crazy and move on their way. Those who do not wish extinction must fight back against the left and use the fact that Loughner is more closely associated with the left to demand that leftists answer for the violence they have wrought. The right is the enemy of the left and leftists want to destroy their enemies through any means necessary. The right no longer has the luxury to deny this or to issue calls to “be bigger than they are.”

The right, if it seeks continued survival, needs to break out of its brainwashed, subservient state.

Yes, it needs to stop believing that somehow the "left" wishes "extinction" on them, before someone else is hurt.

The failure to admit that the left is irrational and beyond debate has been a disaster and it will become even worse if the right doesn’t wake up now. So perhaps the right should follow the president’s advice and come together following Loughner’s horrible crime. And if conservatives do come together, let them do so with the goal of eliminating leftism (legally and non-violently, of course)—a vile ideology that has plagued this nation for far too long. Now is no time for the right to “dial down the rhetoric.” No, instead it is time to dial it up. The left must be confronted and its war to destroy its enemies defeated. It’s the only way to stop the Party of Hate.

Paul Hair serves in the U.S. Army Reserves as a non-commissioned officer; he is veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom. He has worked as a civilian in both the government and private sectors. His views are his own and he in no way represents the Army Reserves or any other part of the U.S. government.

Any mental health experts out there? Because if Mr. Hair has access to weapons, he needs a check-up from the neck up, before he decides it's up to him personally to stop the threat of extinction. "Extinction" is bad, & not to be confused in any way w/ "eliminating" "a vile ideology" "(legally and non-violently, of course)." Is he thinking of thought control?

Also: The gov't. & liberals are controlling your thoughts!!

Mark Durie said the following about the wars against Islamic jihadists, but I think his words apply to the left’s war against the right as well (HT: Diana West):

. . . This is an excellent illustration of World View Subversion. When your adversary has conditioned you to think his thoughts, and articulate his wishes, your battle is already half lost. . .

Indeed, conservatives think their adversaries’ thoughts and accept their premises. The right reflexively defends its own existence instead of going on the offensive and attacking the left—even when leftists are so clearly in the wrong.

Who else thinks the gov't. & media are controlling everything through language/grammar?

Dead Guys

Life of Beefheart through a socialist lens, maybe.

An obit we missed from Richard Cromelin, whose work we've dug over the yrs. It could be good/interesting.

And something just pointless from the Times. We could do a better job (Don't hold your breath.) or at least contextualize some of the locations.

Also dead, & from about the same cultural era (at least age cohort) David "The Late Ricky's Older Brother" Nelson, whom we encountered a couple of times (Or just once?) in the mid-'70s while he was producing & directing commercials & we were dicking around in the music video biz.

'Cause, y'know, if somebody w/ whom we were actually once in the same room (or even on the same sidewalk) dies, that's interesting. And important.

Not Yet

Damn, still a couple of hrs.before the Prez platitudinizes/politicizes "the tragedy;" Sarah bin Palin has produced & distributed a rambling, poorly-translated video from her undisclosed location in Afghanistanlaska.

It would be appreciated if everyone involved would just shut up the hell up, & maybe drown in a fire.

Break Up

Economic downturn edition.

Oh No

Just came to the realization that by the time we're awake & plugged in to the outside world tomorrow the Prez will have spewed platitudes in Tucson & there will be approx. three zillion Internet pp. devoted to what was/wasn't said, whether he was sporting a flag pin, where his hand & heart were during the playing of whatever, yada fucking yada.

As good an opportunity as any to get that bacon smell out of the microwave.

In Case You Forget Where You Live

Stupid Is As Stupid Does

New Murder Redux

If you couldn't be bothered to wrap your lips around all the syllables, now you can just sit there & still get the message, you lump!

Candidate Wrap-Up

Via The Washington Monthly, a recap of Newt Gingrich's quick-draw reactions to the terrible menace of filthy, evil liberals & their liberalism:

In 1994, just a few days before the midterm elections, a deranged woman named Susan Smith drowned her two young sons. Gingrich, at the time, made infanticide a campaign issue and publicly equated Smith's murders with the values of the Democratic Party. Gingrich told the AP, "The mother killing her two children in South Carolina vividly reminds every American how sick the society is getting and how much we have to have change. I think people want to change and the only way you get change is to vote Republican."

Five years later, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed 13 people at Columbine High School. Gingrich insisted that American "elites" bore responsibility for the massacre. "I want to say to the elite of this country -- the elite news media, the liberal academic elite, the liberal political elite: I accuse you in Littleton ... of being afraid to talk about the mess you have made," Gingrich said, "and being afraid to take responsibility for things you have done, and instead foisting upon the rest of us pathetic banalities because you don't have the courage to look at the world you have created."

In 2007, Seung-Hui Cho shot and killed 32 people at Virginia Tech. In response, Gingrich blamed liberals for supporting "situation ethics," adding, "Yes, I think the fact is, if you look at the amount of violence we have in games that young people play at 7, 8, 10, 12, 15 years of age, if you look at the dehumanization, if you look at the fact that we refuse to say that we are, in fact, endowed by our creator, that our rights come from God, that if you kill somebody, you're committing an act of evil." Gingrich, explaining the VT tragedy, went on to condemn Halloween costumes and the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance law.

Sure, Newt, tell us again how awful it is for political figures to rush to "draw conclusions" in the wake of a tragedy.

Note our emphasis above. As delusional as alleged assassin Jared Lee Loughner? Not far from it. Maybe Gingrich should be put away for a while until a team of shrinks can get a good idea of what's going on inside that huge melon of his. Does he own any guns? And should his daughterwife,

Look at these two. Look!

an obvious loon, be allowed access to them?

Straight Outta The Guardian

Rock&Roll not much of a go in Limeyland either. (See another $$-related take on "the biz" down below.)

RIP rock'n'roll? Professor of pop reads the last rites

Rock songs in the charts fall to lowest level in 50 years, with only three tracks appearing in the top 100 best-sellers

Objectivity:

Yet some hold out hope of rebirth. Paul Stokes, associate editor at NME, is not yet ready to bury the sound. "Music is a cyclical business," he said. "We've been told rock was dead before, in the late 80s, late 90s, but it came back."

[Wait, when did this happen? — Ed.]

This year could even see rehabilitation, he said. Much-hyped the Vaccines have a debut album out in March and other acts such as alt-rock act Yuck and smalltown rockers Mona are hotly tipped. "We are waiting for the next big band to come along and change the scene. Something is around the corner and it's beginning to bubble."

The economic gloom may also speed up the revival, according to Martin Talbot, chief executive of the Official Charts Company. "Most interesting and challenging rock music comes out of periods of austerity," he said. "Maybe Tory governments make for more challenging rock music – and now we have one."

Someplace local we hadn't heard of &, it turned out, didn't care much about. No. 4.

History Showing Again: American Political Violence

Our permanent culture of political violence

And why the calls for civility in the wake of Saturday's shooting won't end up changing anything

And again:

With belated sanctimony

Then:

Not us (cont.)

You read all that fancy-typin', & figger out the good parts fer yerse'f!

Liberally-Biased Facts

Televised All-Douchebag Match

Newest Form of American Exceptionalism?

Mmm, could be ...

The events of this weekend seem incomprehensible to us now; someday, with the benefit of hindsight, they may strike us as all too inevitable. For now, however, there is only one question to ask: Was Saturday’s hybrid assassination-rampage a one-off, or is this new species of American murder going to become a defining symbol of our sorry era?

Disturbing Image Of The Wk.

This dreamscape imagined by a third-rate Dadaist, starring his mistress (not incidentally, the heiress to a Central European smuggling fortune) as the woman in funny dress disturbed us.

A woman in funny dress leaves the frozen Lake Orankesee at the Eis-Fasching (Ice-Carnival) in Berlin Saturday, Jan. 8, 2011.
Markus Schreiber/AP

Pissing Off The Pukes

Two items from the WaPo one-panel round-up that irked someone at The DC today: "Political cartoons exploit Arizona tragedy in effort to score crude political points." (Reminder: No style points are given. A point scored is a point scored, no matter how ugly the scoring. And really, who are the ugly ones here again?) Thanks for bringing these to our attention 'though.

Jeff Danziger

How Dare They? Extreme Far Left Hater Wants To Censor Freedom Speech Of Real Americans!

Really! See?

TPM Guide for the Perplexed

In the aftermath of the Giffords shooting there's been a lot of talk about political speech, politicians and whether there's a climate of violent political rhetoric. And it's been clear that a lot of politicians weren't clear that certain phrases and statements -- like calling for armed revolution or target practice at fundraisers -- might lead to misunderstandings. So in the spirit of ettiquette manuals, I thought I'd start putting together a list of things it's probably best not to say simply to avoid misunderstandings or criticisms the next time there's an attempt on the life of a politician.

1. Refrain from telling supporters that winning the election may require active exercise of their "second amendment" rights.

2. Refrain from suggesting it's time for "armed revolution", even if Thomas Jefferson once kinda sorta suggested that.

3. Refrain from holding political fundraisers focused around use of automatic weapons, especially target practices with initials, name or images of your political opponent.

4. Refrain from telling supporters you want them to be "armed and dangerous."

5. Refrain from making campaign posters with opponent's head in gun sights.

6. Refrain from saying that bullets will work if ballots don't.

7. Suggest that supporters not bring weapons to opponents' political rallies.

Censorship of the foulest kind. They know full well that w/o those talking points there's nothing real Americans can campaign on.

Ass-Hole Up-Date

Up-Dating from here. To demonstrate & to demonize Sterling further, we'd figured on eventually scanning one of his hideous adverts from the cage-liner, but once again the Napoleonic approach has worked & we needn't do anything. Granted, this is a mild example. Worse.

Maybe someone at Sterling World Plaza was able to persuade him to tone it down for the real Times.

Moment Of Silence

Unless we were snoring, we observed it.

Exorcism Up-Date

Away, demons!

BRUSSELS (AFP) – The child abuse scandals rocking Belgium's powerful Catholic Church are also shaking the faith of followers, with more and more people asking to be struck off baptism registers -- a global movement known as "de-baptism".

"When you don't agree with an organisation that you never chose to join in the first place, the healthiest thing to do is to leave," Damien Spleeters told AFP.

In this mainly Catholic country of 10 million people, the 24-year-old is among a growing crowd exasperated by church policy on issues such as AIDS, and angered by revelations last year of massive child abuse by priests and lay workers.

Shaming the messenger:

"Whilst we deplore your decision," replied Abbot Jean-Pierre Lorette, "the Catholic Church respects each individual's freedom and will not hold back against their will those who wish to leave it."

Spleeters, the priest added, was in consequence "logically" excommunicated.

Fuckin' logic, how's it work?

In an interview, the young Brussels resident said "I don't consider myself an atheist" but explained he turned to de-baptism due to growing irritation with the Catholic hierarchy

The move was not uncommon, said Daniel Leclerq of the group "Friends of Secular Morality".

"Pope Benedict XVI's statements against condoms, the appointment of a conservative -- Andre-Joseph Leonard -- to head the Belgian church in early 2010, and the child abuse revelations have led to a hike in de-baptisms," Leclerq said.

While national statistics are unavailable on the number of people seeking to quit the church, Friends of Secular Morality, which is active in four of Belgium's 10 provinces, said it has been helping increasing numbers to de-baptise.

"In 2010, we worked on 1,700 cases compared to 380 in 2009 and only 66 in 2008", Leclerq said.

Real Man Litmus Test

We'd planned to note this, but finding the video was daunting, & then ... well, something came up (It always will!) & we forgot all about it.This transcript & brief history jogged the memory.

Just in case you neglected to watch the debate staged yesterday by the five competitors for the job of Republican national chairman - what? you really had something better to do? - allow me to share the most scintillating factoid:

The five aspirants own a total of 25 guns.

This is apparently quite important, if only as a measure of the requisite Republican machismo. Or perhaps as visceral proof that the candidates love Freedom. Or perhaps it's meant to suggest that we should all sleep better at night knowing that the Republican chairman is locked and loaded. Or maybe it's just Republicans behaving as parodies of themselves.

I first noticed this Real Man litmus test during the most recent Republican presidential primary season; at an autumn '07 debate, five of the eight white men on the stage declared that they pack heat at home. A few months later there was another debate, this time featuring the six '08 candidates for the RNC chairmanship, and what moderator Grover Norquist wanted to know was, "How many guns do you own?"

Those six aspirants said they owned a total of 22 guns, but the number could have been way higher, because South Carolina chairman Katon Dawson tried to trump the other guys by claiming that his stash contained "too many to count." But Chip Saltsman of Tennessee got points for specificity when he itemized the contents of his closet: "I've got two 12-gauges, a 20-gauge, three handguns, and a .30-06."

By the way, the only guy at that '08 debate who didn't own a gun was the guy who ultimately won the job: Michael Steele. And we all know how well he has performed. Last we heard, the Republican National Committee was $20 million in the hole. On the other hand, it's worth noting that even though Steele has repeatedly spent the last two years extracting his foot from his mouth, the Republicans nevertheless racked up big gains in the '10 midterms. Which arguably suggests that it really doesn't matter who runs the national party office. Who among us will be biting our nails a week from Friday, anxiously awaiting word about whether Steele has kept his job by corralling the support of 85 national committeemen - or whether he'll lose the post to Reince Priebus or Saul Anuzi or Ann Wagner or Maria Cino?

Anyway, conservative activist Grover Norquist was back again yesterday, moderating the latest RNC debate. And again he asked: "How many guns do you own?"

Again Steele said, "None." Cino, a former RNC official, also said, "None." The room was packed with spectators, but those responses were met with silence.

Then came Priebus, who currently chairs the Wisconsin GOP. He proudly declared, "Five!" Finally, a red-blooded American. He was serenaded with applause.

Then came Ann Wagner, a Missourian and a former ambassador. Ann Wagner quickly morphed into Annie Oakley: "I may surprise y'all, but we just got a new gun safe for Christmas, and I think there are about 16 in there - everything from pistols and a Glock to shotguns, rifles. And my son, who's on the combat weapons team at West Point, has an all-out assault rifle. So there you go!"

Holy John Wayne, she hit the trifecta: Christmas, combat, assault. Try topping that one. Nobody could. While Wagner was basking in the most sustained applause, ex-Michigan chairman Saul Anuzi sheepishly tallied his gun stash, confessing his failure to measure up: "I feel very inadeqate at four."

Poor Anuzi. The GOP's macho stakes just keep going up. When he ran in the '08 party chair race, he said he had two guns. Now he says he has four guns - that's a 100 percent increase - yet he stilllooks like a girly man.

The latest word is that Steele, the gunless incumbent, won't win a new term; he apparently got nowhere yesterday with his argument that the party should knock off the orthodox groupthink and become more diverse. ("We do get a little comfortable with ourselves, and we do become so, to the exclusion and detriment of others" - especially the "fresh voices and fresh faces that don't look and sound like us.")

Instead, the final balloting on Jan. 14 will likely feature Priebus, Wagner, and Anuzi. In case of a deadlock among the 168 voting RNC members, maybe the three finalists can settle this thing where party orthodoxy apparently deems it most appropriate: On the target range.

A wk. later, not so funny.

News Of The World

Ask us to name the nations of the Maghreb & Tunisia would be last, after Mauritania even. Yet even in a nation where, per the VoA, little dissent is tolerated:

Riots in the North African nation were triggered last month when a 26-year-old university graduate in the central city of Sidi Bouzid who could only find work as a street merchant set himself on fire after authorities confiscated his produce. The man, Mohammed Bouazizi, later died of his burns.

Protests are rare in Tunisia, where the government tolerates little dissent.

The AP.

TUNIS, Tunisia (AP) — At least 11 people have died in clashes with security forces in new rioting in the North African country where unrest is in its fourth week, local union officials said Sunday.

The Interior Ministry, meanwhile, said eight people were killed over the weekend in the western towns of Thala, and Kasserine.

Rioting to protest joblessness and other social ills has scarred numerous cities across this tiny country since Dec. 17, after a 26-year-old man with a university degree set himself on fire when police confiscated his fruits and vegetables for selling without a permit.

Mobs have since attacked public buildings and the local office of the party of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

Next door in Algeria:

Algeria Riots
Youth face police forces in Annaba, eastern Algeria, Saturday Jan. 8, 2011. Youths in the North African nation have been rioting for days following sudden price hikes for staples including sugar, flour and oil. (AP Photo)

Face of the Day

Let's see if one of his minions went w/ it. Hah, no. (We haven't cared for a long time, have we?)

Santa, Jesus & The Second Amendment

Open Season! On Violent Eliminationist Rhetoric

Drive-In Sunday Morning: No Wonder (At All)

It's Limey stuff, is why we'd never heard of it.The critic of today:

1954 science fiction movie starring Patricia Neal. It is a slow-moving film with a lot of talk and little action.

Serious competition for us in the field of laziness:

SFFWorld has a review that wonders why the folks behind The Day the Earth Stood Still didn't sue.
DVDTalk's review says it "plays like a pretentious theatrical production made by people lacking the talent to come anywhere close to pulling it off".

Ambien®, hell!

Pre-Punk-Stolgia

DOC40 comes up w/ local action in a Rule 34 stylee: "IF YOU COULD IMAGINE IT, THERE WAS A MAGAZINE ABOUT IT," & from across the pond, too.

Contempt

On a lighter note, Show Bidness, as seen through a lens smeared w/ an especially noxious substance that's guaranteed to make the subject look several yrs. older, or even invisible.

We were so excited by "contempt" that we missed "aging²," which is the actual offense against Americans & their heartland values, as Mr. Driscoll's lens clearly shows him.

This phenomenon of people getting "older" has not escaped the still-eagle-like eyes of concerned critics somewhat younger, we think, than Ed Driscoll, Hard-Boiled (You can tell by the hat!) Media Snoop. We also dipped into the subject of fading show revenue here; Ed was only a wk. late this time.

So we were all excited to find what absolute contempt Hollywood was holding us in. A greater scandal than kiddie-host X & his apocryphal open-miked "That'll hold the little bastards!" before the cartoon, or, or ... Surprise! Links:

Both industries have shown enormous contempt for wide swatches of their audiences

Wow. Get this, straight outta NewsBusters: Paul McCartney Compares Global Warming Skeptics to Holocaust Deniers; Says of Obama, 'I Really Love Him'

And if that's not enough, Colin Firth thinks about science or something. Bet he was sneering while he thought, too.

In case you've been living under a rock, or in your mother's basement, Ed The Hat is happy to fill you in on what's been happening:

The traditional music and film industries were created during the first half of the 20th century, when media meant mass media — by the 1950s, you had three channels on your TV, a handful of radio channels, and a couple of local movie theaters within easy driving distance.

Today you have YouTube, Blip, iTunes, Netflix, DirecTV, etc.

Therefore (Really. This is the very next paragraph. We shouldn't have interrupted the flow of logic.):

Concurrently, both the music industry and Hollywood have watched their stars age and decline. Most of the people we still think of as stars in both Hollywood and the recording industry date from the last days of mass media — and Hollywood in particular has been hurt badly by their decline.

Some of Hollywood’s biggest stars have simply aged: Clint Eastwood, Sean Connery and arguably Harrison Ford are all getting too long in the tooth to be leading men. Younger stars such as Mel Gibson and Tom Cruise severely damaged their careers during the preceding decade by publicly unleashing their inner demons. Alec Baldwin, Sean Penn and Robert Redford put politics ahead of stardom, damaging their brand in flyover country.

You see, the point here is, there's technological change, & the only people in Show Bidness that Ed Driscoll has ever heard of have gotten older, except the ones who were nuts or something to begin w/, so ...

So we dunno what. Did he think Clint Eastwood was going to make the transition to video games & YouTube shorts, & his failure to do so means Americans will now be putting all their entertainment dollars into paying off their credit cards?

Music industry afterthought:

On the surface, this doesn’t sound like it will bode well for Hollywood’s future. Essentially the recording industry, with its own aging stars and genres, faces many of the same negative structural trends as well.

Still not grasping the point, just the realization that Ed has a point on his head. No one's made a record or written a song since Milli Vanilli were run out of the biz? We may not like today's Gss Music From Jupiter any more than Ed would if he ever heard it, but we do have vague (sometimes painful) awareness of some noise out there on the Internet.

At last, at the end, a clue to the new direction:

Contraction is always painful for any business model; any thoughts on where these industries go next?

Heading to Goldberg-land. That explains the lack of there there.

Let's look at just a bit of a comment from maryann:

I proceeded to watch a few of the scenes in Singing in the Rain and as I watched I said to myself, God what amazing creative talent came out of America before the leftists of Hollywood took over with coarsening of the culture and the let’s hate America narrative.

Just imagine being trapped in such a tiny, fearful mind. Too bad that black-list didn't work, huh? And the silents were even better, but FDR killed them w/ his "Hate America New Deal," didn't he?

[Hope this holds 'em.]

Open Letter To The Delusional

The inane clowns self-righteously bloviating "This must stop!" (See: The Internet, Everywhere, & Moderation, Calls for ...) in reference to the most recent evidence (that will be denied w/ every beat of their lying hearts) that American "exceptionalism" mostly means you all are a nation of twisted mass-murderers would do well to read this letter from the paper of record.

Violence, as American as Apple Pie

Published: June 08, 1990

To the Editor:
Anthony Lewis's column ''A Rage to Kill'' (May 18), on the death penalty in the United States, touches on a cultural attitude that appears in many areas of American life, and not just the popular sentiment about criminal justice. An obsession with killing appears in the popularity of movie violence, the fascination with contact sports (and the injuries they produce), the use of the word ''competition'' as a euphemism for bullying (or just general nastiness), the mistreatment of animals (for example, ''road-kills,'' ''rattlesnake roundups'' dogfights) and in the emphasis given to violent events in the news media.

All of these are symptoms, but what is the disease? Part of the answer might be that the people who love violence as adults learned it as a way of life during childhood: psychological studies indicate that those who were abused as children tend to be abusive as parents. One might ask, ''What does this have to do with ordinary people?'' The answer is that one probably cannot draw a clear-cut line between abuse and normal discipline. As a result, it is conceivable that an attitude euphemized as ''being tough,'' or ''making a man of him'' (one's child) may pass from one generation to the next and eventually become a cultural norm.

This implies that we have developed a culture of violence, which might be traceable to the pioneer experience of living in a rough, new land. One wonders how the stress of living on the frontier might have affected the behavior of parents toward children and, ultimately, the attitudes of subsequent generations to life in general. When 12 families of new settlers live stuffed together in a cabin in the middle of the Great Plains in the dead of winter, one would expect some long-lasting psychological trauma as a result (see ''The Old West,'' U.S. News and World Report, May 21, 1990). Circumstances like this must have occurred repeatedly since the founding of the Jamestown colony in 1607.

Another component of this background might be the secularization of Calvinist values, in the form of such notions as restraint (especially of emotional expression), stoicism, the elect (good guys) versus the nonelect (bad guys) and of extremely stern (often physical) family and community discipline as virtues in their own right.

A third element underlying our proclivity for anger and its violent expression would appear to be frustrated expectations: the disappointment of not obtaining one's dreams has affected all generations of newcomers to America. Moreover, deferred dreams appear to be linked to periods of social unrest and violent incidents, at least since the Civil War.

We have a population whose cultural experience has produced generations of anger with only a few socially acceptable outlets, most of which have been physically violent, even when they are supposed to be ''fun.'' Moreover, everyday experience here in New York City suggests that violence may be contagious, through retaliation or by imitation.

Perhaps we are still too close to our origins to be free of their detrimental effects. We also appear convinced that the attitudes resulting from our beginnings are necessary for success, and as a result, we're not willing to change (yet).

LEONARD BROWN
Brooklyn, May 22, 1990

Twenty fucking yrs. ago, & the only change is that the New Media Universe has given every twisted fuck of an All-American murderer an almost-infinite smörgåsbord of possible delusions on which to feed their blood-lust.

Scab of A Nation, Driven Insane Dep't.:

Cop kill a creep/Pow! Pow! Pow!We simply can not play enough of either of these swingin' numbers, whose message strikes close to the heart or other vital organ (Duck!) even today!

Metaphoric

More from the mists of history:

SarahPAC

We respond to a question: "M - is this their graphic, seriously? Jeebus."
This one was seen at FDL.

Sullivan offered this one:

And we suppose the final click would reveal this one, source now lost in the dim mists of history.

Currently at SarahPAC:

"End quote."