Sometimes You Have to Make a Story Funny

And sometimes, the story speaks for itself

Nobody Asked Me, But...

1) And. He. Didn’t. Need. A. Gun.

2) It’s the 70^th anniversary of the birth of the Greatest Generation. How much time do the Teabaggers give Obama peace out of respect for the soldiers who died in the invasion? My money is on “less than 24 hours.”

3) Speaking of Normandy…

4) Theia Smash!

5) Ever notice how much verbal information gets exchange in a conversation without saying an actual, like, you know, word? I was, you know, listening to a convo and the one girl was all “blahblahblah” and the other was “Yea.”

And I understood it perfectly.

6) SOSHALIST!

7) …When the Moon is in the seventh house…

8) Apparently, Neel Kashkari – and there’s a Teabagger name for you – believe the governor of California is a do-nothing job.

9) Advertising his stupidity

10) Finally, this is tragic. And bizarre.

Infectious Dis-Ease

It appears our ammosexuality is contagious:

(CNN) -- In a country often stereotyped for being too genteel, the Canadian city of Moncton prides itself on a special distinction: It was named the most polite.

So what happened here Wednesday seems unimaginable to residents.

A man dressed in fatigues and carrying a rifle went on a rampage, killing three police officers and wounding two others.

Police posted to social media a photograph of a man dressed in fatigues, carrying what appeared to be a rifle.

Thursday morning, the shooter was still on the loose.

I hope you’re happy, gun nuts: you’ve managed to turn the politest place in the politest country on the fucking planet into a shooting range.

The Facebook page of the suspect, Justin Bourque, a 24 year old resident of Moncton, is about as filled with rage and gun-garbage as any nut from Wyoming. The photos the Moncton police tweeted seem to show a Rambonic idiot pretending to be a Navy seal or Army ranger.

And of course, he is taunting the cops while he flees like the little coward he is, posting on his Facebook page after the shooting (Idiot. There are things called “IP addresses” that Facebook will gladly provide to cops on a real-time basis that can pinpoint you in seconds. Gun nuts really are cowardly morons.)

His last post before this rampage says it all:

“A little man with a big eraser, changing history, Procedures that he's programmed to, all he hears and sees. Altering the facts and figures, events and every issue. Make a person disappear, and no one will ever miss you. Rewrites every story, every poem that ever was”

A little man. To be sure.

By Your Leave

I meant to blog about this when the baseball season opened in April but it slipped my mind. Thankfully I have a second chance to:

CHICAGO -- New York Mets second baseman Daniel Murphy and his family will be guests at the White House on Monday for a discussion about the state of working dads.

Murphy received talk-radio backlash after choosing to take paternity leave and miss the team's first two games of the season to be present for the birth of his first child on March 31. Murphy's wife Tori gave birth to 8-pound, 2-ounce son Noah about an hour before the first pitch of the Mets' season.

The White House Summit on Working Families will be held in the South Court Auditorium of the White House. It aims to advance talk about how fathers play a role at home, discuss the challenges of balancing a career and family, and advocate for rights such as parental leave from work.

Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx and Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors Jason Furman will participate in the discussion along with Murphy.

It’s really odd how this nation gets so hung up on bad choices that parents make – single moms, dads abandoning children, divorce – and so uptight about how children need both parents in their lives, and here comes a story of a man, a high-profile professional baseball player, taking a few days off at what amounts to a meaningless time in the season, to assist in the birth of his baby.

Gee, it’s almost like he broke the rules of the corporatocracy!

He did, by the way. There’s a school of thought in the workplace that’s lasted the last thirty years or so: you gave all you had to the job, and then some. Productivity means profitability, means you get to keep your job.

We’re seeing the cracks in that façade as people wake up to the fact that income inequality has skyrocketed since the Reagan years, while productivity has risen even faster and companies have literally enslaved workers until they’ve used them up and discarded them.

It’s gotten so bad that some companies are even forcing workers to take vacations.

Birthing leave, to coin a phrase, is a step in the right direction. By excluding the father from the initial bonding process, you make the relationship between that parent and child more tenuous. Babies imprint, and if Dad is working until 10 o’clock at night to keep his job because Mom can’t work anymore, that’s not leaving a whole lot of time for that kind of bonding. Murphy has spent enormous swaths of time away from his kid during the season and kudos to the Mets for standing up for him.  

The Price of Freedom

People are allowed to think, say, and yes, even tweet whatever the hell they want, so long as their actions do not contravene the law. They are still American citizens:

Since Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl was captured in the mountains of Afghanistan in 2009, his father had become an expert on Guantanamo Bay’s detainees. It was out of necessity, because the Taliban demanded that the United States free prisoners from Guantanamo in exchange for Bergdahl.

“No family in the United States understands the detainee issue like ours,” Robert Bergdahl said in a 2011 plea to his son’s captors.

So it wasn’t entirely unusual when Bergdahl apparently published a tweet last week about Guantanamo’s detainees. Except this tweet was directed at a Taliban spokesman. And it came just four days before it was announced that his son was finally being released.

“I am still working to free all Guantanamo prisoners,” the tweet said, according to various screen grabs. The tweet was subsequently deleted. “God will repay for the death of every Afghan child, ameen.”

This God-person also hates fags, but few of the current critics of the Bergdahls seem to have too much problem with that. Likewise when God strikes down (fill in the blank)_____________ with a (tornado, flood, terrorist attack), those same people whose panties are in a twist over Bergdahl’s desperate attempts to keep his son out of harm, alive long enough to secure his return, seem somehow to remain silent.

Bowe Bergdahl is an American citizen, a soldier, and a prisoner of a foreign government which has demonstrated a curious hatred of the West and western values. If it was Ann Coulter or any other hater who strapped on a helmet and went and fought a war long past its sell-by date, we ought to extend every effort to secure the return of that prisoner, as well.

Bob Bergdahl is an American citizen and therefore deserves at the very least our silence and the very most our compassion and support as he tries to retrieve his son.

Similarly, Bowe Bergdahl’s actions before his capture have come under scrutiny, but I believe we can trust the military to sort out that issue.

The terrorists who were exchanged are being held in Qatari custody. That is appropriate. Qatar has been an ally of ours, and a staging ground for our invasions of Iraq. It’s not like they were freed to roam the airports of the United States and given bottles of drain cleaner and box cutters.

Republicans Suck

Really.

Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl can expect a buoyant homecoming after five years in Taliban hands, but those in the government who worked for his release face mounting questions over the prisoner swap that won his freedom.

Even in the first hours of Bergdahl's handoff to U.S. special forces in eastern Afghanistan, it was clear this would not be an uncomplicated yellow-ribbon celebration. Five terrorist suspects also walked free, stirring a debate in Washington over whether the exchange will heighten the risk of other Americans being snatched as bargaining chips and whether the released detainees — several senior Taliban figures among them — would find their way back to the fight.

U.S. officials said Sunday that Bergdahl's health and safety appeared in jeopardy, prompting rapid action to secure his release. "Had we waited and lost him," said national security adviser Susan Rice, "I don't think anybody would have forgiven the United States government."

The hearkens back to the firestorm Republicans raised back in the early 1980s, when it was revealed that President Ronald Reagan first demanded the Iranians hold Americans hostage until after the Presidential election that saw him garner the office, then traded them for arms to a nation we had embargoed from any materiel dealings with us.

Oh wait…! I forgot! There was none! Somehow the concerns that other Americans might be targeted were non-existent, despite the fact that the Iranians had far more at stake than the Taliban does. Somehow the concern that we were endangering American lives both here and abroad disappeared into the great gasball of Republican bloviating. Somehow the fact that no fewer than thirteen Reagan administration officials and employees were indicted for their involvement in this treasonous scandal eluded the Republican laser-like focus that seems to encapsulate their whole “breathholding until blue” over Benghazi and a dying American soldier.

Add this to the bullcrap pile that includes the administration of the VA (a true tragedy but one in which Republicans are deeply involved with on the wrong side) and you begin to see why the Republicans don’t care about running the country as much as running their mouths.