From Pine View Farm

May, 2015 archive

Facebook Frolics 0

One more time: the internet is a public place. Govern yourselves accordingly.

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“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0

You’ve heard of an “omnibus”? The polite take the “ammobus.”

A man who accidentally discharged his weapon while using the bathroom inside a Megabus traveling on the Jane Addams Memorial Tollway in Des Plaines Tuesday night was ultimately subdued by a passenger and held until police arrived.

Just another day in NRA Paradise.

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Hoist on His Own Petard 0

Essential to teabaggery is denial for any responsibility for the public good or for contributing thereunto, because those contributions take the form of taxes (at least until teabaggers discover they are part of the public).

This case is sad, but it’s not at all sympathetic.

Via Balloon Juice.

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Off the Rails 0

I must have ridden across this bit of track hundreds of times when I worked for the railroad.

I was in a derailment once.

My buddy and I decided to take the old Night Owl to Boston for the weekend. We planned to leave Friday night, catch a night’s sleep in the sleeping car, and head back Saturday night.

Seems that, as the train left Providence, the coach behind the sleeping car derailed (all that means is that a wheel slipped of the tracks). Given that no one was hurt and no noticeable damage was done, the coaches were cut off the train and the engine, the bag car, and the sleeping car proceeded to Boston.

We arrived on time. As the Owl was an overnight train, there was a lot of padding in the schedule . . . .

I slept through the derailment.

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QOTD 0

Marianne Williamson:

Love is what we were born with. Fear is what we learned here.

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Football uber Alles 0

Der Spiegel interviews Patrick Venzke, a German who played in the NFL before returning to Europe to play in the European league. Here’s a bit, in which he responds to questions about Chris Borland, who retired from the NFL after two seasons because of concerns over long-term damage to his health from playing.

Venzke: It’s such a courageous decision. He’ll be mocked because NFL players don’t usually talk about their problems. They sweep them under the carpet.

(snip)

You play for the glory, the fame, the status. But if you win the Super Bowl and get inaugurated into the Hall of Fame only to forget you were a footballer by the time you’re 60 because you have Alzheimer’s, it’s just not worth it. Players still put up with broken bones, but not with a destroyed brain.

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Nailed! 0

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“The Smart One” 0

Yeah. Right.

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Drinking Liberally Virginia Beach Thursday 0

Fun and fellowship for liberals. Join us and talk about anything in a relaxed atmosphere.

When: Thursday, May 14, 6 p.

Where:
Croc’s 19 Street Bistro
620 19th Street (Map)

More here.

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All the World’s a Plot, and All the Men and Women Merely Plotters 0

Tony Norman explores the magnetic powers of conspiracy theories. A snippet:

If you believe that Mr. Obama is the illegitimate son of Malcolm X and was adopted by Mau Mau revolutionaries in his native Kenya, schooled by Marxists throughout the Third World, personally mentored by Saul Alinsky and finally given a white family of mushy liberals from Kansas as cover, then fearing a Jade Elm 15 invasion isn’t much of a stretch.

Ironically, those most concerned about Jade Helm 15 aren’t remotely bothered by the militarization of the police or by what’s happening in large swaths of urban America. They aren’t suspicious of the takeover of the political process by corporate interests and plutocrats. Their anxieties are much more exotic and unlikely. They’re not particularly open to a counter narrative that involves anything less than a supernatural villain whose plans can be leaked in advance on the Internet.

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Republican Family Values 0

Jason330 figures it out.

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Everybody Must Get Fracked 0

Oil company executive:

Via Job’s Anger.

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“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0

Another day in NRA Paradise.

Police say a 4-year-old boy was wounded when a gun apparently accidentally discharged and his head was grazed by a bullet in Ann Arbor. . . .

Ann Arbor police Detective Sgt. Pat Hughes says . . . three other children — two boys and a girl all under the age of 10 — were at the home at the time.

Other than that, police still haven’t figured out exactly who did what to whom.

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QOTD 0

Ernest Dimnet:

The happiness of most people is not ruined by great catastrophes or fatal errors, but by the repetition of slowly destructive little things.

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The Great Unwatched 0

I’m okay with cable bundling, for this reason: If cable companies move to a la carte pricing, there is one certainty: We will pay more for less.

I don’t know how they will manage it, but they will manage it.

The video is still a hoot.

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Driving while Black 0

Honest to Pete, you can’t make this stuff up.

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Chris-Crossed 0

Alfred Dobbin reminds you,

Don’t you dare call Chris Christie a moderate.

Follow the link to find out why.

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Good Neighbors 0

A Canadian who would like to legally come to the United States to work because most of the jobs in his field are in the States recounts his experience. A nugget:

Sure enough, a letter arrived 30 days later. It told me the center is on the case but that I should not make too many plans for my move to the United States, because there is a waiting time for processing. I was instructed to go to the State Department’s website to check on wait times, which it bases on the “priority date” of my application. My priority date was Jan. 9, 2011, the date we filed the original paperwork.

After a few clicks I discovered that, for Americans sponsoring siblings from Canada, the wait time is about nine more years.

Yes, that’s right: 13 years total processing time. They are now processing priority dates of March 2002, and with my priority date of January 2011, they should get to me by March 2024.

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Giving Mothers the Business 0

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The March (and April and May) of the Zombie Lies 1

In related news, Leonard Pitts, Jr, peers from the ramparts of Helm’s Deep and sees the attacking forces of Sauron stupid, the army of the zomebies zombie lies of wingnuttery.

“Twenty years ago,” I wrote, “the idea of anti-government resistance seemed confined to a lunatic fringe operating in the shadows beyond the mainstream. Twenty years later, it is the mainstream, the beating heart of the Republican Party. And while certainly no responsible figure on the right advocates or condones what he did, it is just as certain that McVeigh’s violent antipathy toward Washington, his conviction that America’s government is America’s enemy, has bound itself to the very DNA of modern conservatism.

”That’s the argument conservatives found “hateful” “sickening” and “dishonest.”

So it is, depending upon your religious outlook, a fortuitous coincidence or superfluous evidence of God’s puckish sense of humor that a few days later comes news of conservatives accusing the federal government of trying to take over the state of Texas.

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