From Pine View Farm

2016 archive

Just Another Day in NRA Paradise . . . . 0

At the Bangor Daily News, Gwynne Dyer sums up the speculation as of yesterday regarding the Orlando shooter, then wonders, “What’s the big deal?”

“Violence is as American as cherry pie,” as H. Rap Brown once put it, and on the whole Americans have just decided to live with it. That’s not an entirely unreasonable decision because changing a whole culture is hard, slow, uncertain work, and 13,286 gun deaths per year (including massacres, one-on-one killings, suicides and accidents) is only one in every 25,000 Americans.

Read it. It answers John Romano’s question.

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QOTD 0

Kerry Greenwood:

When your day is not planned, it structures itself around tasks and meals . . . .

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Origins 0

The story of the People of the Book.

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A. No 0

Q. [Click to see the question.]

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War and Mongers of War 0

Shorter Ted Cruz: Existence of hate means we need more hate.

Image of Statue of Liberty holding American flag re-imagined as Gay Pride flag with quotation from Harvey Milk:  More persons have been slaughtered in the name of religion than for any other single reason.  That is the true perversion.

Image via Job’s Anger.

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Light Bloggery 0

Paying attention is just too damned depressing. I need a break.

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Recruiting Poster 0

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QOTD 0

Eden Phillpotts:

The people sensible enough to give good advice are usually sensible enough to give none.

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Orlando 0

I got nothing that others have not said.

Read more »

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The Eagle Has Landed 0

Another picture from my brother in Virginia’s Northern Neck.

Eagle in tree

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Twits on Twitter 0

Twits on the campaign trail.

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Dis Coarse Discourse 0

Image One Title:  How the News Works.  Frame One:  Donald Trump says,

Via Job’s Anger.

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Apple Criminal “Genius” 0

Being an Apple “genius” appears to be easier than Apple would have one think. It would seem that the clothes make the “genius.”

The brazen bloke walked into the SoHo (New York) Apple Store location at around 5.30PM on June 1, and took 19 iPhones from the store without being detected.

His clever disguise? A blue t-shirt that police said was “similar” to the uniform worn by Apple’s retail store workers.

We’re told the thief was able to pass as an employee long enough to walk through the store and into a repair room, where he accessed a drawer containing the iPhones. He then passed off the plundered handsets to an accomplice, who stuffed them under his shirt. Both of them exited the store without being stopped by security.

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Where There’s Fire, There’s Smoke 0

In the Bangor Daily News, Philip Duffy reports that some Congresspersons want to take jurisdiction over the laws of chemistry, likely at the behest of the lumber industry (emphasis added):

Seven senators, including Angus King and Susan Collins, sponsored the amendment. In response, more than 60 scientists and three professional societies signed onto a letter, pointing out a serious factual error in the proposed legislation. The irony is that all seven backers of the amendment accept the reality of climate change.

The amendment would mandate that all federal agencies treat the burning of wood from forests as a “renewable energy resource” that is “carbon neutral,” meaning it does not add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Reality is more complex, but forest bioenergy certainly is not carbon neutral. The carbon footprint of bioenergy should be measured scientifically on a case-by-case basis rather than broadly specified by legislation.

Follow the link to see Duffy delve into the lamer rationale for this endeavor.

I don’t quite know what’s worse about this: the stupid or the craven.

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Stray Thought, Anthropology Dept. 0

The NRA is a cult of the phallus.

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Misdirection Play 0

Title:  Donald Trump's Lesson in Distraction.  Image:  Donald Trump standing in front of

Via Job’s Anger.

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“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0

Donate your politeness that others may share in it.

Two people were shot after a gun went off inside the Salvation Army on Beach Bouelvard Friday afternoon, authorities said.

(snip)

An employee was sorting through clothes and a gun went off, police said.

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QOTD 0

Douglas Adams:

Capital letters were always the best way of dealing with things you didn’t have a good answer to.

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Life Imitates Art 0

Eric Blumberg remembers Ionesco’s The Leader.

One of Ionesco’s least known works is The Leader, a short play about the anticipated arrival of The Leader. During the play, the Announcer broadcasts everything The Leader is doing prior to his onstage appearance. At last, The Leader comes on stage whereupon one of the cast notices he doesn’t have a head. Yet, this abnormality makes no difference to his followers since they know “he’s got genius.” The play also includes a secondary theme, which ultimately points to society’s inability to communicate effectively.

Follow the link to see what brought it to mind.

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“This Pampered Princeling” 0

Jonathan Kirshner doesn’t think much of Donald Trump.

One of the two major political parties in the United States has chosen an ignorant, unqualified, strutting game-show host as its candidate for president. An upper-class scion cultivated in the cloistered hothouse of inherited wealth now posturing as a populist-nativist, Donald Trump is a dangerous huckster drawing on the dog-eared pages of the demagogue’s handbook, rallying his supporters with the timeless tropes of fearmongering and scapegoating. The only thing that makes this pampered princeling stand out from the rogues’ gallery of his predecessors (and his global peers) is that he comes across as even more vain, entitled, and thin-skinned than the average preening Mussolini pounding his chest from the balcony.

This horrifying turn of events (and if you are not horrified, you have not been paying adequate attention) is unprecedented—and it is un-American. A Trump presidency would not make America great again; it would make America ordinary, . . .

And that’s just the beginning.

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