Category: Current Events

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It's Been a Very Bad Week in Wingnuttia

And I couldn't be more delighted.

First it was upholding "Obamacare."

Then it was the Confederate Flag.

And the icing on their fucking big cake of sadz was Marriage Equality in all 50 States.

"The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice." ~Martin Luther King Jr.

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FBI and Police Departments Endorse Apple's Full Device Encryption

Via Daring Fireball:

The Washington Post:

FBI Director James B. Comey sharply criticized Apple and Google on Thursday for developing forms of smartphone encryption so secure that law enforcement officials cannot easily gain access to information stored on the devices — even when they have valid search warrants.

I can't think of a better endorsement of Apple and iOS.

"Apple will become the phone of choice for the pedophile," said John J. Escalante, chief of detectives for Chicago's police department. 'The average pedophile at this point is probably thinking, I've got to get an Apple phone."

Well, that didn't take long. An even stronger endorsement. The pedophile card is pretty much the last resort for these law enforcement types who feel entitled to the content of our digital devices. Fear mongering with bogeymen and an appeal to base emotions.

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Torches and Pitchforks

You know things are getting bad when one of the 0.01 Percent sounds a warning call to his fellow plutocrats:

Here's what I say to you: You're living in a dream world. What everyone wants to believe is that when things reach a tipping point and go from being merely crappy for the masses to dangerous and socially destabilizing, that we're somehow going to know about that shift ahead of time. Any student of history knows that's not the way it happens. Revolutions, like bankruptcies, come gradually, and then suddenly. One day, somebody sets himself on fire, then thousands of people are in the streets, and before you know it, the country is burning. And then there's no time for us to get to the airport and jump on our Gulfstream Vs and fly to New Zealand. That's the way it always happens. If inequality keeps rising as it has been, eventually it will happen. We will not be able to predict when, and it will be terrible—for everybody. But especially for us.

Read the entire article here.

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Fuck the NRA

"So while the NRA may be a bloated, possibly corrupt, excessively powerful lobbying force, partly staffed by horrible racists, it's also the mouthpiece of a fandom more widespread than Bronies, Trekkies, and Furries combined and multiplied by a hundred. Gun ownership is almost inarguably the single most popular hobby in America, and the NRA is a consequence of that.

Even popular gun-control efforts that failed, like the 2013 bill, would have been nothing more than tiny, symbolic changes, such as making background checks more ubiquitous, or eliminating high-capacity magazines. Elliot Rodger passed his background check and didn't use high-capacity magazines. The presence of the NRA makes real reform so far-fetched, nothing has even been proposed, let alone voted on, that will get us anywhere close to Richard Martinez's "Not One More" promised land.

And meanwhile, there's shooting after shooting. When these things happened, the president used to fly out to the grieving town and give a speech. Now we don't even fly our flags at half mast. They've become an ongoing problem we can't take the time out of our day to be individually upset about, like Adam Sandler movies.
Matching shooters gun-for-gun isn't a solution anyone takes seriously, not even the NRA. The real answer is that we, the American people, see that there are school shootings, and we all agree that they're tragic, but then we've done the David Foster Wallace thought experiment in our heads: Gun control would mean an America with fewer school shootings, but we would lose some of our gun freedom.

And apparently we don't want to live in a place like that."

We'll Always Have School Shootings Because We Really Really Love Guns

Fuck the NRA.

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Quote of the Day

"Tranny is an abbreviation for transvestite and transsexual, so I'm free to use it since I fall with that category. Much as blacks can use the N-word. I know tranny from London, where they abbreviate everything—breakfast is brekkie, biscuit is biccie. Tranny is used affectionately on the club scene. Even transsexual advocates like Jayne County and Kate Bornstein have come out and said that these words aren't necessarily slurs…

"And I'm sick of people thinking they can ban words because they make them feel bad. Boo hoo for you! Any time we choose a different path in life, we're going to get shit for it—whether you choose to be openly gay, trans or even a straight guy with tattoos all over his face. If you don't have the balls to take shit, then choose an easy path. And for huge gay organizations like GLAAD to join in to censor Ru or anyone else confuses me. "Gender bender" is on GLAAD's list of banned words. That's what Frank-n-Furter, David Bowie and Sylvester were—that's not a slur except to the most precious, uptight goody two-shoes." ~ Lady Bunny

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If Only…

Just once, I'd like to open up my RSS reader and see this for realz. Imagine a day without anything stupid going on in the world; no war updates, no stupid religious bigotry, no rumors of Apple's NEXT. BIG. THING., no pr0n resembling gymnastic competitions…

What an awesome day that would be!

I guess there's always the option of just not opening the reader…