Asshats on Parade - Which ones are the Good Guys? Edition

“But I don’t want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.
"Oh, you can’t help that," said the Cat: "we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad."
"How do you know I’m mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, or you wouldn’t have come here.” 
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

Hot damn I love Texans. A bunch of open carry Mofos showed up at the Jack in the Box and the employees called the Cops and hid in the freezer. Mofos were indignant that they were treated like criminals. Video at the link.

Open Carry Demonstrators Scare Restaurant Employees

By Ken Kalthoff

 “They locked themselves inside a freezer for protection out of fear the rifle-carrying men would rob them,” the email stated. “The demonstration had no signage that would have alerted anyone to their real purpose, and to our knowledge they did not attempt to contact anyone in the Fort Worth Police Department to advise us prior to the demonstration.”

Fort Worth police responded to the situation as if it was a robbery. 

Imagine if the employees were also big fans of open carry and 'stand your ground'. You want to be the Cop deciding who to shoot?

What are the PoPo going to do if some customer decides to stand their ground and shoots these Mofos? Charge the frightened customer?  Know how much a trial would cost?

Shaking my damn head. Not in my State. How much tax money do they have to waste in Texas? How crazy stupid are these folks? Maybe it is the heat? You have to admit that Texans have panache. What does Pennsylvania have to offer? Scrapple? Quakers? At least when we go out to get a hamburger, we do not end up hiding in the freezer. I will take it. I am getting a little too long in the tooth for hide and seek. And scrapple is delicious.

A Vast Wasteland May Be Soon Upon Us

UPDATE: I wrote the original essay below in October 2013. I so hate to be right.

Antibiotic resistance now 'global threat', WHO warns

By Pippa Stephens

We need the Affordable Care Act. Why is the government shut down to prevent us from having health care? I have nothing funny, happy or partisan to say about this debacle. I say this:

CDC Threat Report: ‘We Will Soon Be in a Post-Antibiotic Era’

• BY MARYN MCKENNA
 

The agency’s overall — and, it stressed, conservative — assessment of the problem:

• Each year, in the U.S., 2,049,442 illnesses caused by bacteria and fungi that are resistant to at least some classes of antibiotics;

• Each year, out of those illnesses, 23,000 deaths;

• Because of those illnesses and deaths, $20 billion each year in additional healthcare spending;

• And beyond the direct healthcare costs, an additional $35 billion lost to society in foregone productivity.

“If we are not careful, we will soon be in a post-antibiotic era,” Dr. Tom Frieden, the CDC’s director, said in a media briefing. “And for some patients and for some microbes, we are already there.”

WPA Poster

We are in bad shape. We are 37th in health care outcomes among all the nations. And we pay the most for health care. That is bad, it is true. It is worse than folks think. Some Governors are resisting the ACA. Their solutions to these serious disease issues are, for example:

1. Defund women's health clinics which diagnose and treat men and women for STDs;

2. Close the only public tuberculosis hospital in the state and house the contagious patients in an old motel in a large city.

This creates active disease vectors in major population areas. These diseases will bubble upward from the poor, who cannot get medical treatment, to the rich and privileged. Disease is no respecter of gated communities, security guards, or wealth. Everyone has heard of Typhoid Mary, right? As ye sow, so shall ye reap. Do we really want to go back to 1940s? Those who do not remember and learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

Response to the Canonization of Pope John Paul II

I remember how shocked everyone was when Sinead OConnor sang this on Saturday Night Live in the 70s. I was there watching the TV. Ms. OConnor was reviled.

Fight the real enemy. It was appropriate then and is even more appropriate now. I am a Catholic baptized and confirmed.

'How can you post this and call yourself a Catholic' you may ask. It is complicated.

"Over the pope as the expression of the binding claim of ecclesiastical authority there still stands one's own conscience, which must be obeyed before all else, if necessary even against the requirement of ecclesiastical authority. Conscience confronts [the individual] with a supreme and ultimate tribunal, and one which in the last resort is beyond the claim of external social groups, even of the official church."  (Pope Benedict XVI [then Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger], "Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II", ed. Vorgrimler, 1968, on Gaudium et spes, part 1, chapter 1.)

Ghetto Garden Fabulous

My New Fig among the Daffodils

My house is a tiny HUD row house I bought as a veritable shell a decade ago. I have had to dedicate any money I had to serious repairs like putting in a heating system and erecting a front door.

I love to garden. However, my garden gets the least investment in terms of capital available. Nevertheless, I have turned it from hard packed clay with a scraggly lawn I had to mow to its present state.

I scavenged antique bricks from an old house and we made a walk. Who wants a lawn to mow? Not me. I use fallen tree branches to make garden beds. I use chunks of cement. I scavenge fallen leaves that others bag up and throw away. I compost to make soil and keep weeds down. In that way, I have raised the level of my garden 6 inches of fertile composted soil all over. Took some time.

I write a lot about garden design here. Even so, I did not realize quite what I was doing, until my Daughter suggested I get some nicer paving stones on a trip to the garden store. I recoiled. And I was not sure why. I mean, I just spent $50.00 on new fig trees.

And then the light dawned. I like the scavenging. Saves money so I can indulge in fig trees. It is a challenge. I just did not know it was a design theme. I scavenged every single one of those Iris and in another few weeks they will be glorious. I have the Herbs in and my Blueberries are doing fine.

My garden theme is Ghetto Fabulous. Example is the old ladder. It is a bean tower. I think it will be beautiful. We shall see. God bless my Daughter. Eventually she will whip me into shape. One way or another. Kind of like my garden.