seen in philly

A large African American man selling girl scout cookies out of the trunk of a pristine black Lincoln town car.

oh, america

You bitch:

"The role of government is to secure for citizens the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In that order. It's like a filter. If the government wants to do something that makes us a little unhappy, or takes away some of our liberty, it's okay, providing they're doing it to save our lives. That's why the cops can lock you up if they think you're a danger to yourself or others. You lose your liberty and happiness to protect life. If you've got life, you might get liberty and happiness later."

~ more disturbingly realistic "irony" (= documentary) from Doctorow's Little Brother.

I bolded the naughty parts to help you out if you've drunk the koolaid. God help us all you fuckers if you don't see that this fiction has come true and we live in a fucking police state.

The most important point, though, is to notice where the flag waving happens: if you're pro Obama's shit-on-the-public-and-spend-their-money-in-Africa-beating-up-on-random-dictators-and-replacing-them-with-America-hating-Islamists stance OR you think beating up on foreigners is a higher priority than helping / feeding / employing American citizens in this hemorrhaging economy then you are equally anti-American in my books. Don't believe the Republican v. Democrat hype but look at actual differences (or lack thereof!) in policy.

The good Lord said, "first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye." We'd better get our own backyard in order before we get back to telling the rest of the world how to mow theirs.

Vote Ron Paul.

good news at last

Some evidence that God still exists. Now those shystering, crap-producing, freedom-hating, audience-cheating fucks in LA can join the poor, the lovers of peace, the African-Americans, and everyone else Obama made promises to during his campaign but whom he has since let down. Of course, unlike those groups, the producers of excrement like Jack and Jill don't have a legitimate complaint, but it's hard to see how this isn't good news.

If both SOPA and Obama lose, we might wake up in a slightly better (i.e. more American) country. I'm in a patriotic mood tonight:

lawyers for sopa

Guess who supports SOPA? In addition to the obvious suspects (e.g. Time Warner or the Screen Actors Guild), there appear to be a large number of law firms. I guess that tells you who's really going to benefit. The culprits:

Baker & Hostetler LLP
Covington & Burling LLP
Cowan, DeBaets, Abrahams & Sheppard LLP
Cowan, Liebowitz & Latman, P.C.
Davis Wright Tremaine LLP
Irell & Manella LLP
Jenner & Block LLP
Kelley Drye & Warren LLP
Kendall Brill & Klieger LLP
Kinsella Weitzman Iser Kump & Aldisert LLP
Lathrop & Gage LLP
Loeb & Loeb LLP
Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp LLP
Morrison & Foerster LLP
Phillips Nizer, LLP
Proskauer Rose LLP
Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi LLP
Shearman & Sterling LLP
Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP
Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP
White & Case LLP

Do what you can to stop SOPA, however insignificant.

ghetto d ~ master p

After SOPA, gems like this will be lost forever, like tears in rain. Do what you can, however insignificant.

sane approach to terrorism

I'd never really believed in terrorists before—I mean, I knew that in the abstract there were terrorists somewhere in the world, but they didn't really represent any risk to me. There were millions of ways that the world could kill me—starting with getting run down by a drunk burning his way down Valencia—that were infinitely more likely and immediate than terrorists. Terrorists kill a lot fewer people than bathroom falls and accidental electrocutions. Worry about them always struck me as about as useful as worrying about getting hit by lightning.

~ Cory Doctorow (2008) Little Brother

don't worry

~ paper rad