2011-10-31

Ultra Hallowe'en

One of teh awesome things about babbies is Hallowe'en.  I picked out Ultra Ninja's costume before listening to teh story again.  I just remembered teh strong female lead using her cunning to overcome her enemy and *SPOILER* learn that she didn't need no boy to make her life complete *END SPOILER*.  Anyways, I didn't realize that it was such an ecological nightmare!  If I could go back and pick out a different costume - one that wasn't so violently adverse to Mother Earth - I would not have changed a thing.  The story for those of you who don't know it.

Anyways, here she is between her dragon and Prince Ronald:

2011-10-18

Occupy Nazi Hashtags

Late to teh party, but wanted to get my two cents in on Hashtag Hitler-gate

1. It's a hashtag.  But let's give teh guy teh benefit of teh doubt and try and address his post-hoc editted correction argument.  That orange hashtags will be creeping everyone out due to their imagined connections to "totalitarian tendencies". Perhaps teh PJmedia-idiot is right - I mean gauging teh opinions and views of teh general public isn't always easy. How else can we explain teh popularity of Creed or Justin Bieber? What we do know is how favourable a view teh public has of OWS at teh beginning of teh month. Because there was polling.

At 54% favourability, it currently outpolls teh Tea Party 2:1. In fact teh Tea Party has never polled higher than mid 40's in terms of favurability, so teh general public already connects better with OWS than they ever have with teh Taxed Enough Already movement.  Sort of an important point when discussing teh public's view of teh movements.

2. But teh thing is that no one knows. Despite teh apparently unshakable belief displayed by teh moran that OWS is doomed to being despised by all Americans everywhere. Maybe as moar polling data becomes available and OWS' popularity trends down she might be able to come back to this post and say that she "told us so." But that data isn't in yet. Incidentally, I kinda think that any effect teh orange hashtag has on OWS favourablity polling is microscopically miniscule at best, but that leads us into,,,

3. Moar importantly - and I think this is part of teh original point - it's not about teh orange hashtag. It's about teh OWS movement having "totalitarian tendencies". That it's really a giant fascist autocratic movement with a cult-like reverence of some charismatic Dear Leader Fuhrer-figure. Uh, minus that cultish leader thing. And teh autocratic fascism. But otherwise - exactly that.

wev. Hashtags or not, this is about teh nature of teh OWS movement. If OWS really is just a patchouli reeking version of Heaven's Gate looking for teh low-Gini-coeffecient spaceship behind teh comet of record high corporate profits or whatnot, polling will bear it out.

4. As a kind and generous Dragon-King, I want to look at common ground. I am totally against totalitarianism. Don't liek it one bit. Not a fan of fascism. I relate bettar to anarchists than authoritarians. Teh entrenched establishment can eat me. &c.  Just teh same as they profess "on teh other side."

So we're on teh same page on opposing blind loyalty. That despite what we're told to believe - we need to use our own judgement to decide. I mean, who are you gonna believe - edicts from above or your own lying eyes?  I believe teh phrase is WAKE UP SHEEPLE!

And here we have OWS. Made up of people. And while teh righties may disagree with some of them, dislike some of them, and outright despise some of them with 53% of their shrivelled hearts and missing souls. And on teh other hand we have Wall Street and teh Financial Industry.  Who after leading teh entire world into a massive financial crisis that we still haven't seen teh bottom of, is in teh middle of reaping near-record profits.

I dunno how you define "being against totalitarianism", but siding with Goldman or Citibank certainly doesn't fit my definition.

UPDATE: I've been informed with great Gravitas that d00d is of teh non-d00d gender, so I plucked some eyebrows on teh way and shaved some pronouns now he is a she.

Doo-de-doo, de-doo, de-doo, de-doo-de-doo

2011-10-13

Congrats Jigme.

Congratulations to teh d00d whose name I done stoled.

2011-10-07

Very Low Food Security

via this Mark D comment at teh Mothership.

There's already been a lot of good commentary on how horrible teh Julie Gunlock piece is so it's tough to add anything worthwhile. Well Imma try anyways.


Teh USDA page has a lot of useful descriptors and statistics regarding food insecurity. It is no wonder Gunlock didn't link it.

She is using teh stat for "very low food security" even though a substantial percentage of the "low food security" group report skipping or reducing the size of meals. What she describes as "unpleasant to be sure, but at its core, just a somewhat boring, irregular, and occasionally reduced diet" includes households where someone did not eat for an entire day. Sometimes several days a month, several months a year.

While it's true that in households with children, the adults shield teh children from hunger by going without food first - this factor is offset by the fact that households with children are more likely to suffer from food insecurity.

Regarding teh lazy bums ought to get a job so's they can afford food aspect of Gunlock's inhuman sociopathy, 85% of households with food-insecure children had at least one working adult, the majority being full-time workers.

Gunlock is offended that Sesame Workshop is creating a whole new muppet to address this minor issue which only affects a bare few million American children. This character was created specifically for this one television special. She claims the Sesame Street is "telling a fib" - but as far as can be determined from the available information and teh sneak preview clip, nothing of the kind occurs. Lily only claims to understand teh unpleasantness about "not knowing where your next meal is coming from" because her family is food insecure and has used food pantries before. Gunlock assumes that government programs and charitable organizations addressing hunger in America "will likely be absent" despite the fact that Lily specifically mentions school meal programs and that TEH ENTIRE SPECIAL IS BUILT AROUND A FOOD PANTRY BEING RUN ON SESAME STREET.

Of course, Gunlock doesn't really think her pre-schooler needs to learn about the welfare system in the U.S. Which is why this show IS AN ABOMINATION BEFORE GOD. NO ONE MUST LEARN OF ANYTHING THAT LITTLE GUNLOCK IS BEING KEPT IGNORANT OF.

It's amazing. There's this one-off Sesame Street special coming up and Julie Gunlock is offended and pissed off about it. Despite being exactly wrong about what is and is not in it. She is offended by what she imagines those dirty hippies at Sesame Workshop have cooked up in their dirty socialist puppet conspiracy. And that's the least offensive part of the column. That she's an ignorant idiot raging against an obviously irrelavent strawman pales in comparison to teh arguments she's using to tear it down. She is actually saying that millions of households experiencing very low food security - where adults are skipping meals for entire days - in teh RICHEST NATION IN THE WORLD - that is okay by her. That situation is a non-problem. Feature, not a bug. God bless those United States of America.

2011-10-05

Election Day Again

Third time in less than a year, tomorrow is voting day in Ontario.  It's been a pretty lousy year as teh first election got us Mayor Rob Ford and teh second one got us a Conservative majority government at the federal level.  So I'm not feeling particularly optimistic.

Right now, opinion polling is looking pretty good.  This is the end of the second consecutive Liberal majority, so the public was certainly in a mood to toss teh bums out.  8 years is plenty long enough to develop a good collection of bad decisions, but that's something I certainly don't have to tell my American readers.  At the beginning of the year that mood dominated with the Progressive Conservatives enjoying close to a ten point lead - but the shine has already started to come off the right-ward swing.  The last polls before the official one are calling for a Liberal victory - just a question of whether it will be a third majority government in a row or not.

Maybe it's that Ford Nation am disappoint.  With good reason.  Maybe it's because, teh Harper majority, although only convened for a few weeks, has managed to Law and Order teh fear of totalitarianism into teh public.  Maybe being ignorant selfish fucktard assholes is a phase that most Canadians work through in under a year.  Maybe it's because the Ontario's PC party went with teh most unlikable shitbag they could have found for leader.  I don't know what the reasons are, but I am hoping that they hold strong throughout tomorrow.  Because a conservative trifecta will make being in LEAFS SUCK pretty fucking sucky.

Anywho, my predictions (based on pure guesswork) - first the Dippers are going to do a lot bettar than anyone's calling for.  Not an Orange surge like in teh Federal election, but at moar than teh 10 to 20 they are projected to pick up.  Also, I'm calling for a not-quite majority Liberal government.  Plus one seat for the Greens, because why not.

Lib: 53, PC: 28, NDP: 25, Green: 1 - that's the results after all the too-close-to-call ridings are finally called.  I'm guessing that there'll be three of these - close enough for recounts, which may or may not happen but don't actually flip any seats.

My own riding was one of the few LEAFS SUCKian ridings that flipped Conservative during the federal election and went for Rob Ford really strongly.  I'm predicting that my neighbours have been disillusioned enough with the right that we'll keep our Liberal MPP.  He's also fairly high profile being teh Minister of Energy - and that's actually one of the issues being talked about right now too.

Anyways, we'll see how out of touch I am with my province in just a bit over 24 hours.  And there's an unopened bottle of Bulleit in case I need consoling.

We'll see how totes off teh mark I