Not Responsible For Your Fantasies

Short, late post mostly because this week and next week pretty have/will blow for me.

First Rabbit Day coming week 3.

[22:18] ditriech: what is this. i dont even
[22:19] WhamBangThud: DEATH PICKLE
[22:19] ditriech: how did you know what i call it?
WhamBangThudsigned off from "gmail.DFFAA63A" at 22:22.

I BLOG THIS FROM A LAND OF ICE AND SNOW BLISTERING FUCKING HEAT. I MEAN JESUS DC, WHAT THE FUCK.

Ahem. Sorry for that. Mostly.

Anyhoo, I really wanted to, you know, jump back into blogging today. Or something. But I had a minor problem of electricity loss^sd for the past week or so. Or exactly one week. I cant remember. It’s not like it’s been so hot the only way I was able to keep cool was by drinking beer or anything. No! Never!

~

The news today gives me an opportunity to respond to ditriech's comment from a few weeks ago. Where he wondered why I didn't show more respect to the arguments for a cause of Autism, and what this did to families of Autistics. Well here's why: families of Autistics are one of the most manipulated groups of our time. And a minority of them have taken the bait of their manipulators and become the most threatening anti-science crusaders this side of the Creationists. And the dumbest celebrity fad not involving L. Ron Hubbard.

It's all fun and games until I give your kids Polio.

The thing about Autism is, we don't know what causes it. It's unsolved and incurable right now. That makes it a Gap where you can put a God. A big, deep gap, since it destroys lives and motivates families to try almost any promised cure. Using illness as a con is ... human. Born blind or eyeless? You can turn it to your advantage and become a "seer." Or get fucked become a scapegoat or a curse. Epileptic? Better accuse someone of giving you a demon, before they accuse you of being one. Inbreeding make your rulers dumb, parinoid, and OCD? Declare their ravings to be messages from god.

When there's no cure, we turn medicine into business or politics. So we shouldn't be surprised when every group of quacks in this country decides the Autism market is bullish. And whatever they want to destroy, should develop a "link" to Autism. Fast.

Hate vaccinations for hippie, or tinfoil-hat reasons? Link them relentlessly to Autism, no matter what they contain.

Want to ban all animal products? There's your cause of Autism, right there.
 

Ice Cream Mandrake? Children's ice cream?

Vaguely Christian activist? Hate fertility treatments and contraception? Late birth and IVF cause Autism.

Want to make a fortune off untested, piss-bottle medicine? You can cure Autism!

Want to forget Causation-Correlation, and get your grant work in the news cycle? Bad parenting and TV = Autism!

This is quackery with consequences.

SOUP?!!?

Say what you will about poisoning kids with iron enemas - or wasting research money that could find real treatments -, but attacking vaccination is not a game. If you leave some kids open to infection, you create mutation factories. You expose other kids at different stages of vaccination. It's like lighting one bush on fire in the middle of a forest. Only the fire is immune to water and the trees are made of infants.

So Autism claims drive me nuts, because they're a byword for bad faith. It's a cause so complicit with evil, that it can bring California hippies together with the Taliban, in a joint crusade to thwart doctors, because doctors are uppity and pretend like they know things. Here's hoping science can keep the word out, and further immunize us to dipshits.

I have found it.

PETA leadership probably aren't the absolute craziest people alive, but their ratio of Money/Respectability to Insanity is unmatched.

They also have the highest ratio of lying to self-righteousness of anyone outside the Discovery Institute. Probably comes from having the same mission: convince people of something you do not yourself believe.

~

What are we hoping for exactly? I'm a cynic at heart, so I can see why sane people would worry about the Obama Phenomenon. And every one of us should have to answer this question. It's inspiring to hear that this election is about "the past versus the future." That "we are the change we have been waiting for." It's easy to wade into a crowd of your own generation, 100,000 strong, chanting happy generalities. But this doesn't have a great track record over the last 400 years. It usually leads to policies that are stupid, followed by death. And Committees.

That's why I gave a snarky toast last night. Warthog and I were drinking our liberal microbrews in our costal sports bar. The Sabres had just spanked a great team on the road. Our Man is about to lead our party into every house of government, tossing out the cruel legacies of the old farts before us. The toast I got the bar into was "Barack Obama! Tomorrow belongs to us!" Because I'm a dick.

Another stellar pick from the Random Number generator.  With no "off" games on the board this week, it can't do too badly. But I'd like to point out that it picked PSU, OSU, and Michigan. I gotta respect an algorithm based on atmospheric noise that picks the hometown favorites.  And that also has a soft spot in its digital heart for hating on Minnesota. Despite its successes in the last two weeks, the RNG played it safe this week and predicted that the enimitable ditriech. Full predictions after the jump.

~

On the road just north of IU, I took some time for cofabg's Best Blogger Alive. Who you'll notice, agrees with my take on the Palin run.

It's worth re-stating from the heart of Red America: there's a sizable minority of voters who are being asked, a third time, to vote on tribal identity. In 2000 it was For Christ, in 2004 Against Queers and 2008 it's For One of Our Own.

Honestly folks, Aaron Sorkin, Paul Begala and the rest need not apply for this election. It's going to follow its own strange logic. The last decade has whittled our battle down from Liberal vs. Conservative to People of Ability vs. The People Next Door. The Republicans have broken as a governing party, and have no other logic left.

It's an insane sell, given how difficult next year's going to be.

I still think it could work.

~

This speech is fucking surreal.

Lady, you're talking about your fellow citizens. What is wrong with you?

"Our opponent." "Those people." "That government."

EVERYONE OUTSIDE THE ROOM IS SUSPECT. SPEAK THEIR NAMES AND THEY MAY APPEAR.

Jesus.

I hate almost everything CNN does. They've got more people watching the wires and more cameras on the ground than anyone, and once they have the image or the lede they consistently do the shittiest, most half-asked job covering it.

Say, here. In this encouraging piece of news.

But I can forget, if not forgive, the "air the controversy" bullshit cable news always falls back on when it feels like doing no research and taking no stance. Because the fact that this statement is out there makes me happy.

Also, Georgia signed.

This ain't a sewn outfit homes, homes is about it

This is one of those sad situations where 95% of all grownups agree, and yet we do the opposite. "21" combines some our worst fantasies. We take a real fact of life (young people are reckless), and pretend we can control it with symbolic action and voodo responsibility.

Voodo as in, the month after this law gets changed a 19 year old will die. Just like every other month. But now everyone will feel bad, like their allowing the law to change somehow caused it. Which feelings will be milked by monomaniacs, and given free coverage on CNN.

Unlike now, when 19 year olds die, no one will go on the record saying how, no one that age is told or can be expected to seek help when too drunk, and jurors and soldiers are legal children. But Candy can sleep well at night, and dream that she re-writes human nature with every letter to Congress.

The fantasy can't end soon enough.