Why can’t we prosecute people for gun incompetence?

It’s another of those stories.

Det. Sgt. Troy Gilleylen of the Battle Creek Police Department said Babick and her 25-year-old boyfriend, whose name was not released, were in their upstairs bedroom at the time of the shooting, lying on their bed watching television. The boyfriend’s .45-caliber handgun was on the bed, after it had just been cleaned and loaded.

Babick got up from the bed to answer the telephone, the boyfriend told police, and when she got back in bed, the gun discharged, sending a bullet through her left rib cage.

She staggered downstairs and collapsed in the living room, where she died.

That’s tragic and terrible. But this is what also makes me furious.

The man told police she may have lain on top of the gun, or somehow hit it with her hand when she got back on the bed, causing it to discharge. Gilleylen said the distraught man has been “100 percent cooperative” with police and he has not been charged in the incident.

Wait. He’s lounging about with a loaded handgun in bed, and it goes off and kills a woman, and the police do nothing? Isn’t there a charge like negligent homicide that would be appropriate here?

This man is an idiot who killed another human being with stupidity. At the very least, he ought to have his privilege to carry guns around taken away, especially since there are two children living there. Do we have to wait until an ‘accident’ kills one of them?

Nah. As we all know, a gun-fondlers right to be a danger to others may not be infringed.

Stop the beatification of Scalia

I’ve been seeing so many articles praising Scalia, now that he’s dead. He was a consistent jurist; he was enthusiastic and lively; he was best friends with Ruth Bader Ginsburg; he was steadfast and sincere in his beliefs.

I don’t give a fuck.

For me, this is what defines Scalia: his dissenting opinion in Edwards v. Aguillard. The man was a confident ignoramus.

The body of scientific evidence supporting creation science is as strong as that supporting evolution. In fact, it may be stronger…. The evidence for evolution is far less compelling than we have been led to believe. Evolution is not a scientific “fact,” since it cannot actually be observed in a laboratory. Rather, evolution is merely a scientific theory or “guess.”… It is a very bad guess at that. The scientific problems with evolution are so serious that it could accurately be termed a “myth.”

The core of his argument was that the creationists said they were teaching the scientific evidence, and gosh, they sure seem sincere when they insist there is no religious purpose to teaching that the world was created in 6 days and there was a big flood and a boat, so who am I to question them? His originalism and insistence on a strict literal interpretation of what was said was a disingenuous sham that he hypocritically adopted whenever he saw a conclusion he wanted to reach for.

It’s also ironic that he was an affirmative action hire. Maybe he should have been appointed to a lesser court, except that I don’t believe any court in our country would be well-served by a racist dumbass.

Obama will nominate a competent legal scholar to the Supreme Court

yandle

I’m seeing lots of rumors that Obama has made his choice for Scalia’s replacement (but no good confirmation), and that he’ll make the formal announcement on Thursday. Her name is Staci Michelle Yandle, and she is a United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Illinois.

For some reason, the rumor sites are all emphasizing the fact that she is a black lesbian woman, rather than the real shocker, that Obama isn’t installing another far right wackaloon in the slot.

I don’t know that I trust this rumor, but if true, it would show that Obama is completely out of fucks, which would be awesome.

Sorry to confuse you all — there is no good evidence for any specific choice anywhere. I’m just amused at the headlines that all babble about “black lesbian woman”, and you know that when Obama does deliver a choice, unless it’s a “white heterosexual man”, the headlines will all be entirely about the person’s color, sexual orientation, and gender.

Happy Darwin Day!

Mr Darwin would be 207 years old today.

youngmrdarwin

How are you planning to celebrate? I’m going to spend all day teaching and grading and in meetings, and then late this afternoon I’ll hitch-hike to the nearest ocean, convince a cranky sea captain to let me aboard his brig-sloop, and then spend 5 years sailing around the world. So if you don’t hear anything from me after today, I’m just chasin’ the dream.

Oregon occupation is ending

I’m actually respecting the way the FBI has been handling the Bundy situation. They’ve been deliberate and cautious and have been trying to minimize the gunplay. I wish police everywhere were paying attention: guns are a last resort.

OPB has been tracking developments. The FBI has closed in on the Malheur refuge, and has demanded that the remaining four surrender. Those four have been freaking out and posting defiant videos to youtube, which do diddly for their situation now but are going to play well in the courtroom. The story is that they’re going to surrender sometime this morning.

The next step will be for the FBI to document all the damage the militia did to the refuge. That’ll also play well in court.

Cliven Bundy has been arrested. He sent out a twitter message and email calling for all “patriots” to go to Oregon. All caps, of course.

After his plane landed in Oregon, he was arrested. How anticlimactic. And how totally predictable. And about time. Anyone else who is a million dollar scofflaw wouldn’t need to incite rebellion to find themselves in jail.

These people aren’t heroic patriots. They’re just arrogant, privileged crooks with weird religious beliefs to justify criminal behavior.

I will never accomplish anything this great

lloydsturd

Julius Caesar is said to have wept at the tomb of Alexander the Great — “Do you think I have not just cause to weep, when I consider that Alexander at my age had conquered so many nations, and I have all this time done nothing that is memorable?,” he said. Well, now I have learned of the Lloyd’s Bank Turd, and I am disconsolate. 1200 years ago, Vikings had conquered the city of York in England, held it for a century, and left behind a clutter of buried debris, including old cesspits. In one of them, archaeologists excavated an amazing relic: a single massive bowel movement, left behind by some heroic citizen who passed it alone into a hole in the ground, where it rested in solitary glory and was somehow preserved for posterity.

So what do we know about the anonymous Viking who made the most famous deposit that Lloyds Bank is ever likely to see? His or her diet consisted largely of meat and grains, but not much in the way of fruits or vegetables, which may help explain why the sample is nine inches long and weighs half a pound. “Whoever passed it probably hadn’t ‘performed’ for a few days,” says student conservator Gill Snape. Considering the large number of fruit pits and vegetable seeds found at the site but not in this particular Viking’s stool, this was likely not the healthiest or the most regular person in the village.

Like a lot of Vikings, this one suffered from at least two types of intestinal parasites: The remains of hundreds of whipworm and maw-worm eggs were found in the stool. The presence of worms in the stool is indicative of the filthy conditions and poor hygiene in Viking settlements. Wells were dug too close to latrines, making the availability of clean, uncontaminated water a hit-or-miss (usually miss) proposition. The dirt floors of the Viking dwellings teemed with fly larvae (maggots) and mouse and rat droppings, with plenty of dog, pig, cow, and horse droppings just outside the door. It was virtually inevitable that residents of such settlements would be infested with intestinal parasites.

Not only do I fail to produce such impressive output in the first place, what I do excrete gets swirled around in a watery sewer system, demolished in a frothy slurry at a sewage treatment plant, and encouraged to degrade. What legacy will I leave to my descendants? I’m tempted to start digging many holes in my backyard and create a bank of excrement. I hope the neighbors don’t mind.

Oh, wait! I have a blog! Perhaps some fragment of it will survive the inevitable bit rot, get archived somewhere somewhat permanent, and someday get enshrined in a museum somewhere, for the enlightened people of the future to grimace over.

One can hope.

Baby steps, everyone

All right, there was another Democratic debate last night between Clinton and Sanders. Both of them revealed different strengths and weaknesses, and make no mistake, both of them have weaknesses. I think it’s because they’re both human beings, and not gods.

And now today I look out at all my friends, who are also all human beings, and I see their weaknesses exposed: it is not enough to favor one candidate, you have to divide them, so your favored person is the candidate of Heaven, and the other is Satan’s representative. Just stop it. Please. Here’s what I want you to do instead.

Vote your conscience in the primaries. It’s going to be between Sanders and Clinton, so just pick the one you like best. You can even write in a different candidate! It’s easy!

After the primaries, the party apparatus will be working to promote the winner, who will face off against the Republicans, who actually are the Evil Party. Maybe your favorite did not get the final nomination, but that’s the nature of politics, compromise. Hold your nose and vote for the non-Republican, whoever it is. It’s OK. You have to refocus and get a job done, and it is the nature of American politics that trying to stick with your ideal candidate who does not have the consensus of the party is futile, and can only aid the opposition.

But, you are saying, you are an idealist and want to see your philosophical and social utopia implemented in government now, and the official candidate falls short! This is true. But, I will point out, the president is one person, and has limited power to implement your goals while in office, and if your dreams are all so narrowly aimed at that one office, you’re never ever going to see them come true.

If your candidate isn’t the final nominee for president, vote for the nominee in the election anyway, and before the election, pay attention to that mob of rat-fucking assholes in congress. Are you for Bernie, but Hillary gets the nod? Work to get more progressive socialists into congress right now. Are you for Hillary, but somehow Bernie rides an unlikely populist wave to the White House? Buckle down and get more pragmatic women elected to represent you. Run for local office yourself! Don’t forget that there are also these midterm elections that always have reduced voter turnout.

I’m just saying that if your ideological position doesn’t get the White House, the best response is to then turn your passion to those other branches of government, congress and the courts. If your hero doesn’t snag the national office, get more heroes into state and local government.

Also, please, pay attention to the media. They want to see the spectacle of Bernie fanatics battling Hillary fanatics. They are intentionally feeding that antagonism, because they don’t want to see the electorate focused on fixing problems — fixing things never gets the goggle-eyed viewership of ongoing catastrophes. Don’t let yourself be used.