Kara Jean

Some inspiring news for the deport-everyone-immediately crowd today: According to a Los Angeles Times report, “at least five, and as many as 10, of the 42 children” who have been killed in criminal violence in Honduras since February had been deported from the United States, according to the manager of a city morgue in San Pedro Sula. Not that anyone could have seen that coming, except for the human rights workers who warned that it was likely to happen.

You might remember the nice lady in the top photo, who stood at a protest in Murrieta, California, in her American-flag top, and chanted “Not our kids! Not our problem!” Rachel Maddow was astonished by her. Jon Stewart was astonished by her. We know nothing about her at all, except that she had her moment on the news and probably found it very, very exciting. We wonder if she reads the Los Angeles Times. Probably not — too much liberal bias. Besides, this is our country, and we don’t owe anything to a lot of dirty diseased children who are flooding over our borders like vermin, hoping to become registered Democrats, haw-haw-haw.

Best to put them on a plane and send them back. Sure, they may end up dead, but they can still vote Democrat, haw-haw-haw.

But really, they’re their own lookout. No less an authority than Man of God Bryan Fischer has explained that God instituted borders between nations, and therefore allowing a bunch of Honduran children across ours all willy-nilly would be an offense to the Almighty. Look, just because their families don’t want them to die in a nation with the world’s highest murder rate doesn’t mean we owe them anything. Send them home, and maybe they should try praying some, maybe.

The LA Times also spoke to the cousin of a teenaged boy who was shot to death just hours after arriving back in San Pedro Sula on one of our deportation flights.

He said his cousin had left for Los Angeles after his family received several threats from the Barrio 18 gang. His mother and sister moved to a different neighborhood while the boy headed for the U.S. They simply abandoned their house in Chamelecon, one of the city’s roughest areas.

But then he was deported, and now he’s dead, and he’s not our problem either.

What we really need to do, of course, is fast-track the deportations and beef up border security, because these are not our kids, and you never know how many al Qaeda members might be sneaking in and leaving their prayer rugs at the border. Hey, we bet James O’Keefe could make a real funny video about kids being murdered after they’re deported!

We’d like to know if Alejandro, the hopeful-terrified boy in the lower photo up top, who bravely handed his birth certificate to the ICE agent at the border, ever found his parents. We sure hope he did, and we sure hope his parents can find a good lawyer, because Alejandro is not our kid. Alejandro is not our problem.

[LAT via ThinkProgress]

A news crew, clearly no threat or impediment to the cops, films from a verge in Ferguson, Missouri. A pop and a cloud of white smoke marks the arrival of a tear gas canister at their feet, and the newscrew is forced to flee.

the-ankle-rocker:

Totally Rad, known in Japan as Magic John, developed by Aicom and published by Jaleco for the Nintendo Entertainment System.

(1990)

therandominmyhead:

Yes just me, a dog. Taking a walk. With my dogs. Who are my friends. But also dogs. And I am a dog.

Dear Abby, 8 August 2014:

DEAR ABBY: My husband and I and our toddler son were recently out to dinner. A woman walked past our table to the family next to us and gushed about how “beautiful” the couple’s daughter was. Their child was the same age as our son, who is just as well-behaved. I found it hurtful that a stranger would compliment one child and ignore the family seated at the next table. My husband disagrees. Am I wrong to be offended? Do you think this was rude? — FURIOUS IN FLORIDA

Dear Furious,

Your son was not being disruptive in public, which means total strangers should shower him with praise. Otherwise, how will he ever learn that other people should reward him when he doesn’t annoy or hurt them? This stranger missed a valuable part of the social contract: the obligation that random people at restaurants have to make sure your son feels good about himself.

You didn’t have a kid just so people could ignore him in public while they do whatever shit they need to do before I Wanna Marry Harry comes on. You had a kid so that people could tell you how fucking great you are at life. The main benefit of raising children is how other people must take every opportunity to reinforce your own overblown sense of self-importance.

Fundamentally, the reason this stranger’s cruel and deliberate snub hurt you so badly is this: life is fair. Everyone always gets what they want and deserve, and good things are doled out equally to everybody on planet earth. But for one bizarre and troubling moment, this vicious and sadistic woman ripped a hole in the fabric of reality that may never be mended.

From now on, your son will be forced to go through life with the terrible memory of that time a total rando gave another person a compliment in front of him, a horrible fate that his decent behavior in public should have forever insulated him from.

pizzzatime:

(via ophthamovntn)

710642:

well? can he????

(Tales of Innocence)

silenceofthevoid:

Me, every time in public.

Wonketanians, we have failed you, and for that we are humbly sorry. How have we let you down? Because it has been three whole days since this shining diamond of dumb, GOP gubernatorial candidate Taylor Haynes, elbowed his way over the Wyoming horizon to open his mouth and let spew forth a veritable gusher of Tea Party nonsense, complete with a suggestion that we should drill and mine the fuck out of Yellowstone National Park. Oh, and maybe lease out the land as well, because what a great plan.

See? It’s unforgivable that we slept on this guy. Let’s rectify that.

You might be wondering how Haynes plans to just take Yellowstone away from the big mean federal government. With the Constitution, stupid.

If elected Wyoming governor, Republican Taylor Haynes intends to take back federal lands and could open Yellowstone National Park to drilling, grazing and mining, he said.

Haynes, who describes himself as a conservative and a scholar of the Constitution, said the U.S. government can own only 10 square miles of land, Washington, D.C., for the seat of government, as described in the U.S. Constitution under Article 1, Section 8, Clause 17.

Actually, that particular chunk of the Constitution says that the federal government could only annex ten square miles of land, tops, to be the seat of the government. It doesn’t say that the federal government can neither own nor manage any other lands, because that is a numbskull thing to think or say. Maybe if we were self-styled “Constitutional scholars” we’d understand.

Anyway, so when Haynes is elected, he’s going to wave a pocket copy of the Constitution at Barack Obama and take Yellowstone AND Grand Teton National Park AND Devil’s Tower AND U.S. Forest Service and BLM lands, because of course it is the soundest possible policy to let precious natural resources be managed at the state level by someone who doesn’t appear to believe in natural resources management, except insofar as “manage” means “drill, baby, drill.”

Also too Haynes is sort of ignoring that whole part where Wyoming only gets to be a state because they gave Yellowstone and Friends away.

The Wyoming Constitution, in Article 21, Section 26, states that Wyomingites gave up claims to federal lands in exchange for statehood, [University of Wyoming history professor Phil] Roberts said.

Apparently Haynes’s vast Constitutional knowledge extends to neither understanding the federal constitution nor reading the state one. He also seems to assume that the federal government will just roll over and play dead after he gets elected, maybe because they’ve known all along that owning anything except Washington D.C. is an unconstitutional scam or something. Whatever. Point is, once he wins, he’ll just send the feds a letter and this will all work out.

Haynes would send federal government agencies a certified letter and invite them to attend a meeting in which he will explain his plan. He said they must be gone by January 2015, when he would takes office.

“Then in whichever county they attempt to have any official activity, they will be arrested for impersonating a law enforcement officer in Wyoming,” he said.

Haynes doesn’t expect Wyoming jails to be crowded with federal employees. Most will accept job offers that he intends to extend to federal employees, he said.

Oh, well, if you make it a certified letter, then the feds will just have to stop right at the border and give up their weapons and also too make Taylor Haynes a delicious sandwich. It’s right there in the Constitution.

[Casper Star Tribune]

bestfunny:

ghostbab:

Looks like today is “Who’d ‘a Thunk It?” Day at Yr. Wonkette. First we learned that guns everywhere can lead to armed misunderstandings, and that the Supremes’ Hobby Lobby decision was a teensy bit broader than it looked at first blush. And now, you could just knock us over with a feather boa after we learned that a group of religious leaders is asking that there be a faith exemption from an upcoming executive order protecting LGBT people from employment discrimination, because otherwise Religious Liberty in America is dead (and the Nazis will come back). Color us astonished!

After the House refused to consider the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, Barack Obama said, fine, I’ll do the executive order thing so that at least companies fulfilling government contracts can’t discriminate. But wait, hints the letter sent by “faith leaders” Tuesday, the Supreme Court just said you have to take corporations’ deeply held religious beliefs into account, and so you can’t make no private corporations hire sodomites, or it’s not FAAAAAIIIIRRR! Or in earnest Concern-Speak:

Without a robust religious exemption, this expansion of hiring rights will come at an unreasonable cost to the common good, national unity and religious freedom.

What about the religiously motivated bigots? Won’t SOMEBODY please think about the religiously motivated bigots? After all, if Amalgamated Death Missile Supply is forced to hire a gay technician to install Death Missile parts, that would go against their sincerely held beliefs as adherents of the Prince of Peace.

While the letter didn’t specifically mention the Hobby Lobby decision, Michael Wear, who organized the effort, and had worked as director of “faith outreach” for the 2012 Obama campaign, explained to the Atlantic that it definitely means the concerns of homohaters must get equal status with the concerns of fetus-worshipers:

“This is not an antagonistic letter by any means,” Wear told me. But in the wake of Hobby Lobby, he said, “the administration does have a decision to make whether they want to recalibrate their approach to some of these issues.”

The executive order hasn’t been issued yet, but the Senate’s version of ENDA did include a get-out-of-discrimination-free amendment that bowed in the direction of god-driven discrimination. If the unpassed law included a “please discriminate if God tells you to” clause, then it’s only fair and just that the executive order include that too. Otherwise, Congress might have to try passing laws itself, and god knows that’s not going to happen.

[Atlantic via TPM]

Follow Doktor Zoom on Twitter. He’d like an exemption from paying taxes for bigots with churches, please.