Sunday Funnies 141012

The Sunday Funnies phrase of the week is smoke and mirrors:

smoke and mirrors the obscuring or embellishing of the truth of a situation with misleading or irrelevant information : the budget process is an exercise in smoke and mirrors. [ORIGIN: with reference to illusion created by magic tricks.]

Smoke and mirrors is a metaphor for a deceptive, fraudulent or insubstantialexplanation or description. The source of the name is based on magicians' illusions, where magicians make objects appear or disappear by extending or retracting mirrorsamid a distracting burst of smoke. The expression may have a connotation of virtuosity or cleverness in carrying out such a deception.

In the field of computer programming, it is used to describe a program or functionality that does not yet exist, but appears as though it does. This is often done to demonstrate what a resulting project will function/look like after the code iscomplete — at a trade show, for example.

More generally, "smoke and mirrors" may refer to any sort of presentation by which the audience is intended to be deceived, such as an attempt to fool a prospective client into thinking that one has capabilities necessary to deliver a product in question.

Compare red herring.

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Dear Reader,

This week's offering is an examination of smoke and mirrors; it is not an attempt to use them to deceive you. If anything, it is hoped that a few of the items below might blow a bit of smoke away and replace one or more of the officially-sanctioned, carnival mirrors with ones made of tempered, plate glass.

The Management

1. Smoke

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2. Mirror

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3. A Little of Each?

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4. Mirror mirror on the wall, who's the wisest wizard of all?

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5. A reflection On His Intelligence

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6. Smoked Pork (the political variety)

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7. With Smoke, Mirrors, and the Koch Brothers' Cash...

Go to the GOP Police State! Go directly to the GOP Police State! Do not pass Go, do not collect a living wage!

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8. The New GOP: Turning Political Pipe Dreams into Reality

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9. Despite the scientific inaccuracy and the somewhat-sticky subject, discos here!

Male honeybees are called drones. They do not hunt for flowers and collect pollen. Therefore they do not dance. Their sole raison d'être is to mate with the queen...well one of them does...once. All the pollen-collecting, honey-making worker bees in the hive are infertile females. 

So the bee talking in the cartoon is blowing smoke, which, along with the spinning, mirrored, disco ball gives me two excuses for including it in this week's compilation.

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10. Where there's smoke; there's fire, except in the minds of science deniers.

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11. Holy Smoke!

Hey! For centuries it's worked to keep the masses in line and the elite in power. Why mess with such a successful system?

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12. Smokey Bear would NOT approve!

Yeah, I know. That title is a pretty lame excuse for including this one in a smoke and mirrors collection, but it allows me to fill out the requisite dozen items.

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Dear White Racists... (a shared repost)

Today, I'm letting someone else do the talking, because nothing I might have written would say what needs to be said about this topic any better than what follows.

Dear White Racists...

Dear white racists and your fragile fee-fees:

Relax, I'm white, too. Look, I can do the secret handshake and nudge-nudge, wink-wink. Lemme whitesplain something to you, fellow white men: no one buys your bullshit. That's because your bullshit runs like this: For historically- and presently-oppressed black people to be treated decently, they must carefully avoid doing anything that could be remotely twisted into behaving like a white racist, even if you're squinting and looking at it from five hundred meters away in a thick fog. Because that would be racist, and therefore hypocritical, and if that's the case, they deserve to continue to be oppressed.

Here's the thing you thick-headed assholes totally fail to get: NO ONE DESERVES TO BE OPPRESSED, PERIOD. You can talk all you want about how it's okay for black people to be mistreated if--- but get this, there is no "if". It's not okay, ever. That's why we call it mistreatment. Your error is to think that it's ever justified, and your active misdeed is to constantly search for a justification. Black people, collectively, are not guilty of anything. In fact, a basic principle of civil society is that we reject the notion of collective guilt.

Some individual black people, like individual white people, have done bad things, and in those cases, may deserve judicial punishments. But even those people don't deserve mistreatment from some random white guy on the street. And black people in general don't owe anyone anything as a prerequisite for being treated decently. No one does.

Now I know there are a bunch of you in the back of the room waving your hand and getting ready to launch the argument that it's racist to complain about white privilege. No, it is not. Complaining about white privilege is not the same as assigning collective guilt to white people. White privilege is a pervasive feature of our society and our legal system. It's hard to see if you're white (and you're not looking or actively trying not to look), but it is real, it is powerfully destructive, and if global warming had the kind of statistical support that evidence of white privilege has, Bill O'Reilly would be haranguing FOX News viewers to install solar panels.

And here's the subtle point that you folks either can't or won't grasp. White privilege is especially the responsibility of white people to fix, not because we're all racist schlubs like you are, but because white privilege itself means that we're the ones who have the power to change it. Black people don't have that power, again because of white privilege, and not because they aren't sufficiently careful in the way they phrase their complaints about being mistreated. It's our problem and our responsibility as white people to fix not because whites are collectively guilty, but because it is the responsibility of ALL PEOPLE to fight for decent treatment for ALL PEOPLE. It just happens that, because of our shithead ancestors and a helping handful of historical accident, we white people are the ones who can do something about it. When the finger on the trigger is white, it's pointless to ask a black guy to lower the gun.

And quite frankly, given all the shit that our black fellow citizens have put up with, and all the shit they have to deal with every. fucking. day., if some of them lose their tempers and say things that aren't carefully calibrated to kiss your privileged, hypersensitive asses, well, is that actually surprising? You lose your minds when black people just complain verbally about being kicked. Imagine how tough it would be for you to keep your cool if someone was actually doing something to you instead of just talking.

Finally, yes, I know this is pointless. You want to be offended to fluff your fragile egos, and you want black people to please shut the fuck up and stop harshing your mellow. I hate to break it to you, but as long as people are being murdered by the state, given draconian sentences for crimes that in many cases they haven't even committed, and being held in poverty and privation and a constant state of fear, those of us who actually give a shit about our fellow citizens are going, at the very least, to make some noise about it.

In the meantime, if you can't be bothered to do your duty as an American to protect your fellow Americans with the considerable power at your disposal, at least shut the fuck up and stop making an ass of yourself.

Regards,

Your fellow privileged white guy

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/10/01/1333622/--Dear-White-Racists-is-One-of-the-Best-Explanations-of-White-Privilege-You-Will-Likely-Ever-Read#

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Why are there two links?

I first saw the article above in a Daily Kos post, described as an open letter written by eodell preceded by an introductory discussion. I have searched but have been unable to find either the original post of the open letter or information about eodell. All searches result in links to the Daily Kos article or reposts containing links back to the Daily Kos post.

Because I wanted to share the letter as a stand-alone post for your perusal but did not want to alter the Daily Kos post, you will find two links (above). They differ as follows:

1. The first link will take you to the Daily Kos web page containing the introductory discussion and the text of the open letter.
2. The second (Link to Source) is to a third party repost of eodell's open letter with no introductory discussion but with a link to the Daily Kos post (the first link) included at the end.

Sunday Funnies 141005

The Sunday Funnies word of the week is vision:

vi-sion |ˈvi zh ən|noun1 the faculty or state of being able to see : she had defective vision.• the ability to think about or plan the future with imagination or wisdom : the organization had lost its vision and direction.• a mental image of what the future will or could be like : a socialist vision of society.• the images seen on a television screen.2 an experience of seeing someone or something in a dream or trance, or as asupernatural apparition : the idea came to him in a vision.• (often visions) a vivid mental image, esp. a fanciful one of the future : he had visions of becoming the Elton John of his time.• a person or sight of unusual beauty.verb [ trans. ] rareimagine.DERIVATIVESvisional |- zh ənl| adjectivevisionless adjectiveORIGIN Middle English (denoting a supernatural apparition): via Old French fromLatin visio(n-), from videre ‘to see.’

Well, will you look at that!

1. Circumspect Vision

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2. Television

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3. Déjà Vu

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4. Making a Spectacle of Himself

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5. Clairvoyance

#1 Past

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#2 Present

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#3 Future

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6. Now You See It; Now You Don't

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7. Trichromatic Trouble

FYI: Cats are trichromatic, but since they rely more on night vision to hunt, their retinas have a much lower proportion of cones to rods than those of humans.

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8. Impaired Vision

Perhaps if they took off those dark glasses...

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9. In the Eyes of the Beholder

You may have to think twice about this one. I did a double take when I finally got it.

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10. Foresight

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11. 20/20 Hindsight

#1 Regret

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#2 Denial

Two words from the history of the Bush administration's case for invading Iraq are all one needs to bring into focus the bald-faced hypocrisy of the GOP's latest attack on President Obama, slam dunk.

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#3 Doggone Good Assessment

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#4 A Digital Ending for the 02/20 Hindsight Section

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12. A Total Lack of Vision

That's what I call an ironic sight gag!

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Sunday Funnies 140928

The Sunday Funnies phrase of the week is food for thought:

PHRASES

food for thought something that warrants serious consideration.
A Note, A Disclaimer, and  A Musical Interlude for readers with Nordic heritage:

1. You may think of this week's collection as a dietary supplement for your brain.
2. Most supplements should be avoided, and usually people should not eat micronutrients except people with clearly shown deficiency.[4] Those people should first consult a doctor.[5] An exception is vitamin D, which is recommended in Nordic countries[6]due to weak sunlight. (source: Wikipedia)
3. (Aquarius) Let The Sunshine In –The Fifth Dimension (from the musical, Hair)

1. The Case for Illiteracy

Here's a new argument Texas governor, Rick Perry, and his right-wing allies can use to justify their Ignorance is Better than Inconvenient Scientific Facts education policy.

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2. Forbidden Fruit

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3. Dietary Choice #1

This is the opposite of the serious dieter's two-handed push away from the dinner table.

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4. Cereal Killer

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5. Rover Discovers that the GOP's Strategy Handbook is Really a Cookbook

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6. An Honest Mistake

It was unfortunate for Herb that the zebras didn't have a better command of the English language. The "H" is silent, and so is Herb.

I'll be generous and give the cartoonist a pass for his breach of English pronunciation protocol, but only because it's a sight gag of a different stripe.

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7. Dietary Choice #2

Hey, I'll drink to that! Then again, maybe I won't.

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8. Peanut Allergy

This cartoon is a little nuts, but anaphylactic shock is nothing to sneeze at.

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9. A Non-Menu Entree

I've heard they sometimes come free of charge with coffee in the morning.

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10. Michigan Giacomo

Cartoon aficionados will understand and appreciate the title. For those who don't, I offer this alternate: The Hunger Games in Id.

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11. When Visions of Sugarplums Aren't Enough

No matter how your heart is grieving;
If you keep on believing,
The dream that you wish will come true. (lyrics from Disney's Cinderella)

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12. He's Biden His Time

Vice President Joe Biden is known for his verbal gaffes. Last week, however, he had a very bad week, even for him. You can read about it by clicking here.

Bonus: Here's a link to a top 10 list of Biden gaffes.  

The Last Bite: Biden's gaffes are epic, and he would be the first to laugh along with us at them. In contrast, there is absolutely nothing humorous or humane in the lying, self-righteous, war-mongering offerings of his immediate predecessor.

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