Even more problematic stuff

[laklak]

Billy Gibbons, founding member of ZZ Top and noted activist, has fired his current tour's opening act, America's Got Talent alumni Benton Blount. Blount posted a picture of himself on Facebook wearing a MAGA hat and holding a Chik-Fil-A sandwich, and was suspended from Facebook for "violating community standards". Gibbons, famous for his unwavering commitment to social justice issues and such feminist anthems as "Sharp Dressed Man", "Pearl Necklace", "Legs", "Woke Up With Wood", "Velcro Fly", and "Tube Snake Boogie", had no comment.

Way to go, Billy! Stick it to the man, man! And good on you, Facebook. Fuck Trump! Fuck anybody who voted for him! And fuck those Christo-fascist Chick-Fil-A sammiches and any Nazi slimeballs who would eat them!

https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/p ... d-off-tour

[Jason]

[Seabass]

Billy Gibbons, founding member of ZZ Top and noted activist, has fired his current tour's opening act, America's Got Talent alumni Benton Blount. Blount posted a picture of himself on Facebook wearing a MAGA hat and holding a Chik-Fil-A sandwich, and was suspended from Facebook for "violating community standards". Gibbons, famous for his unwavering commitment to social justice issues and such feminist anthems as "Sharp Dressed Man", "Pearl Necklace", "Legs", "Woke Up With Wood", "Velcro Fly", and "Tube Snake Boogie", had no comment.

Way to go, Billy! Stick it to the man, man! And good on you, Facebook. Fuck Trump! Fuck anybody who voted for him! And fuck those Christo-fascist Chick-Fil-A sammiches and any Nazi slimeballs who would eat them!

https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/p ... d-off-tour

Woke ZZ Top! That's hilarious. I, too, would have given him the boot if it was my tour, but I don't think that picture should be grounds for a Facebook suspension. Perhaps there's more to the story? I'm sure there's no shortage of pictures of MAGA-hatted slimeballs on Facebook.

[laklak]

Yep, his tour, his rules. Pretty funny, though.

[Forty Two]

Kavanaugh has been treated so unfairly! What the angry Democrat mob has done to him is a disgrace! SAD!

It is unfair. Having false allegations, especially of this serious nature, is unfair, and the Democrat mob is absolutely ridiculous. Screaming at the sky, clawing at the doors of the Supreme Court, chasing down Senators in the halls and trapping them in elevators to scream at them like a tantrum-prone toddler, filling the audience of Senate hearings with screaming meemies harping on and on, chasing Senators and administration officials into restaurants and to their homes to harass them. Sitting on the allegations for months with the plan to sandbag the confirmation process if they couldn't stall it otherwise, and then trying use these ridiculous allegations to thwart a nomination, hoping to take over the Senate at midterms. Sitting their wasting committee time by pontificating and speechmaking instead of engaging in relevant inquiry, and wasting still more time asking dopey, idiotic, juvenile questions about fucking yearbook comments and quotes? Absolutely absurd and shameful. Disgusting and sad.

Yes, the Democrat mob is a dog damn disgrace, and they should be ashamed of themselves.

It is unfair... So unfair. The mere existence of unproven allegations, especially of a serious nature against a powerful figure, is unfair by default, because only allegations that are proveable to the satisfaction of the accused, and their supporters, should ever be made or aired publicly.

Wow, that's an amazing bit of hyperbole there. It's not the "unproven" nature of the allegations that make the matter unfair. It's the unfalsifiable nature of the allegations. Her allegations were just enough to be sure not to afford any ability to disprove anything, or to test them (with the exception of the bits that were demonstrably not true and the bits that changed, so one or the other had to be not true).

The sexual nature of the allegations are the only reason this was given credence. If he was accused of initiating fights with teenage boys at the time, everyone would have said - "well, there's no way to tell if this is true or not true, so we can't do anything with the allegations." If the guy was accused by a former customer of a bank that it was Brett Kavanaugh and his friend Mark Judge who robbed the bank - and I know because I was there - but I don't remember how I got to the bank, and I dont' remember how I got home, and I don't remember which bank it was, but I'm sure it was Kavanaugh. If the candidate said "I never did anything like that" and the supposed witnesses all said "I don't remember any such thing happening" then what would we do with the allegations? Would it be "fair" to give them any weight? Should we engage in months long investigations into every decades old allegation of a serious crime?

It was also unfair in its process. When any allegations are known in July, to wait until the close of hearings in September, on the eve of a vote on the issue, and then spring the allegations on the candidate and the committee evaluating the candidate, is quite unfair. You then want to ask for lengthy investigations, which are to be expanded, and to try to make sure that the vote is delayed past a Senate election. That was bullshit, and unfair.

When serious allegations remain unproven then anyone and everyone challenging their flat-out denial can be characterised as an impotent oaf screaming at the sky; a political protest can be painted as clawing at the doors of government like some impulsive, slavering animal; and trying to give a personal account of similar experiences can be dismissed out-of-hand as an aggressive and threatening act, as chasing down and screaming at people like a tantrum-prone toddler.

Nobody characterized "everyone" who "challenged" the denial as that. However, there were plenty of primal screaming, clawing at the door, chasing senators down the hall, screaming idiots to go around, that's for sure. And, they were an embarrassment to themselves and the country, and many of them did it as political protest for political purposes. The gallery in the Senate doesn't get filled with screaming protesters by accident, my friend. That's in the Senate building. It's not "come one come all."

It's unfair because when serious allegations remain unproven real people give up their stake in the process and forgo their right to participate while instead some mysteriously implicit 'them' fills the audience of hearings

Not mysterious, and not implicit - it's obvious and known - the Democrat Senators caused the audience to be filled with those nonsense spewing "protesters." It was a purposeful attempt to jack up the process and whip up a frenzy. Their goal was to delay the vote, and get it past the November elections.

with screaming meemies harping on and on before encouraging otheres to chase and harass officials in their homes and at their dinner tables: these people can never act under their own volition while serious allegations remain unproven.

They can act on their own and some do. That doesn't mean that such protests aren't manufactured - they are from time to time - and that doesn't mean they aren't used for political purposes. The idea that politicians on both sides of the aisle don't push buttons to whip up a frenzy over issues is naive. They do it.

It's unfair when serious allegations remain unproven because those sitting on boards of inquiry, and whom are charged with challenging the testimony of the accused, are rendered irrelevant and simply waste their time pontificating or asking dopey, idiotic, juvenile questions about the material evidence provided by the accused: they can never have a legitimate point of view, a justified concern, or even a valid obligation to the truth.

You see how you've got it completely backward here. Kavanaugh was not "the accused.' Remember all the points made about it not being a criminal prosecution but rather a nominating process. Stick with that. Kavanaugh was a Presidential appointee presented to the Senate for its consent. He wasn't "the accused." He has never been "the accused." He was not on trial. He was being reviewed for confirmation. If Ford had a criminal complaint, she should have gone to the police. Then he would be "the accused."

And here, the Senators did, in fact, pursue repeated questioning over a 16 or 17 year old boy's yearbook quotes and commentary. They did that. Nobody explained any "legitimate point of view" for doing that and nobody explained the "justified concern" that warranted inquiring about the banter between 17 year old boys in 1980s yearbooks.

Valid obligation to the truth? To the truth? Coming from the side of this argument that says women ought not be doubted when they tell fluid and changing stories about the same incident, and cannot remember most of the details of the decades old unprovable allegation, and get pertinent facts demonstrably wrong, because being inconsistent, lacking memory of major events, and being wrong on pertinent points is "entirely consistent" with being correct about an accusation.... coming from the side of this argument that says that two people can have different "truths" and "different lived experiences" and that it's really a question of picking whose "truth" to accept -- in this case, the powerful, Kavanaugh, vs. the oppressed, Ford. That's the side that's after the truth? Come off it.

It's unfair because when serious allegations remain unproven all right-thinking people must agree that the only reasonable thing to assume is that there's absolutely no possibility of the allegations even touching on the truth, and that consequently they are, and can only and ever be, false, and that it's absurd and shameful, disgusting and sad to think otherwise.

Not in the least. Ford doesn't now, and never did, need a Senate confirmation committee to "prove" her allegations. It's not even their job to prove them. They heard her out. What she brought to the table were decades old allegations from 1982 about a teenage boy who, she says, tackled her in a room of a house which she has no recollection of, with people at the house who have no recollection of the party, much less the event in question, and she doesn't remember how she got there, or how she got home, and never told anyone about it for 30 years after the event, and then when she told it for the first time it was to a psychologist trying to help her and her husband work through her anxiety and need to have a second door put in her house (a door which was proven to have been installed several years before the psychological therapy in question), and she didn't say the judge's name at that time - she mentioned his name for the first time in 2016. And, a woman who was anxiety ridden about this incident for 30 some years first comes forward - not to trusted friends, family members, or health care professionals -- not to the police - not to her husband or her children or her parents - but, to who? Senator Diane Feinstein.

What can be done with these allegations? Go interview everyone from their high school at the time? None of them were said to be at the party, but we can interview them to see if they have different views on yearbook quotes, right? And we can take statements from everyone who has an opinion on whether Kavanaugh drank a lot, a little, normal amounts, or too much, and whether they think he downplayed the extent of his drinking. We can interview people to see if 30 years ago he got drunk or got in a fight.

Yes, the mob that threatens the lives of the accusers of powerful people, that denigrated them as shills and liars, as delusional or deranged, as manipulative and mendacious, that pass comment on the accusers' physical attributes and score them low on their sexual appeal or their so-called rape-ability, that characterises personal testimony and challenge equally as unreasonable and the hysterical, concocted ravings of tantrumic pre-schoolers who lack either the will, the intelligence, or the moral fibre to ever act independently or in good faith, and that then presume to lecture others about how inconsistencies in the testimony and material evidence of the accused is actually a demonstration of their extreme wholesomeness, virtue and honesty, is a dog damn disgrace, and they should be ashamed of themselves.

Inconsistencies in testimony are perfectly legitimate areas of inquiry, and where they exist on pertinent facts, they call into question the veracity and/or accuracy of the person making the statements. There is nothing in the least wrong with that. It does not in the least demonstrate the wholesomeness, virtue and honesty of "the accused" as you call him. But it does tend to show that the story being told about the accused is not accurate. Two factual inconsistencies cannot both be true.

So, when the location of the house in question is first fixed in the story, the defenders of the accuser say words to the effect of "see, she knows where it happened." When the accuser changes the location of the event, the defenders of the accuser say words to the effect of "doesn't matter - changing stories are entirely consistent with someone who is truthful about her accusation..." When the witnesses named don't remember the party, the house, the event, or the "accused" being there at any such happening, the defenders of "the accuser" are still with her -they say that it only stands to reason that the event would be burned into the memory of the accuser, but that the others there would not remember it because they didn't have an unusual experience there. Then when someone says "but, hey, you said she showed up at the party and was drinking one drink with the group, went upstairs to pee, and then next thing the party attendees - including her good good friend -- know is Ford comes down the stairs and moves right past them all through the living rooom and out the front door ,never to return, with no ride home (and no such thing as a cell phone) and far from home - and nobody thought to ask her about it or inquire after her safety, etc.? The defenders of the accuser say "well that's entirely consistent...." -- and then when people say "you walked out of a house far from your home, and you don't remember who gave you a ride home after you thought you might die from an assault? You don't remember either how you got to the alleged party or how you got home?" The defenders of the accuser say, "oh, yes, it's entirely consistent not to remember that..." and, then when people ask "did you tell your parents, siblings, friends, or schoolmates?" The defenders say "that's entirely consistent with...." And, then when people say "you kept that to yourself for 30 years, why did you bring it up then 3 decades later?" and the response is that there was a marital issue over a second front door that I desperately needed in my home (despite never having lived in such a multi-door home before), and then having it demonstrated that the front door was actually put on years prior in order to accommodate strange men renting space inside her home....? The response of her defenders is "well, that's entirely consistent...." And, when other "accusers" come forward and say "he raped me" or similar allegation, the defenders of the accusers say "see ! A pattern! A pattern! not all these women are lying!" -- then after that the other accusers recant or are proven to be liars -- the defenders of the accusers say "that's entirely consistent....and it doesn't matter if those other women are lying or wrong... we still believe all women..."

Cool story, bro. In no other context besides the sexual assault context would such lack of evidence, inconsistent testimony, and changing stories be given any credit. You know, not remembering the details and being wrong and fluid in one's recollection is also "entirely consistent" with someone who was the victim of a non-sexual assault. Yet, I highly doubt anyone would have given the time of day to a fellow male student of Kavanaugh coming forward and reporting the time Kavanaugh beat him up at a beach party where none of the attendees remember it, the accuser doesn't know where it happened exactly (location changes), and he doesn't know how he got there or how he got home, and he did not mention it for 30 years out of embarrassment and only brought it up 3 decades later in counseling with his wife over the issue of whether they should or should not buy a beach house (and yet the beach house was purchased 3 years earlier), etc. In no other context is the lack of evidence and inconsistent testimony itself considered proof.

[Joe]

Must get paid by the word.

[Forty Two]

Billy Gibbons, founding member of ZZ Top and noted activist, has fired his current tour's opening act, America's Got Talent alumni Benton Blount. Blount posted a picture of himself on Facebook wearing a MAGA hat and holding a Chik-Fil-A sandwich, and was suspended from Facebook for "violating community standards". Gibbons, famous for his unwavering commitment to social justice issues and such feminist anthems as "Sharp Dressed Man", "Pearl Necklace", "Legs", "Woke Up With Wood", "Velcro Fly", and "Tube Snake Boogie", had no comment.

Way to go, Billy! Stick it to the man, man! And good on you, Facebook. Fuck Trump! Fuck anybody who voted for him! And fuck those Christo-fascist Chick-Fil-A sammiches and any Nazi slimeballs who would eat them!

https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/p ... d-off-tour

He can fire or hire who he wants, and Facebook can boot who it wants.

We are, however, in the midst of a religious revival.

And, those who take such actions are playing with fire. The same rules of the intolerance road apply to everyone. So, soon, ZZTops songs may be considered violations of terms and conditions and community standards.

She gets a charge out of bein' so weird,
Digs gettin' downright strange
But I can keep a handle on anything,
Just this side of deranged

She was gettin' bombed,
And I was gettin' blown away,
And she held it in her hand
And this is what she had to say:
A pearl necklace
She want to pearl necklace
She want to pearl necklace

-- ZZ Top, Pearl Necklace

She's got legs, she knows how to use them
She never begs, she knows how to choose them
She's holdin' leg wonderin' how to feel them
Would you get behind them if you could only find them?
She's my baby, she's my baby
Yeah, it's alright
She's got hair down to her fanny
She's kinda jet set, try undo her panties
Everytime she's dancin' she knows what to do
Everybody wants to see if she can use it
She's so fine, she's all mine
Girl, you got it right
She's got legs, she knows how to use them
She never begs, she knows how to choose them
She's got a dime all of the time
Stays out at night movin' through time
Oh, I want her, said, I got to have her
The girl is alright, she's alright

- ZZ Top, Legs

But, by all means, get rid of the guy with the MAGA hat who eats Chik-fil-A sandwiches. That's over the line.... man.

[Forty Two]

Must get paid by the word.

"Je n’ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n’ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte." - B. Pascal.

[Forty Two]

Was once a time that Rock n Rollers used to fight for the right to be politically incorrect.

It now seems as if they've all joined the PMRC.

[Sean Hayden]

Yeah, there's nothing edgier in these times than supporting a guy that shits in gold-plated toilets. It's just not the kind of edgy most people want to be.

[Sean Hayden]

I should've guessed someone had beat me to it, and by two years!

Since the beginning of time, the rich, the powerful, and the megalomaniacal have all built shrines to their own self-importance. Think the pyramids. The Palace of Versailles. Any investment banker’s home in the Hamptons.

But if we’re talking about the apotheosis of opulence—a world where “too much is never enough,” where rivers of marble meet acres of chintz, where crystal chandeliers hang from the ceiling like guillotines, and where taste (bad taste, that is) seems to have been applied with a trowel, we couldn’t help but notice a striking similarity in the decorating palate of two demagogues: Donald Trump, the putative Republican nominee for president of the United States, and the late Saddam Hussein, the former president, prime minister, and chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council of the Republic of Iraq.

All of which begs an interesting question: Who influenced whom? Is it a coincidence, or does their preference for strongman politics dictate their prejudices in decorating? Or, perhaps more prosaically, which came first: the gold-plated toilet or the gold-plated bidet

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/03 ... in-palaces

[Joe]

Must get paid by the word.

"Je n’ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n’ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte." - B. Pascal.

I feel your pain.

[Svartalf]

yeah, having to remember Pascal is always a major pain, as a scientist and mathematician, he rocked, but as a thinker and philosopher, he was a small frightened soul

[Brian Peacock]

Must get paid by the word.

42 doesn't do irony, nor will he acknowledge that my recasting of his own comments merely reflected their underlying premises and prejudices.

[laklak]

The same rules of the intolerance road apply to everyone. So, soon, ZZTops songs may be considered violations of terms and conditions and community standards.

The Left always seems to end up eating their young. Except Neil, who is apparently marrying Meg Ryan, who will probably do the eating.