The desolation of Smaug: how being rich seems to destroy people’s souls

San Franciscans raise $46,000 to stop homeless shelter in wealthy area. Apparently they prefer the homeless to be sleeping in the streets in their area (which is close to transit and services, thus why the homeless hang out there) rather than being in a shelter receiving services.

There’s something about being wealthy that seems to suck the soul out of people. They lose all empathy, all willingness to interact with people not exactly like them, and become Smaug the Dragon huddled miserably on top of their pile of treasure glaring gimlet-eyed around them viewing anybody not them as a threat to be driven away with fire if at all possible, or at least with lawyers, pretty much the same thing actually when you think about it. I don’t know if it’s just that you have to be a vicious sociopath to become rich in the first place, or if it’s the wealth that makes you an ass, but there seems to be very few rich people who are actually good people, and if you look at their background, usually they are the few rich people who came from lower class or diverse backgrounds. The rest… are asses. Asses who worship a bad science fiction writer who wrote crappy books about the power of individual achievement while she collected social security and started some pseudo-philosophy called “objectivism”, which can be summed up in five words: I got mine, fuck you.

And sadly those asses, these small minds huddled atop their piles of hoarded treasure, run the world.

— Badtux the Hobbit Penguin

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Responsible gun owner shoots his nuts off

Yet another “responsible gun owner” shoots his nuts off. A headline that repeats on a regular basis.

This dude’s first mistake was in buying a Hi-Point 9mm pistol. From a review, talking about its accuracy: “Should you try to fire toward your opponent and hope the round doesn’t stray into a crowd, and that the loud noise scares away your attacker? Or do you just drop the magazine and throw the thing at them? If you have a pretty good arm, I wouldn’t discount the second option. It might be your best bet.”

Accompanied by a bench test sheet showing that if you shoot for his head, you’re more likely to hit his testacles. I have never seen a bench test so terrible as what this reviewer got from the Hi-Point 9mm. This wasn’t a pattern. This was random chance that he hit the target at all — at nearly point blank range, with a pistol sighted in on the target in a bench vise!

Makes you wonder if this dude was trying to commit suicide, and managed to hit his balls instead :).

– Badtux the Snarky Gun Penguin

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America — land of the baby kidnappers and home of the cowards

Over 8 months after being ordered to do so by a Federal judge, the Trump Administration says they have no plan to reunite children with their parents because it’d be “a burden”.

A burden. Reuniting children with their parents would be a burden.

This is sick, sick stuff. But this is what America is today. What was once The Land of the Free and Home of the Brave is today the Land of the Baby Kidnappers and the Land of Cowards Scared Of Brown People From Central America.

For the inevitable who say “if you don’t like it, leave!” — nope. I can’t change the fact that there are a significant number of Americans who are, well, evil (and I use the word because there is no other word that can apply to a people who support things like this), but at least I can hang around and document the atrocities until it comes time for my ashes to be buried in the landfill. Perhaps the generation coming of age today will be braver and less venal. They could hardly be more cowardly and more venal.

— Badtux the Sickened Penguin

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Of moral equivalencies

Hamas is a terrorist organization.

There, I said it. They’re a terrorist organization.

What makes them a terrorist organization? Simple: They target unarmed civilians. That is what makes them a terrorist organization.

So a friend of mine posted a photograph on her Facebook page of Razan al-Najjar, the 21 year old paramedic who was targeted and killed by an Israeli sniper from close to 300 yards away while helping people who had been injured. And an Israel defender said: “Why don’t you post Israeli victims of Hamas?” I.e., the Israeli government isn’t doing anything that Hamas doesn’t do.

So he was saying that a terrorist organization targeting civilians is exactly equivalent to the Israeli government targeting civilians so we should post photos of both?

Well, I suppose we could. But the tens of thousands of unarmed civilians killed by Israel far outnumber the hundreds of unarmed civilians killed by Hamas, so we’d mostly be posting photos of Palestinian civilian faces anyhow.

Besides, I thought the Israeli government wasn’t supposed to be a terrorist organization. Even though they’re killing unarmed civilians, unarmed medical personnel even, which is exactly what terrorist organizations do.

But this person apparently believes that because Hamas is a terrorist organization, the fact that Israel’s government is behaving like a terrorist organization is fine and dandy.

So there you have it, straight from an Israel defender: Israel’s government is a terrorist organization. Hey, he said it first — though he apparently didn’t realize what it was that he was saying!

– Badtux the Snarky Penguin

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White people think that the police are their own personal racism valets

Dear white people: The police are not your personal racism valet to be used to ask questions that you’re too scared to ask yourself because you’re terrified of black people. Quit using them like that. Signed, another white person.

I got into an argument on Facebook today when I mentioned that every single person of color that I knew had had the cops called on them for things that were none-criminal, and that this had *never* happened to any of the white people I knew. He whined that they were just looking for racism so that’s why they saw it. Uhm, no. POC got cops called on them, us white people didn’t.

He kept going back to “but that wasn’t racism, everybody had a good reason to call the cops!” of the three examples I listed, three black women having the cops called on them for having suitcases while black, a former White House staffer having the police called on him *twice* for moving into his apartment while black, and police called on two men at a LA Fitness for playing basketball while black. Yeah, that reason being that they were too scared of people of color to just ask them what was going on, instead calling the cops as their personal racism valets to ask in their stead.

I eventually ended up having to block him because he just kept whining “but that’s not racism!” even though I kept pointing out that cops weren’t called on my white acquaintances, only on my black ones. But none are so blind as those who refuse to admit their white privilege. Sheesh.

A final thought: Maybe The Negro Motorist Green Book is needed again. I mean, when segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever has apparently become public policy again… hey, let’s just set the Wayback Machine to 1948 again, already. SIGH.

– Badtux the “Nope, racism ain’t dead, and police are the new racism valets” Penguin

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Conspiracy fail

So the Jews run everything, huh?

There are less than 20 million Jews on the whole planet Earth, out of 9 billion people. If the conspiracy theorists are right about Jews running the planet, the other 8.98 billion people on the planet must be pretty darn lame. I mean, even the old Soviet Union needed more people like that to rule over only 200 million people. Surely 8.98 billion people would overturn the rule of 20 million people without a problem, right?

Or else the conspiracy theorists are full of sh*t. Which seems a *whole* lot more likely, doncha think?

– Badtux the Numbers Penguin

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So apparently this Toronto asswipe murdered ten people because he was too big an asshole to get laid

No, I’m not joking. He claimed to be an “incel” who was a victim of feminism because he can’t get laid. He’s one of those toxic MRA dudes who think that women should be their property to be raped at will. Talk about an overweening sense of entitlement. Dude should have gotten a sex toy, since that apparently was all he was interested in when it came to women — sex.

Dude’s not bad looking, so his looks are no reason he’s a virgin. Might it have something to do with his obnoxious personality, his sense of entitlement, his view of women as sex toys rather than people? He’s lucky he did this in Canada. Here in the US, he wouldn’t stay a virgin long once he got to serving life in prison for murder.

And to cap it all off, others in the odious MRA community he was a member of are hailing him as a hero and promising to do attacks of their own upon women they view as “Stacys”, i.e., uppity women who won’t have sex with them and view them with disdain. Their obnoxious personality is never the reason why women disdain them, it’s always the woman’s fault.

Jesus, the sense of self-entitlement just never stops…

– Badtux the Disgusted Penguin

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