Breastfeeding in Public and Wackjob Cousin II

My wackjob cousin hasn't sent me anything from the rabid right in a long time. She's probably written me off as a lost cause. It's likely I won't be invited to the next family reunion. And that's just as well, since there's an old saying among the men in the Farnsworth Clan that the best place to hook up with women is at family reunions and funerals... (we do have our roots in Appalachia, after all).

But, living proof that nature abhors a vacuum, we now have a contender for the official title of Wackjob Cousin II. This time it's a cousin of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed who fortunately, for all concerned, lives in SoCal and gets up here only once a year or so.

Sidebar: She works with the chronic poor and the thinking impaired in the WIC program, the significance of which will be apparent shortly.

So I'm doing my level best to avoid her, but SWMBO came into my study and asked me point-blank to come out in the living room or she'll think I am avoiding her.

If there was ever a Duh! moment, that was it. But those of you who have been in a "significant other" relationship for any length of time will understand why I didn't belabor the obvious and why I agreed to show my face for a while.

The saving grace was that we watched a movie on Netflix and that ate up about two hour and a half hours -- the movie was genius director David Lynch's great Mulholland Drive".

Then things turned to shit on me.
"So, do you ever watch The Daily Show?" I asked. Innocent question, right? I thought so too, but apparently WJCII had an issue.

"No," she shrieked, frightening the cats who ran under the furniture. "Jon Stewart said that women breastfeeding in public was disgusting!"

"Huh?" was my considered response, followed shortly by. "I don't believe it."

"I heard him say it! I heard him say it! Are you saying I'm lying???"

"Uh, okay, no...I believe you think you heard him. I don't believe he really said it."

"I heard him say it! I heard him say it!"

"Okay, maybe he did, but gimme a break. It was part of a bit. It's a comedy show."

"You just don't know! They are very subtle..."

"Okay, prove it to me. That show is online with all the episodes. It ought to be easy to find it."

And then the "conversation" took an unsuspected turn: "This is the only country in the world where a woman can't breast feed in public! And it's all because of Hugh Hefner!"

Me: "??!"

As you can imagine, this caught me flat-footed. I didn't think until it was too late to ask if that statement was true for places like Saudi Arabia or Yemen (I think not) or what the hell Hugh Hefner had to do with it, since boobs have been around since long before he was born.

"These," she yelled, pointing at her relatively flat chest, "are FOOD! How would you like to eat under a blanket?"

"It's a fucking baby! It doesn't know and doesn't care where it eats. If it comes with your attitude, then it IS disgusting!"

Well, given that this is an issue about which she obviously feels very strongly -- irrationally, some would say -- some more verbal dueling ensued in the heat of the moment, culminating in her screechingly repeated, "I am not coming back here! I am not coming back here! I am not coming back here!"

Jeez, have a cracker, Poll Parrot. So then I retreated back into my man cave. She whipped out her Apple laptop and started a search. Not trusting her, I did my own search.

This is what I found: Absolutely NO reference to Jon Stewart saying anything remotely like that, which didn't surprise me since it would have been totally out of character for him. But what I did find is that Bill Maher was the one who said it. And, as I suspected all along, it was a fucking joke. If you've ever watched Bill Maher in action, who can be an obnoxious asshole, you'll understand.

So, long story short, I ended up apologizing for my part in this. After all, I was as SWMBO pointed out baiting her. Kind of. But I also swore that if she goes back on her threat and does come back here, I will have some important business out of town to take care of during her visit. Like volunteering to pick fly shit out of pepper in a school cafeteria in Walla Walla.

I think I prefer my wackjob cousins to be in touch by email. If at all. It's too hard on me to deal with it in the personifiction of an escapee from the Atascadero State Mental facility.

Nuke 'Em!

Yep, nuke 'em. That's the sum total of my wackjob cousin's latest email regarding the tragedy in Libya. Of course she went off half-cocked, as it were, and initially identified the putative location -- and of course the putative target -- as Cairo. Oh well, never mind those fact-checking details. If Sarah Palin says it's Cairo, then it's Cairo. Besides, it'll still fry a bunch of Muslims, and that's what it's all about.

Naturally she'll be voting for Romney. Even though six months ago she was weeping and wailing and gnashing her teeth over just the possibility that he -- a Mormon cultist -- could beat her boy Newtie Gingrich. Oh how the worm has turned, and it just displays the pathology of her Obama Derangement Syndrome even more, that she is willing to support a guy she totally hated six months ago, just because she totally hates Obama more.

Go figure.

Salutegate: More from My Wackjob Cousin

Even though I've taken some time off, my wackjob cousin hasn't. Here's one of her latest:

Disgusting absolutely disgusting. A few minutes ago Mr. Obama left the White House to board Air Force 1 helicopter. Upon approaching the helicopter the Marine in his dress blues snapped to attention and saluted Mr. Obama. Mr. Obama showed total disregard or respect for the marine refusing to return salute. Mr. OBAMA THE MAN JOINED THE MILITARY AND WOULD PUT HIS LIFE ON THE LINE FOR YOU ANY DAY OR ANYTIME . Out of respect you deserve to return that salute. ACTIONS speak louder than words. We know how you feel about our constitution and our country.

What a lie you tell. And where is he headed, to FT Bliss to parse the military, what an idiot.

Really? Well, you know -- and she should have known -- that I just couldn't let this slide by without a response:

Jesus, that's what you are going with now? Now I must conclude that your visceral hatred of Barack Obama knows no bounds.
Oddly enough, the same people who are now slavering over this alleged "disrespect" are the very same ones (WND, Faux "News", Free Republic, etc., i.e., all of the "regular" sources which you seem to cite routinely) who said that Bill Clinton had NO RIGHT to return that same salute because he was a "draft dodger" who had never been in the military.
Really?
If you want to consider a REAL affront to the military, take a listen to Romney's speech last night (here's the full transcript, from Fox News so you know it hasn't been edited: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/08/30/transcript-mitt-romney-speech-at-rnc/, in which you will find exactly ZERO references to the troops in Afghanistan, even though he had a virtually unlimited amount of time to speak.
Mr. Romney, those men joined the military and if you were president, they would put their lives on the line for you any day or any time. Don't they deserve at least a passing mention, if not a loud and enthusiastic "shout out" of appreciation for their service?
How about that?

Okay, so after a couple more emails back and forth, one of which addressed the Romney-ignoring-the-troops thing by her saying dismissively that Romney is a busy man and the troops didn't mind:

Funny thing on that whole salute business, but I can find no record of any president doing it before Ronald Reagan, not even Dwight D. Eisenhower, who had more right than any other president with the possible exceptions of Washington and Grant. I remember the discussion in my VA "rap session" rehab group around the time that Reagan whipped out that first salute in 1981. No one had ever seen it happen before (and our ages ranged from vets from WWI on up through WWII, Korea and Vietnam), and we were somewhat divided over whether it was proper or just more of that famous Reagan showmanship.

But at the end of the day, the consensus was reached, as I recall, that no civilian, not even the commander-in-chief should salute a military person. Here's our reason why: One of the great concepts enshrined in our Constitution is that the military is always under civilian authority, command and control, and for a civilian, even the CIC or the SECDEF (Secretary of Defense), to salute a military man tends to blur that sharp distinction. For more on this topic, you might want to take a look at an interesting and lively forum discussion on this topic among some current and former service members on Military.com from several years ago, before this became a big current affairs issue: http://forums.military.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/409192893/m/9150000112001.

BTW, you can't tell me with a straight face that, if the tables were turned and it was Obama who "forgot" to mention the troops in Afghanistan in a similar speech that you would be all right with that. I don't for a second believe that. And, on what the troops themselves thought of Romney's omission, we seem to be in disagreement -- you think they didn't mind, and I think that they did. Since neither of us is a mindreader, we'll have to let this one drop, except for me to add that when I was in the Army and in Vietnam, it was nice to have our commander-in-chief acknowledge our service and our sacrifices. It contributed greatly to morale and esprit de corps, and both Johnson and Nixon, consummate politicians that they were, knew that.

Hell, yeah, I'll play the Vietnam Card!  In a New York minute!

Well, as She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed never tires of reminding me, you can't argue with stupid and you shouldn't argue with crazy... Yeah, true enough, but Jeez, sometimes it's just so goddam much fun!

George Soros and Gun Control?

Jeez, it just never stops. Regular readers know that I have a wackjob cousin who insists on sending me the worst kind of crap imaginable. But I don't cut her off because they are invariably entertaining. Plus I can almost always count on them to provide fodder for the OPOVet gristmill.

Here's today's example:

Don't know if this true or not ! Worth checking out .
Subject: WOW! This is scary!
For the last several years a company called "The Freedom Group" has been buying up American gun and ammunition manufacturers.
Some of these companies are:Bushmaster,
Marlin,
Remington,
DPMS,
Dakota Arms and
H&R.
DPMS Panther Arms
NEF
Dakota Arms
LC Smith
Parker
AAC
Barnes Bullets
EOTAC
INTC
Some people worry that Freedom Group is going to control most of the firearms companies in the United States. Of course, If you control the manufacturers you can decide not to sell to civilians, or, you can raise the prices to rediculous levels or you can make the supply of guns and ammo scarce - all sorts of logjams.
What a perfect way to control America's guns!
If you do some digging you will see that The Freedom Group is owned by a Wall Street investment company called "Cerberus Capital Management".
"Cerberus" in the epic book "The Inferno" by Dante Alighieri, is a three-headed demon hound (from Roman mythology) that guards the Gates of Hell to prevent those damned souls who have just crossed the river Styx, from escaping back to the world.
Investor GEORGE SOROS owns Cerberus!
Please pass this on to all your freedom loving friends. This needs to come out - and quickly! Why have we not heard about this in the "mainstream" media? I would think this would be BIG news.
The absence of big media coverage on this important subject should be BIG news to you, too!

You'd think that an email that starts out with "Don't know if this true or not! Worth checking out" would normally be followed by the person actually, you know, checking it out. But in this case you would be wrong.

Here's what I found with a minimal amount of actual effort. Yeah "BIG news", and it's also big news to Snopes:

As the National Rifle Association's Institute for Legislative Action (NRA-ILA) notes on their web site:
Recently, an old rumor regarding Cerberus — the private equity firm that owns Freedom group, a holding company that in turn owns a number of firearms manufacturers, including Remington, Marlin, Bushmaster, and DPMS — was in some way tied to George Soros.
This rumor is completely false and baseless.
NRA has had contact with officials from Cerberus and Freedom Group for some time. The owners and investors involved are strong supporters of the Second Amendment and are avid hunters and shooters.
In reality, at no time has George Soros ever been a part of the ownership group of Freedom Group or Cerberus, and as a privately traded corporation, there is no possibility that he will be in the future.
This unsubstantiated rumor has caused a great deal of unnecessary concern for gun owners. NRA-ILA urges our members to take great care before repeating baseless rumors found on the Internet.

George Soros appears nowhere on the Cerberus list of senior executives, unlike such other notable socialist-communist-fascist gun control freaks as ... Dan Quayle and Baby Doc Bush's former Treasury Secretary John W. Snow.

Sometimes you gotta laugh. Sometimes you gotta cry. And sometimes you gotta do Andre Breton's ultimate surrealist act: "...dashing down into the street, pistol in hand, and firing blindly, as fast as you can pull the trigger, into the crowd." --Second Manifesto of Surrealism, 1929.

Okay, all you wingnut pantywaists, don't flame me over this. I'm just fucking kidding!!!!!

A Worker Without a Union...

My wack-job cousin, as regular readers know, is constantly needling me about my leftwing views. Recently she sent me an email she got from one of her fascist friends about the public sector union movement. It was the usual bullshit:

...the left seem to conflate private sector unions with those in the public sector, which obfuscates the real problem. I've not heard any outcry to dismantle private unions. But public employee unions are an entirely different problem ... a very large problem.
Without question state budgetary issues related to public union excesses have done as much as anything to create fiscal crises across the country. Public unions have deliberately and systematically worked to overcharge for their services by "negotiating" with the powers that be, resulting in fat salary and benefit packages and retirement plans...

And on and on in that vein. It's nothing new. I've been hearing this crap for 30+ years, how the greedy public employees who are lucky to have a job have been sucking up all the tax dollars, blah blah blah.

You can't reason with these people and it's best to ignore them.

Except I did send her back this little zinger:

A worker without a union is like a mouse in a roomful of cats negotiating what to have for lunch.

That kind of burnt her, I think, since she doesn't belong to a union and has been whining for years about how low her pay is, how fucked up her working conditions are, etc etc etc.

Snark. Take that.