Even if we can’t use the word “retarded” anymore, at least we’re still allowed to torture and execute mentally disabled people.
(A little dark for a Saturday morning, I realize. But it’s true.)
Deep thought
by DougJ| 52 Comments
This post is in: Good News For Conservatives, We Are All Mayans Now
Svensker
Well, yuh. Duh.
asiangrrlMN
Goddamn it. More things about which to feel angry…and helpless. By the way, WaPo is down right now. I only got to read the second link–which was bad enough. I’m not surprised as our society has a remarkably callous outlook on human life (despite the lip-service paid to every life is meaningful and whatnot), but it’s still depressing beyond belief that the desire to execute someone is so strong, the government of a state would circumvent constitutional laws to do it.
Oh, wait. Never mind. They learned by watching the W. regime in action.
Jim C
No such thing, Doug.
Kryptik
Doug, you’re oh so so so wrong. We don’t torture and execute them at all, haven’t you learned?
We “enhanced interrogate” them and exercise “capital punishment” on them.
Totally different things. You see how they’re different words? Totally different.
(And case in point, you and John are totally different people as well)
Notorious P.A.T.
Good point, DougJ.
kay
“Another thought to ponder: what does this mean for Texas’ Chief Justice Sharon Keller, if anything? She awaits the fact findings from her trial this past August (Judge Berchelmann has not issued anything as yet), and Dr. Dankowski was the expert who provided the requisite testimony in the Michael Richard case, allowing Mr. Richard to be executed that fateful afternoon when Justice Keller was too busy to hear his motion for stay (“the clerk’s office closes at five.”)
Lordy. It just gets worse and worse.
Lolis
And Palin endorsed Rick Perry in the Texas Republican primary. I didn’t even make that connection. It is disturbing.
I, for one, will never give up my right to say the word retarded. If I do the Constitution will spontaneously combust.
Jason Bylinowski
You missed the angle that this is GOOD NEWS FOR SUPER-GENIUS ARCHCRIMINALS.
I gotta tell someone this: I had a very funny moment in a dream last night but first some background. On the place where I keep stuff to read in the bathroom I have a book by Tad Williams, the first book of the Otherland series. Anyway, in the dream, I was living far, far in the future, and I had to use the bathroom, so I go in, and as I was washing my hands (gotta be hygienic even in dreams, I guess) I noticed that the book had changed. The title of that book?
Ted Williams – My Life As A Frozen Head. (with forward by Walt Disney)
I immediately woke up laughing, which is probably why I remember it at all. Anybody else contantly surprised (and a little envious) by dream comedy material like this?
Kryptik
@Jason Bylinowski:
In all honesty, I’ve never heard of anyone who had a dream so that they woke up laughing.
…tell me your secrets, please. It’d make waking up so much more enjoyable.
Dan Robinson
That’s because they had it coming. Jesus made them retarded, it’s not our fault.
Jason Bylinowski
@Kryptik: Oh. Really? I’ve woken up laughing, crying, screaming. It doesn’t happen that often though, seriously, maybe once or twice a year. Not claiming to be crazy-dream freak boy or anything, but yeah, it happens.
Zam
Well of course we execute them, any wing nut can tell you that retardation is only an excuse so lazy minorities can get off after murdering our precious white women. It’s just like the insanity defense it is used all the time and our streets our filled with murderous black people who pulled that card.
Why oh why
Either you’re with us, or you’re with the retarded.
Bruce Webb
Sigh. I am old enough to remember when ‘Retarded’ was the polite term. Instead of being a ‘moron’, an ‘idiot’, or an ‘imbecile’, all of which had technical definitions, instead everyone decided to pretend these kids were just somehow behind in their mental development (‘retarded’ meaning literally ‘held back’), or that they were just ‘slow’.
I suppose that in 20 years the word ‘special’ will be pejorative as well given that we are already well on the way to ‘differently abled’.
RSA
@Bruce Webb:
I was 12 years old when Congress passed a landmark bill on education for handicapped children. “Special education” was all in the news, and almost immediately the insult “sped” was born. “What are you, a sped?”
SiubhanDuinne
@Jason Bylanowski: I’m glad to know I’m not the only one who does this. I find my dreams wonderfully entertaining, often employing wordplay. One I remember fondly involved my making a salad dressing, the main ingredients of which were “piss and vinegar.” That had to be at least 35 years ago because I know I woke my husband up with my laughing, and we split in 1975.
Thanks for sharing your dream. The foreword by Walt Disney is an especially fine touch!
jeffreyw
@SiubhanDuinne:
Fun with dots LOL
Brick Oven Bill
The last time Barack was allowed to answer questions without the teleprompter was when he called Officer Crowley ‘stupid’, which is admittedly not as bad as ‘retarded’. This was nonetheless damaging as Officer Crowley decided to defend his Character and, when he appeared on TV, spoke very articulately without a teleprompter. This was an exceptionally notable performance for a stupid cop.
The last time Barack was allowed to do a back and forth on late night TV was when he compared his ability to that of full-blown retards with respect to bowling. He was pulled from these back and forths after it became known that while some retards bowl an average of 165, Barack bowled a 37. In front of the national cameras. You have to figure Barack either practiced before this performance, or is exceptionally arrogant.
Then there was the baseball pitch.
So now Barack is only allowed to read to us.
soonergrunt
The thing about ‘retarded’ is that it hasn’t (even coloquially) been used by marginally intelligent, marginally classy people to refer to the developmentally disabled (as they used to be called) or the cognitively disabled (as they are sometimes called today.
Having said that, I think Rahm Emmanuel is retarded for his constant insistence at pissing off the base instead of people like Lindsey Graham who will never vote with us in the first place.
Trig Palin is cognitively disabled. Sarah Palin is retarded.
SiubhanDuinne
@jeffreyw
LOL! You’re funnier than a dream. Hell, you’re funnier than a helicopter.
soonergrunt
Will somebody please reboot the system running the Brick oven Bill program? We’re about to get a stack overflow error in the stupid buffer again.
jeffreyw
Ooh! Got a comment on the chicken with tomatoes post:
I sent that over to Iasa, she replied “not sexy, how about coq au poule au vin blanc?”
soonergrunt
@SiubhanDuinne: As long as the helicopter isn’t making jokes, we’re good.
Nethead Jay
@Jason Bylinowski: Enjoy the Otherland series. They’re big books in more than one sense, Tad Williams crams a lot of interesting stuff into them and it’s a fairly huge universe. Took me while to get through them, due to both the size and concentration, but was totally worth it.
balconesfault
@Brick Oven Bill:
Someone apparently didn’t watch Obama schooling the entire Republican House Caucus without a teleprompter a week ago.
Then again, perhaps you’re just blocking that painful intrusion of reality into your own corner of the universe?
dr. bloor
Suck on it, libtards.
darryl
No, my dreams are horrible. I’m usually trying to escape from somebody, my strength has been zapped and I can’t beat up whoever I need to, and my teeth often break. And I’m back in college and forgot to take my exams and don’t know what to do.
dr. bloor
@Brick Oven Bill:
Except, of course, when he’s carrying out a verbal beat-down on the entire Republican House Caucus on live teevee.
darryl
I live in the Deep South, and that’s not far from what people believe here. According to my relatives, welfare is the gummint program which allows the majority of black people to sit in their apartments eating free food and doing nothing, indefinitely.
danimal
I’m lifting this from the comments over at Kevin Drum’s home because it resonates so strongly. JRW writes:
I wish that we were dealing with real conservatives, you know, the ones that care about conserving the greatness of the American experiment.
Brick Oven Bill
Barack taught us:
“I will close Guantanamo Bay within one year.” This was the very first executive action of his life.
Tim Maloney, the Special Olympian, gave the President the following advice:
“Focus, take time, and relax. Keep your eyes on the alley.”
I used this advice two days ago, every single time before releasing the ball. My score improved twenty points. This was very good advice.
Thanks Tim.
darryl
the Euphemism treadmill
The number of people calling Harry Reid a racist for saying negro, in 50 years, the same number will be calling us racist for saying African-American when we slip up and forget the new term.
darryl
There should be a clicky button on this site
*show tard
*don’t show tard
and depending on what you select you’d see B.O.B., or not.
dmsilev
Can we at least call BOB retarded?
Please?
-dms
Chyron HR
@Brick Oven Bill:
I’m glad your accident hasn’t impaired you sexually, but it’s not really scoring if you’re the one playing with your ball.
balconesfault
@Brick Oven Bill:
And if he had done so over the concerted fearmongering and opposition of every Republican in the country (plus not a small number of cowardly Dems), that action would have fit into the Republican narrative of how he’s a tyrant who does whatever he wants no matter how everyone else feels about it.
Sounds to me like Obama did a very good job of keeping his eyes on the alley in this case – and the Republican concern trolls are clearly pretty damned frustrated and pissed off over this.
soonergrunt
It is now past time to reboot the BoB machine. The overflow is inevitable.
BTW–did somebody revert versions of the BoB, and not tell the community? The recursive behavior looks a lot like 4.121 but we should be running 4.33_Stable for distro and 5.02 for development. This project will not work if we don’t keep the rest of the devs informed.
One could even say that BoB is retarded.
darryl
Can I get a filter which not only removes B.O.B, but also any idiot who says “concern troll”?
Brick Oven Bill
dmsilev,
You can call me retarded if I can call you retarded.
And SGEW.
soonergrunt
I thought we had ruled out the six-year-old behavior in the Bob because that would just be too obvious.
So now he’s doing the “I know you are but what am I” subroutine.
Did you guys decide to incorporate that mod and not tell me? Don’t you know what indicates for the stability of the system?
Mnemosyne
@darryl:
The treadmill is especially funny when it starts turning the other way. One of my classmates in graduate school got yelled at by a professor because she referred to “queer cinema” during a class discussion. That actually is the current preferred term in critical studies circles to talk about films by/about GLBT folks, but the professor freaked out.
scav
@Mnemosyne: isn’t language funny? I just can’t wait for some teenager to roll their eyes, sigh, and say “Homophobia? That’s just SO. GAY.”
R-Jud
@Jason Bylinowski:
You’re not the only one that does this, and I’m also glad that you could read in the dream. I regularly read signs, mugs, t-shirts, etc., while dreaming, and my husband swears up and down that it’s not possible for you to read in a dream.
The last dream I remember waking in a giggle from was one in which I was on a guided tour of NYC, and while we were looking out from an observation deck, the guide was telling us a story about a shoeless monk who found a pair of boots in an egg that was growing on a tree. There was an illuminated manuscript, too, which showed the monk throwing his hands up in praise at the discovery of the boots.
I don’t do recreational drugs, btw. I clearly don’t need to.
licensed to kill time
@Bruce Webb:
I can remember when Mongoloid was used as a simple description, you never hear that anymore.
(Also note the term “Idiots” as used above.)
balconesfault
@darryl: “but also any idiot who says “concern troll”?”
You’ll have to filter the lexicon then, dude.
Paris
@Jason Bylinowski:
Jesus sidn’t retard them, Satan did. That’s why its ok to
exterminateexecute them.” it is unconstitutional to execute someone who scores 70 or less on a standard IQ test ”
G.W. is off the hook for war crimes.
SiubhanDuinne
@R-Jud: I read things all the time in my dreams. I’ve also noticed that if I’ve been spending a lot of time IRL working on, say, spreadsheets, or designing bargello patterns (geometric needlepoint designs), or sorting books, that activity or visual, whatever it is, often shows up in my dreams. Same with people, of course.
chrome agnomen
i think you meant ‘intellectually challenged’, doug.
asiangrrlMN
@darryl: I’m with darryl. I get rape, murder, attempted murder, and friends dying in my dreams. Not once have I woken up laughing.
That said, I have a friend whose husband dreamed that she (my friend) and her friends were smoking weed. He went to look at the bowl in which the weed was stored, and it contained broccoli florets. He said to his wife, “Do you know you’re smoking broccoli?” She said, “Dude, there’s other stuff with it.” He said, “Yes, but you’re still smoking broccoli!” Then he woke up laughing.
johnny
We’re still living in John Steinbeck’s America. It’s Of Mice and Men all over again. Love the guy, but mercy kill the first time something goes wrong.
Terrible.
jacy
@RSA:
Oh, yes, I remember that well. “Sped” quickly became our favorite perjorative in junior high.
A few years ago I berated one my kids, who was in junior high at the time, for saying “that’s so gay.” And then I remembered the crap I used to say in junior high school. Yikes. Thankfully most of us grow out of our hidden sociopathic tendencies relatively quickly. Either that or become republicans.
nepat
@jacy:
Or not. These tiresome “retarded” posts and threads are more than enough evidence that sociopathic tendencies are not outgrown quickly and that Republicans haven’t cornered the market on bigotry.