pandemerica

... or how i stopped worrying and learned to love the virus.

the party's over

tulsa was shaping up to be a horror show masquerading as the largest human trial in the history of medicine masquerading as a hate rally masquerading as a campaign opener:

sadly, trump's running low on guinea pigs:

commies from mars

we know now that in the early years of the twenty-first century this world was being watched closely by socialists browner than we real americans and far less moral than our own. terrorists lusty, stoned and sociopathic, regarded the land of the free and the suburbs of the brave with envious eyes and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. in the twentieth year of the twenty-first century came the great awakening.

it was near the end of may. stocks were better. the covid scare was over. more men were back at work. cities were re-opening. on this particular evening, may 31, internet world stats estimated that 4.65 billion people were cruising the internet ...

donald j. trump @realDonaldTrump, may 31

the united states of america will be designating ANTIFA as a terrorist organization.

anonymous, may 31

i am not one to spread false information, i have been informed by numerous realizable resources. the protest planned for tonight at 8:30 in downtown klamath falls, IS GOING TO BE DANGEROUS. there are two buses heading this way from portland, full of ANTIFA members and loaded with bricks. their intentions are to come to klamath falls, destroy it, and murder police officers. there have been rumors of the ANTIFA going into residential areas to 'fuck up the white hoods'.

do not get me wrong. i am all for peaceful protesting. infact i was going to attend the protest tonight believing it was going to be peaceful.

the real 3%ers idaho, may 31

ATTN ada county BUSINESS OWNERS in boise and surrounding areas:

we have credible intel tonight that antifa and other groups are planning a riot tonight in the boise area. their plan is to destroy private property in the city and continue to residential areas. we are calling on all business owners to contact us if you are concerned for your business and your private property immediately. we are here to protect you, your private business, and have teams on the ground standing by.

ghost 117 @ThomasMerrick16, jun 1

Antifa is now in klamath falls Oregon my home town we the people of klamath falls #Patriotsforlife let's get these terrorists out of our town

cory johnson @cjohnsondubai, jun 1

time to lock and load to protect our home. two buses of antifa showed up in klamath falls and with in an hour the citizens were on the street heavily armed.

pacificriver @pacificedge541, jun 1

3 buses of BLM/antifa dropped off in klamath falls oregon. residents out too protect thier town.

i climbed a small hill above the pond at sixtieth street. i looked in vain for the monsters or the buses that reportedly had brought them.

it was later found that they were killed by the disinfecting agents against which their systems were unprepared. slain, after all man's defenses had failed, by the two humblest things that god in his wisdom put upon this earth: time ... and the cold hard light of reality.

(apologies to h.g. wells)

[nbc news]
in klamath falls, oregon, victory declared over antifa, which never showed up

...still others remain convinced that antifa had been there that night, run off by the sight of hundreds of armed patriots.

and that’s the story spreading online.

"antifa retreats from suburb after business owner and neighborhood show up with guns," stated the headline on the website newspunch, one of the internet’s most notorious fake news destinations. the article quotes a facebook post by dan kline, the owner of a local billiards bar.

"i have never felt a threat to my business as i did last night," kline wrote in his post. "antifa didn’t make it to the courthouse and my bar had no incidents. antifa walked into a hornet’s nest. it was like a sixth grade football team walking into the oakland coliseum to take on the raiders."

meet the cure

when the truth has a liberal bias, who you gonna call?

make us a god who will go before us

conservative faith leaders visiting the white house lay their hands on trump to pray for him.

i told them, ‘whoever has any gold jewelry, take it off.’ then they gave me the gold, and i threw it into the fire, and out came this calf!” [exodus 32:24]

the heartbreak of conservatism

every trump poll we've ever seen

making america great again

updated for today’s conservatism in the age of trump, here’s a modern version of one of my all-time favorite comic stories from psychedelic sixties underground master robert crumb, originally about a form of mental awakening.

(the original story “meatball” can be seen at “classic crumb”.)

(original story & art by robert crumb, 1967; updated by aarrgghh, 2017)

ya gotta kill some pigs

if FOX news were a liberal outfit ...

At Iowa's "Freedom Summit", Mike Huckabee declared war on the police

des moines, iowa — folksy former arkansas governor and faux news commentator and current 2016 presidential potential mike huckabee dropped a bombshell during the closeout speech of saturday's republican party "freedom summit" in iowa. outlining the principles of his radical agenda for the country, huckabee exhorted his talibangelical legions everywhere to massacre law-enforcement officials in washington and beyond.

"we need to do some pig-killing!" huckabee declared, pumping his fists in a gang-salute to a boisterous crowd, where nevada cattle rancher cliven bundy was overhead saying: "we're about ready to take the country over with force!"

however, not everyone at the summit agreed with huckabee. fellow speaker, new jersey governor, rival contender and perennial porcine punchline chris christie nervously called the plan "a solution in search of a problem."

police officers quickly voiced their displeasure with huckabee. "what police officers felt yesterday after that speech is that they were thrown under the bus," said new york police union president patrick lynch. "that they were out there doing a difficult job in the middle of the night, protecting the rights of those to stump, protecting romney's sons and dollars, and huckabee was behind microphones like this throwing them under the bus."

despite some resistance among traditional conservative ranks, huckabee remained committed to pushing the GOP down a new and militant path. "ya gotta kill some pigs," he said. "and folks, there are a lotta people ... that don't wanna kill any pigs."

this is the song of cliven bundy

cliven bundy
deadbeat on monday
rebel on tuesday
fox news hero on wednesday
racist on thursday
doubled down on friday
cast out on saturday
forgotten by sunday
and here ends the song
of cliven bundy

the birther era

... cliff notes version:

not the civil war they dreamt of

hostage-taking 101: time is not on your side! — especially when your confederates chase different goals, expect different ransoms, serve different masters and respond differently to stress. should the theatrics play out too long, hands at each others' throats may be your only reward ...

salon: appearing on MSNBC on friday, congressman peter king continued his epic verbal assault on ted cruz — and, to a lesser extent, rand paul — by describing the texas senator as a "RINO" (republican in name only) and a "fraud."

speaking with MSNBC's andrea mitchell, king called the ongoing government shutdown "the strategy of ted cruz" and wondered aloud "why more republicans around the country didn't join me in denouncing ted cruz" before the shutdown began. "we cannot allow our party to be taken over by the likes of ted cruz and rand paul," king continued, describing cruz and paul as "isolationists" and "RINOs" who "don't represent traditional republican principles."

"ted cruz, what he did here, was lead the party into a dead end with no strategy, somehow convincing a number of house republicans that we just sent this to through senate as far as defunding and closing down the government, he would manage to get harry reid and president obama to back down," said king. "he never had a plan. it was fraudulent from the start. and we have to cut this guy off now."

TPM: mccain's appearance on fox came shortly after sen. ted cruz (R-TX), the leader of the movement to defund the health care law, spoke at the values voter summit. maccallum asked mccain how he felt about cruz "representing" republicans at a meeting scheduled for friday at the white house.

"first of all, martha, please, he's not representing us there" ...

daily kos: [tex rep louis gohmert:] "when it comes to the shutdown that's going on, i heard just before i came some senator from arizona, uh, a guy that liked qaddafi before he wanted to bomb him, a guy that liked mubarak before he wanted him out, a guy that's been to syria and supported al qaeda and rebels, but he was saying today the shutdown has been a fool's errand. and i agree with him. the president and harry reid should not have shut this government down!"

TPM: tensions are flaring between house and senate republicans over how to defuse the crisis ahead of an oct. 17 debt ceiling deadline. house GOP members expressed concerns during a private saturday meeting that the senate GOP would undercut and jam them by striking a deal with president barack obama that conservatives dislike.

... "they're trying to cut the house out, and trying to jam us with the senate," a fired-up [WI rep. paul] ryan told reporters after the GOP meeting. "we're not going to roll over and take that."

breitbart: on his radio show on friday, fox news host sean hannity said house speaker john boehner (R-OH), along with the rest of the republican leadership in the house, had to be replaced.

"i do think leadership in the house needs to change," hannity said. "i don't think john boehner is equipped for the job. i don't think he has the stomach to negotiate. i don't think he has the ability to communicate the positive, solution-oriented vision for the country."

... he said the GOP has a "communications problem" that has been reflected in the party's bad poll numbers.

hannity also ripped republican leaders in washington for "alienating" the tea party. hannity named senators like john mccain (R-AZ) and bob corker (R-TN) for being the top offenders and said their "unwillingness to stand strong" and constant bashing of the tea party is "irritating every conservative i know."

AP: "we're not saying obama is right. we're saying what republicans are doing is wrong," said matt cox, a former executive director of ohio's cuyahoga county GOP.

TPM: erick erickson, prominent conservative blogger, said on his blog friday that he will be donating to the primary opponents of house speaker john boehner (R-OH) and senate minority leader mitch mcconnell (R-KY) because of the way both leaders are approaching negotiations on the continuing resolution and debt ceiling.

"republican leaders in washington, DC are signaling they will cave on the fight against obamacare," erickson wrote. "GOP leaders, by caving, are signaling they want us to primary them."

erickson blamed the GOP's sinking approval ratings on boehner and other republican leaders.

"[n]ow that john boehner and the orange man group of capitol hill are the faces of the GOP, obamacare's popularity is going back up and the GOP's popularity is going back down," erickson wrote.

redState: but john boehner, eric cantor, mitch mcconnell, and john cornyn will ensure that obamacare is fully funded and give the american public no delay like businesses have.

in doing so, they will sow the seeds of a real third party movement that will fully divide the republican party.

washington post: conservative groups that advocated for a standoff spoke openly about their motives. at a breakfast with reporters wednesday, michael needham, chief executive of the conservative group heritage action, freely admitted that he was "pretty optimistic" that we will soon see a crackup of the old republican order.

thinkProgress: as the government shutdown enters its eleventh day and the nation races towards a possible default, a growing number of republican lawmakers, leaders, and voters are publicly blaming congressional republicans for the budget impasse. ...

"it's time for someone to act like a grown-up in this process," former new hampshire gov. john sununu (R) told the associated press. michigan gov. rick snyder (R) agreed, remarking on monday that "this is not how we should operate. it shouldn't be about people fighting and yelling.' "the bottom line is we need that money in our economy to save rural hospitals and jobs in the rural areas," arizona gov. jan brewer (R) told the arizona daily star on thursday, criticizing the GOP'e effort to defund the affordable care act.

the criticism comes as an associated press-GfK poll released wednesday showed that "three-quarters of republicans nationally said their party in congress deserves a moderate degree or most of the blame for the shutdown" ...

in yet another sign of trouble for the GOP, business interests are also showing signs of discontent, signaling a possible rift with republicans ahead of the 2014 mid-term elections.

iowa republicans "are recruiting a pro-business republican to challenge six-term conservative rep. steve king (R), a leader in the push to defund the health care law," the associated press reports and party establishment leaders in michigan are threatening to recruit and fund challengers to rep. justin amash (R) and other tea party aligned candidates.

TNR: "the business community has got to stand up and say we are not going to back the most self-described conservative candidate. we are going to back the candidates that are the most rational," says john feehery, a former aide to delay and hastert who is now president of quinn gillespie & associates, a washington lobbying firm.

what washington business lobbyists say on-the-record about the house republicans and about tea party activists pales before what they are willing to say if their names aren't used. one former republican staffer says of the anti-establishment groups, "they want to go in and fuck shit up. these non-corporate non-establishmentarian guys — that is exactly what they are doing. and the problem with that is obvious. what next? what happens after you fuck shit up?"

conservatives went looking for fresh plunder from the administration in a raid that was supposed to pit republican vs. democrat — not GOP vs. GOP and certainly not along every conceivable fissure:

house vs. senate.

extreme vs. moderate.

upstart vs. established.

ideology vs. money.

anarchy vs. order.

none of them came prepared for a suddenly resolute president or a unified party behind him. no one expected to run into a veritable stone wall — against which the GOP, to its own horror, seem incapable of thwarting the urge to batter itself delirious, in what historians might one day call the "republican war into irrelevance".

what a difference a week makes

freeperville, oct 4:

lol. the plan is obama caves.

what don’t you understand?

we are on the verge of an historic CONSERVATIVE victory.

what’s not to like?

(by st_thomas_aquinas)

oct 11:

[texas congressman louis] gomert [sic] on beck’s show today, just before noon EST, saying that boehner is now in a meeting with obama, and is “giving up on 98-99% of obamacare, so they [RINOs] can say that they got something from obama.”

so yeah, the cave is in progress.

i guess the NBC/WSJ rush is talking about spooked them.

as beck says, it's time to defund the GOP. tea party candidates only. no collaborators need apply.

(by st_thomas_aquinas)

RINOs = "republicans in name only"

acme wingnuts

"better than science"

after forty long hours in the desert and forty long hours on the mountaintop, indefatigable texas birther rudy davis descends unto youTube to deliver the gospel:

... i probably spent about eighty hours, maybe more, so far researching this, reading books, going to various websites, using the knowledge that i've gained in my physics class — lemmee share a little bit about my background and this isn't me like braggin' on my background, there's nothin' to brag about. y'know, when you ask me about my credentials are, i know how to use a shovel and, uh, i can clean a pretty good litter box, but i did go through four years of college and obtained a electrical engineering degree, with a minor in mechanical engineering, and, um, i passed my calculus classes. i loved calculus, i love math. i, uh, passed my trigonometry, geometry, analytical geometry, um, y'know, physics, uh, thermodynamics — i loved all that stuff. i love, y'know, mathematics and science since it was one of my favorite topics.

i'm not, um, completely ... uneducated. but i'm not the smartest guy in the world either. i'm not here saying i'm smarter than anybody — i think, for these things, the lord has to lead you into this, sort of, belief, uh, and you have to have a biblical perspective in order to understand what i'm about to say ...

and after a short digression into 9-11 trutherism:

... so i want you to think back, y'know, when somebody first told you that, t—, your reaction. 'cause what i'm about to say, i'm not sayin' for shock value. i couldn't care less if you like me or you din't like me, i could care less about, uh, how many subscribers i have. what i'm about to say i'm telling you because i believe it's the truth and i know 99.99 percent of you are going to reject it. i rejected it when i first heard it, until i started lookin' into it more, 'til i started reading my bible, 'til i started, uh, understanding, uh, a little bit more about the things that we've been told, and, uh, i would just ask you to look into it before you jump to the conclusion that i'm an absolute nut. and, again i'm just telling you this because there are — there's gonna be point-zero-zero-zero-one percent of you that, uh, is gonna receive it, just like, just like i received it and just like, y'know, there, there's a few, there's a few that can weed through all the BS that we've been told in this world and see what's goin' on.

but i wanna declare, uh, that i am a geocentrist. and uh, what a geocentrist is, is someone who believes that the earth is the center of the universe and does not move. lemmee say that again. the earth does not move, it does not rotate, it does not revolve, it does not, uh, go around the sun and it does not wobble. the bible says the earth cannot be moved. and, uh, that's what i'm goin' with.

and, y'know, when it comes to copernicus, galileo, uh, kepler, uh, carl sagan and einstein, all of 'em are flim-fam— flam artists. i believe they're all con artists and they're basically in a satanic deception that put forth satan's very, very first blue-ribbon lie. y'know — well, uh, you could go all the way back to the garden of eden, so i wouldn't say it's his first, but, uh, satan's blue-ribbon lie, at least one of them, is that the, uh, earth moves around the sun. okay? that absolutely is not true and i believe it with all my heart.

... now do i believe that carl sagan, einstein, kepler, uh ... uh ... copernicus and galileo were in some, y'know, plot where they communicated with each other? no, i don't believe they were communicatin' with each other through the centuries but what i do believe is, uh, that satan allows certain people to be puffed up with pride an' this world promotes, uh people and they get too smart for their, for their own good an' they just put out absolute BS. i mean we've just been lied to upon lied to.

... some people say that y'know, uh "the bible does, does not say how the heavens go, but the bible tells us how to go to heaven." in other words, they're tryin' to say that the bible is not a sci— is not a science book. but i would say that the bible is better than a science book. the bible is better [chuckling] than any science book ever written. and if it says the earth doesn't move, then it doesn't freakin' move. and uh, that's one thing you need to know about me. and, and you may be a christian watching this thinkin' i'm an absolute kook, but know this: when i read that bible, the difference between me and other christians is when i read that bible i believe what it says. i don't try to fit into my little, uh, box of how i think god should be or how the universe should be. if the bible says it, that's the way that it is. and i don't believe the king james bible has any errors.

that's right, folks, a hardcore wingnut conspiracy theorist who never doubted a rumor found in his yahoo inbox is calling a satanic hoax on the last 500 years of scientific discovery. eighty hours of what passes as deep thought in rudy's mind and the bible (king james version only, accept no imitations!) is all any right-thinking patriot needs.

to supply the perfect counterpoint to rudy's admitted defiant anti-intellectualism, enter working physicist sean carroll, someone who's certainly spent more than eighty hours on the subject. sean casually explains what real scientists and real mathematicians already know — the "known knowns", so to speak, wherein neither god nor satan nor any other strange supernatural, metaphysical or paranormal beings, forces or powers are anywhere to be found:

so, the laws of physics underlying everyday life are completely understood. the reason why i emphasize this is because scientists, and skeptics for that matter, love to go right to the unknown things. there are many, many things that are unknown, from dark matter to quantum gravity to finance, okay? but there are also things that are known. and among the things that are known are how the matter around us in our everyday life actually works. and it's not just "we have a theory that works." it's better than that. we know that there are no new parts of nature that we haven't found yet that could exert a substantial influence over our everyday lives. there are no new particles or forces that could be relevant to your everyday life that science hasn't found yet.

... so we've looked. there could be plenty of new particles of nature, but they must be either weakly interacting, too heavy to create or too short-lived to detect. what that means is that they can't possibly be very relevant to your everyday life. they cannot affect your consciousness, you cannot blame them for being in a bad mood. you and everyone you know is made up of the standard model of particle physics and nothing else.

... we've ruled out every possible force that is both long range and strong enough to notice.

... the conclusion is that as far as the immediate world of experience is concerned, as far as what you see and touch and taste and feel as you go through your everyday life, we have the theory. we're done. that does not mean that we understand everything, but the underlying laws that describe what baseballs are made out of, or tables or living beings, we understand that. it's electrons and quarks with masses from the higgs field interacting via those forces. that's the everyday world.

... when it comes to the everyday world, we have figured out what the pieces are and what direction they can move in. that does not make us good world players or chess players. it does constrain the kind of games you can play. if someone has come up with a new chess strategy that involves the rook moving diagonally, you know that you can rule that out without listening to their elaborate presentation on it. likewise, if someone has a great new theory of living their lives that involves homeopathy or astrology, you can tune them out without listening to the details. because just knowing the fact that the standard model of particle physics is the right theory of the matter that makes up the everyday world is immediately enough to rule out a whole host of possible phenomena. anything you can't do with electrons, protons, neutrons, gravity and electromagnetism, you can't do in your basement.

... you cannot bend spoons with your mind — unless your mind tells your other arm to go out and bend the spoon. but you can't just do it with a new force emanating from your cortex because there are no such forces. you cannot predict the future, see around corners, the position of saturn when you were born sadly irrelevant to the rest of your life, blah-blah-blah ...

and in fact we known there is no life after death. sometimes even atheists and skeptics like to be open-minded about this because we haven't done all the right double-blind experiments, blah-blah-blah ... forget it! if you believe in life after death, tell me what particles contain the information that moves your soul from place to place. is it electrons? 'cause those would be easy to notice cause electrons are electrically charged and it's actually quite a lot of charge. is it atoms? but the atoms don't move very much when you die. if you believe that there's some way that you have an immortal soul that travels from place to place, then you're not just saying we don't know how it works, you are saying that our current knowledge of the laws of physics is wrong. which means you better give me a good reason to believe that our current knowledge of the laws of physics is wrong, because it's not, and i'm going to move on to more interesting things.

most of science's work, certainly that part which concerns everday human experience, has been done. science can explain through natural causes everything we do and everything that effects us between waking and sleeping, including waking and sleeping. whatever important unknowns remain lie beyond john q. public's quotidian concerns.

sean argues that even gravity, one of the universe's most ubiquitous, constant and far-reaching forces, can be ignored as "utterly, utterly irrelevant" to our lives since it is also one of the weakest. air travelers might quibble, but his point is that the activity of any purported forces or beings that supposedly affect or manipulate human lives on any regular and significant level would have to be stronger than gravity — and therefore, like gravity, noticable and provable. so we would have already noticed by now if any undiscovered entities were regularly intervening in the world by stopping bullets from hitting people or picking sides at sporting events. and we certainly know enough to ignore out-of-hand rudy's entreaties for us to "educate ourselves" by following up on his so-called research since it defies everything real scientists have discovered.

to justify itself, every religion claims to be not just relevant but inseparable and indispensible to the human experience — all while hiding just beyond reach in the supernatural. but science has yet to find any human activity that can't be explained by some combination of the natural forces we've thus far discovered. despite or because of the worst abuses of religion, the history of science has been the inexorable balkanization of gods and ghosts onto smaller and smaller islands of possibility. sorry rudy, but as of today, atlantis is sunk — even the king james version.

there is a cult of ignorance in the united states, and there has always been. the strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge".
— issac asimov

the venn of birthers

rotting away in jail for fraud? well, this could be your lucky day! birthers are once again fishing for clients and anyone convicted under any laws enacted under an illegal president can apply for a get-out-of-jail-free card — at least according to their latest sure-fire usurper-slaying scheme, passed along by birther debunker blog obama conspiracy theories:

dcist.com reports the story that sibley has created a motion template for people convicted under the 2009 fraud enforcement and recovery act (the act makes it easier to prosecute cases of mortgage fraud and predatory lending). they can petition the court to have their convictions overturned because obama isn’t really president, forcing, sibley believes, the courts to adjudicate the president’s eligibility.

wherein i made the following offhand remark:

finding plaintiffs should be rather straightforward since, as with tax protestors and sovereign citizens, one cannot toss a birfer across a citizen grand jury without hitting a convicted fraudster.

which prompted the reply:

someone should make a birther/lowlife venn diagram.

which got me thinking ...

this first one requires a bit of nuance since one can argue that many if not most birthers fall into all three categories.

in the wingnuttosphere, even those that reject birthers (breitbart, beck) still feed into their mania.

odd duck birther martyr and former army surgeon terry lakin doesn't fit into my standard model but i came up with this just for him and his fellow high stakes losers.

how nra messaging works

overhead today at our favorite wingnut watering hole free republic:

i live in what is considered a safe neighborhood and stay in "safe" areas, never had a problem YET.

not familiar with guns although my husband used to have quite a collection and i had a baretta shotgun. i'm not so much afraid of home invasions or robberies at this point — but times are changing. what i'm more afraid of is our government setting off a stampede of marauding hoards[sic].

i have NO clue what might be useful for me — need advice.

— "aria"

when crime rates are falling and even hardcore wingnuts admit to feeling safe in their homes, how does one get already convinced gun owners to buy still even more guns?

easy — sell them an apocalyptic delusion.

'cause you can never have too many guns when that happens.

comment of the day

catdance @ talkingpointsmemo:

somehow i don't think i'd feel all that comfortable dropping my child off into an armed camp every day.

today for certain

("watchmen" #3, story by alan moore, art by dave gibbons, 1986)

of course the interview was never used

roger ebert:

let me tell you a story. the day after columbine, i was interviewed for the tom brokaw news program. the reporter had been assigned a theory and was seeking sound bites to support it. "wouldn't you say," she asked, "that killings like this are influenced by violent movies?" no, i said, i wouldn't say that. "but what about 'basketball diaries'?" she asked. "doesn't that have a scene of a boy walking into a school with a machine gun?" the obscure 1995 leonardo di caprio movie did indeed have a brief fantasy scene of that nature, i said, but the movie failed at the box office (it grossed only $2.5 million), and it's unlikely the columbine killers saw it.

the reporter looked disappointed, so i offered her my theory. "events like this," i said, "if they are influenced by anything, are influenced by news programs like your own. when an unbalanced kid walks into a school and starts shooting, it becomes a major media event. cable news drops ordinary programming and goes around the clock with it. the story is assigned a logo and a theme song; these two kids were packaged as the trench coat mafia. the message is clear to other disturbed kids around the country: if i shoot up my school, i can be famous. the tv will talk about nothing else but me. experts will try to figure out what i was thinking. the kids and teachers at school will see they shouldn't have messed with me. i'll go out in a blaze of glory."

in short, i said, events like columbine are influenced far less by violent movies than by cnn, the nbc nightly news and all the other news media, who glorify the killers in the guise of "explaining" them. i commended the policy at the sun-times, where our editor said the paper would no longer feature school killings on page 1. the reporter thanked me and turned off the camera. of course the interview was never used. they found plenty of talking heads to condemn violent movies, and everybody was happy.