March Madness concludes, an event handled something like an outbreak of typhus in workplaces across the country; treated with quarantine and let to run its course. Recent racial tensions notwithstanding, it culminated in a charmingly integrated riot. But if it weren’t the parade of paid amateurs in their skivvies, it would be some other diversion; perhaps the buttons on our shirts or better, the buttons on Kim K’s shirt. Are the flags still at half-staff? Must be for Whitney, national treasure that she was. It couldn’t be that there are caskets burdened with the bits of American soldiers pouring into New Jersey as they have never been lowered for that yet. There is a drought across the nation. It is a drought not of water, though that, too. What we thirst for, seek and find absent in every dusty bucket on every rusted hook is seriousness for the serious matters; sobriety in the face of sobering events. We desperadoes are a small and vilified minority. Instead of frank discourse we meet the mouthpieces of vested interests or free-lance mouthpieces without portfolio who, on speculation, ape the paid press agents. For any who question the state of affairs, whether it is the public debt or private vice there is one ready rejoinder with all the insight and subtlety of a vuvuzela; lol.

A bit of pretentious jargon for the semi-literate, you know what it means; laughs out loud. Yes, the one thing that sets us apes above other critters, humor, has been weaponized. This is no modern phenomenon but it has taken a peculiarly perverted turn. Cicero stood nearly alone against the blood-soaked whoremonger, Marc Antony and while Antony had his legions and fierce temper, Cicero had only his tongue to employ at close quarters and his pen for effective fire at range. Antony, the gold-plated bandit, got the worst of it. One could even say Cicero was triumphant as he forced Antony to hang Cicero’s head in the Senate by that spear of a tongue and nail those delicate hands to the door. With that everyone knew the Senate was closed for business, while open for charades. This was what Antony did NOT want. Advantage Cicero. But while the old knight certainly dished out insult and obloquy it was not simple mockery, rather a calling to proper accounts.

Like so many other conventions of antiquity, the rules of civility versus mockery have been intentionally upended for tactical reasons. You hear of Alinsky, friend of Lucifer and at least philosophical antecedent to Obamaism. His Rules for Radicals explicitly favored mockery, derision, even sexualized and racially antagonistic assault for tactical reasons. He hoped to drive all decent people from politics in disgust, nearly a Mission Accomplished. And by politics he did not mean merely the high offices or offices at all. Alinskyism is to be applied across the board. Enemies on the Right, clearly are most constantly targeted but also are uncertain allies; mostly those with principled stands from yesterweek that are now inconvenient. If there can be anyone to the Left of the Progressive in office there is a slight readjustment of the sights. Instead of those parties being attacked it is the daft notion that there is legitimate connection to the more palatable actors. Observing that the President alternately embraces and then denies policies and people from the ghetto, draws fire. It is government by denunciation; no innovation there. The Soviet Script is what we have, the one taken to its logical conclusion in North Korea where, as we know, it is not confined to the ruling class but turns the life of everyone under its sway into hell. To be damned or a tormentor are the only choices.

Is there so much danger in unthinking and insincere laughter? Oh, you betcha. The laugh precedes the attack of the monkey horde. It is a quick banishment at the least, even when superficially kindly. Oh, honey. You just don’t understand, this fifteen percent we are taking from your check, it’s for your own good…. or someone’s anyhow. And you will hardly miss it! You are either child or invalid, honest laborer though you be. Your puerile complaints only warrant lolz.

But recall that some plagues fall on all houses, Pharoah’s not incidentally. There has been a turn of the worm. Setting: Chambers of the Supreme Court. Players? You know except for the poor fool tasked with the monologue. Verilli is his name and he showed up at a comedy thinking it was drama. The result made Keystone Kops look like Othello. Each “argument” was transparent, self-contradictory, tautological and thin. The Solicitor General, Verilli, was the object of open, spontaneous and quite sincere laughter. The availability of THREE friendly refs did not help much even when they took his foul shots for him. As we know, Kagan sat in Verilli’s seat as SG moments ago. Indeed she was the architect of his case! But even with the active intervention of her and Sotomayor and the recently treasonous Ginsberg, Team O could not put a point on the board. They have come to the Final Four in golf cleats and with cricket bats, tearing up the floor and cracking a few heads but only exposing the reality of their preparations to a gaping audience.  And no, swapping out Clement for Verilli  did not help.

In somber open court neither Justices or witnesses could help but laugh out loud! This isn’t quite unprecedented, a term we had best get intimate with, but it is fairly close. Could there be a shift in the wind that turns the lolz against their masters? In the press room, certainly laughter has long time precedent but so does the reflexive credulity with which those pressies receive any pronouncement from their favorite President ever! But precedent isn’t everything. A bored 1%er actually asked Press Sec Jay Carney to explain Joe Bidens’s assertion that Obama taking out Osama was the greatest event of the last 500 years. Preemptive hilarity buried the sad-sack Carney before he could taste the churn in his stomach. But it’s not his fault. He is sent out to defend the indefensible no less than Virelli or Clement or even Kagan when she presses her own briefs from behind the bench. It is all absurdity and nothing more. Laugh out loud at these clowns. Laugh out loud at their supporters.

Any comic will tell you, people want to laugh but are afraid. This also is a large element of the Alinsky strategies. Laugh first, laugh loudest and never cease; this is the gambit arrayed against you. You have seen it a thousand times. The laugh is deployed much like The Hand; as a barrier, a trench. A wall. But it’s fake. Genuine laughter shatters it all to hell once it gets started and you polite, friendly little farmers and ranch-hands out there should know, it’s already begun. Alright, watching Carney explain Biden might be Comedy Gold but it’s just too easy, isn’t it? Biden, pitched as some sort of elder statesmen in ’08 is well known as the stupidest man in public office; a high bar. But on more substantive issues the Plague of lolz has also struck at Carney’s podium. Last September there was a nasty outbreak on the subject of the President’s “jobs program”. The question alarmingly implies that it has been a bit of a bust. Carney rises to the occasion but even his friendliest of audiences rises back in guffaws.

That is bad news indeed. Not only are the pressies the most gullible of demographics; the most passionate of believers in Hope and Change, they are also vital cogs in the Obama Machine. The cogs are missing teeth. Returning to Obamacare, reliable Leftie and less reliable legal critic, Jeff Toobin, contemporaneously declared the Obamacare oral exam a “trainwreck”, modifying that the next day to “planewreck”. And he laughed, oh yes he did, that rat, at the hapless government attorneys face-planting as they defended legal precepts that HE had published with approbations just weeks ago. If Toobin is the mouth of Obama-friendly legal trends, and he is, he has just turned on his comrades and joined the other side of the dodge-ball field. This rodent knows a losing team when he is on one. Well, after halftime.

So the friendly arbiters are laughing. The contract retainers are laughing. The public is laughing. The Court is laughing. What could be worse? Only that now even their enemies are laughing. Behold the rehabilitation of Sarah Palin. SARAH PALIN! NBC employed her in a bit of interoffice politics to spite Katie Couric making this a media civil war that has done gone nukular! It’s the Scorched Earth Doctrine with Palin in the rubble smirking that smirk they hate so much. If that isn’t an infectious bit of drollery you must actually BE Katie Couric. But Palin has been benched for years, what else you got? We have also a certain Paul Ryan, the designated boogie man on maters fiscal and medical since Boner has been too accommodating to play that role. You may remember that Ryan was the fellow unsubtley portrayed as throwing granny over a cliff in her wheelchair, another example of Alinksytuned humor. Well, looks like the hoot is on the other foot. The denunciations of Ryan are the same… maybe worse, but now as the mood of the room has changed, it is Ryan who chortles.

And there is one last bit of bad news from the Humor Front. For years now, from the beginning, there is one institution that has been at least neutral, contrary to their habits, inclinations and personal interests. That would be the Pros, the mercenaries… the paid comedians. As showbiz types they are mostly liberal and mostly loyal to Obama if not the Democrats overall. Oopsie. The target is just too big and the rewards too great. Obama has now been officially thrown in the tank with all other Presidents preceding him. This development is unprecedented, at least for him, and as with his machinations in the Supreme Court, he seems to have never considered things might turn against him and has no contingency. Dana Carvey turns his fire not on Obama in particular but neither does he give him quarter. That’s enough. That’s plenty. No messiah, certainly no political messiah, can survive as just another dope like Reagan or W, can he?

I hope you laughed at that one.

Knock knock.

Who’s there?

Obama.

Obama who?

President Obama!

lol

Have you heard about the new “Avengers Assemble” #1? On March 13, USA Today had a big preview that is sure to whet your appetite for… well, um, more of the same. At least, if the cover is to be believed:

Obviously the first question when looking at this stupid image is, Why is Captain America leaping off from Hulk’s crotch? Hulk has a super crotch, I’m sure, so it would take a lot to injure him, but Captain America has super feet, so there’s still a chance for injury.

The second question is, Haven’t I already seen this image before, about a million times already, including within the last year, on a comic book that made national headlines? Well, yes, as it turns out, you have seen this image before:

Let’s see… There’s a green one, a blue one, a red one, a gray one… there’s a bunch of men and one woman… there’s a bunch of action lines… there’s a blue background with some photoshop lighting effects… they’re all leaping up from a spot on the floor just outside camera range. But the characters are different. For instance, one of the teams has a wealthy industrialist with no real superpowers, but a lot of skill, and a suit that helps him fight crime. Then the other team has a nearly omnipotent godlike humanesque creature who wears a cape and can fly.

Anyway, they’re forced to get together, despite their obvious differences and clashing personalities. They have to solve a problem that no one else could possibly handle.

Sorry. Got a little distracted there.

Last summer, when DC “rebooted” their entire lineup, they used this as the cover of their flagship title, Justice League #1. In fact, USA Today itself covered that reboot. Extensively. They’ve been all over it:

Justice League No. 1, with its A-list team of writer Geoff Johns and artist Jim Lee, kicked off DC’s ambitious “New 52″ relaunch in the fall and sold more copies than any other single comic during the year, according to Diamond Comic Distributors.

“New 52″ issues dominated the pack, with 19 of the top 25 comics of 2011. Three Justice League, two Batman and two Action Comics issues cracked the top 10, which had only one Marvel title: Ultimate Comics Spiderman No. 160, which featured the demise of the Ultimate Universe’s Peter Parker.
…
According to DC, as of last month the company has sold more than 361,000 copies of Justice League No. 1 and more than 250,000 each of the first issues of Scott Snyder’s Batman series and Grant Morrison’s Superman-centric Action Comics since September.

361,000 is a lot for a comic book, these days. Of course, the population of the United States alone is over 315 million. That means that at least 99% of people in the United States were able to resist that cover image. And remember that DC was beginning a program of releasing its books digitally on the same day as their print release. Are those numbers included? USA Today exhibits absolutely no curiosity on that front, but DC Comics has been exceptionally shady where their digital sales numbers are concerned:

[I]t looks like DC won’t be releasing its New 52 digital numbers but will feel confident in making claims on their behalf. It also looks like comics sites will then repeat this claim as news, perhaps qualified by source or as a claim but still putting that information out there.

This should stop. I think DC has a really dubious history with using the hidden portions of their numbers to PR advantage — call it the “I have a girlfriend in Canada” of sales analysis. My take is that this practice has intensified slightly ever since the numbers have become smaller and therefore more crucial.

It’s not just “comics sites” that are repeating DC’s sales claims as news. Actual “news” papers like USA Today are doing it, too. Speaking of which:

There was good news for the comic-book industry as a whole, too. Boosted by a slew of popular Marvel titles and renewed interest in DC’s relaunch, annual single-issue sales to the specialty market increased in 2011, up 1.2% from 2010 figures, although graphic novel sales dipped 5% from the previous year.

But, what were the sales figures for 2010? Was that an up year? Not particularly. But saying that 2011′s figures almost clawed their way back up to 2009 levels doesn’t sound nearly as impressive, which is clearly what USA Today was going for.

But back to “Avengers Assemble” #1. It’s been a fairly common complaint that superhero comics today are written exclusively by and for people who are hermetically sealed within the Fandom Bubble (as far as I know, I just made up that term, copyright and trademark by me!), and that there’s nowhere for a curious outsider to jump in, therefore alienating a potentially new audience. Will “Avengers Assemble” #1 be the book that comics newbies can jump in with? Let’s get back to the intrepid USA Today:

Writer Brian Michael Bendis has been hearing a lot from people wondering where to start in reading Avengers comics before the film opens. “Here’s the place,” he says, meaning Assemble. “It is a clean-as-a-whistle, come-on-in-the-water’s-nice Avengers story.”
…
Giving new fans an easy entry point into “what can be a confusing world of comics” is a goal for Marvel, executive editor Tom Brevoort says. But that’s especially important considering the massive promotion en route for the film.

This makes excellent artistic and financial sense. Tell a new story in a fresh way, unencumbered by a melange of continuity, and you could potentially make a lot of money doing something artistically fulfilling. There’s obviously a market for the characters and situations, since filmmakers have been mining the 70+ years worth of mainstream comics material to create massively successful feature films.

Maybe they’re finally getting it. Maybe these creators and editors are starting to understand that there is a potentially massive audience out there, if they’d only reach out to it. Maybe they’re starting to realize that for almost 20 years they have been actively antagonizing all but the most devoted fanboys, who don’t have time to consult decades of back issues to understand what’s going on in the latest issues.

Or, maybe not.

“Our problem is that people don’t read anything, and kids read less and less,” Bendis says. “That’s my focus even more than the movie people. I want to get everyone on the planet into comics.”

No. No, no, no, no, no. And no.

Mr. Bendis is so far into that Fandom Bubble that he needs a plumber to help him swallow his food. I don’t know what that statement means, but is he aware of the massive popularity of, for instance, The Hunger Games? Does he not remember the phenomenon that was Harry Potter? How about Twilight? Bookstores were opening at midnight for the releases of the latest editions of some of those series. What about Artemis Fowl? The Percy Jackson books? Diary of a Wimpy Kid? His Dark Materials?

Kids are not reading “less and less.” As the sales figures of the above books show — some of them in the hundreds of millions of copies! — kids are actually reading “more and more.” What they are reading “less and less” of, Mr. Bendis, is comic books. It’s now mostly white men in their mid to late 30s who read comics.

If you believe that what you’re competing with is a cultural trend toward kids reading “less and less,” and not with the material that the kids are actually really reading, then you’ve already admitted defeat and given up on expanding your base. You’re going to continue to sell to the same core of about 300,000 or so people, who are just getting older and more entrenched. You claim that you want to get “everyone on the planet into comics,” but nothing, absolutely nothing that you or the company for which you work have been doing has demonstrated that. And the same is true of DC. For all their “New 52″ hype, they’re still churning out the same old stuff.

Meanwhile, you’re being lapped, by The Hunger Games. And all you can do is shake your head, and sigh, and say, Kids these days, huh?… They’re just reading less and less. And Captain America is leaping off of Hulk’s crotch.

There has been a spark in Florida. Whether it proves igniting depends on the condition and volume of the available fuel. It has been hot and dry across the nation for some time so we should be cautious with cigarette butts and any other sort of burning. In that case, maybe Al Sharpton should have stayed home. Too late for that now. He has broken out the tropical suits and the high-humidity hair treaments. Rev Sharpton has been one of the leading voices championing Justice for Tayvon as this movement is aptly known, calling for patience and support for the Martin family as they brace for the possibly imminent arrest of their son. 

The details of that evening are combustibly in dispute but some of the evidence is in the public domain. 911 calls record the last words of George Zimmerman, age 28, the community watch captain in this modest gated community. The one thing that is certain is that the Sanford police explicitly told Zimmerman NOT to approach the “suspicious” character who turned out to be seventeen year old Trayvon Martin. But he did, according to Martin, accosting him from the rear, gun drawn and trying to restrain Martin. He resisted this ununiformed, armed stranger and struggled with the gun resulting, accidentally he says, in a single shot being fired that killed Zimmerman instantly. Martin was taken into custody without incident, questioned in the presence of his father and counsel and released.

There are witnesses to this twilight exertion but in some regards they conflict. One question is, who was sitting on whose chest? If, as Martin contends, the larger Zimmerman was straddling him about to rain his fists down on his face, Martin would have a good claim of self defense, although he contends the shooting was accidental. But the sounds of dismay on the 911 call were plausibly coming from either participant. Martin claims it is him. The witnesses who only heard and did not see are split as to whether it is Martin or Zimmerman. The one who claims to have seen the conflict at dusk but at a distance, says it was Martin over Zimmerman at close quarters.

The coroner’s report and forensic investigation are not in. From the cop shows we know that the technicians will be able to draw many of the finest details from their art. If the bullet was fired from above, it is in the ground and will be unearthed if it hasn’t already been. If it was fired from below they will be able to tell that to a certainty. A grand jury is impaneled and will decide on an indictment of Tayvon Martin, the most probable charge would be one of manslaughter.

But waiting for indictments is not everyone’s cup of tea. The Florida latino community is up in arms. They complain that this clear crime, the open murder of a young husband defending his neighborhood from what everyone agrees is a crime wave, is being brushed under the rug. Racial overtones are unmistakable. The black community argues for cool heads and patience with the system. Sharpton offers counsel and support as Trayvon’s legal team is assembled from pro bono bigfoots and a sharp array of media defenders.

In the mean time Zimmerman’s family remains in seclusion. The patriarch of this family with Peruvian roots and cousins of all colors has released a statement defending his late son from media charges that he was overzealous in his position with the neighborhood watch, that he may have assaulted Martin for racist reasons. Neighbors mostly agree as he has aided more than a few with crime problems in this thoroughly integrated development. Unfairly adverse and conspicuously perverse media treatment has been brought down on a dead man, possibly killed in the legitimate execution of a public trust though neither paid nor trained to do so, George’s survivors say.

Justice For Trayvon moves forward. It is a sensation across the social media sites. #Justicefortrayvon trends on twitter. Meaning? Meaning a lot of people are publicly talking about it, for good or ill. There is real approbation for it though as the movement is collecting large sums of cash from small, dispersed and diverse donors. The newly formed JusticeForTrayvon Trust has seven figure deposits and takes more every day. Martin will have the finest in representation, that seems certain. In addition to straight material support, Martin also enjoys energetic demonstrations at the local courthouse, though he is not there, and in cities around the country.

While Colonel Sharpton moves things forward on the front in Florida, General Jesse Jackson is defending the supply lines. Jackson is on a flying tour speaking before La Raza groups and making other public addresses regarding the concerns of the national hispanic population that Zimmerman’s death is being subsumed under a cloud of black racial solidarity. Jackson made it a point repeatedly to explain that hispanics, blacks and indeed all “persons of color” owed it to their posterity to stick together, making a solid and growing majority as long as hispanics and blacks stay in step. But when questioned about what this might mean specifically Jackson asserted “…blacks are under attack in this country.” and the attempt to short circuit due process for Martin was an example of it.

Gun control groups and their antagonists have also made hay. Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law is under public assault with Martin as a hook though the facts of the case aren’t really germane. Those who abhor guns completely raise a horrified cry that Zimmerman actually carried his legal and licensed firearm. Look, look! they say. Your gun will not save you. It is more likely to shoot you. The gunners say, quite rightly, the guns are already out there. We will not disarm.

The most shameful response, though it may still prove the most prudent, has been from the so-called white community. It is unchronicled anywhere but if you are white, you know what it was. It was a great big PHEW!! and a pantomimed wipe of sweat from our brows as the unlikely named Zimmerman was revealed in his stock photo to be of hispanic origins. We will officiate and spectate at this one and quite happy we are to be off either end of the hook. But no, honky-crackers. ’tis not to be. Yes, as a practical matter, in the media and that miasmic stink we call a culture, this will be a racial melodrama like Westside Story without the romance, but you are still involved. There is the potential for a fissure in the Rainbow Coalition to open like the Cracks of Doom, exposing the lava beneath and swallowing those in the front rows. This could well be a good thing. If caused by agitation and animosity, it will prove to be a very bad thing indeed. Are Americans of any color doing their duty by voting Present? No. If the bigs of race and government are determined to hash these things out on the front lawn, so be it. AG Holder called us cowards to our whiny little faces years ago. And he was right. It’s time for courage then, even if it is rum courage, to say the simple things we all know.

Justice for Trayvon and justice for George are one and the same thing. These are not opposed ends and should not enjoy opposed camps. Justice will involve a full, public and contested airing of all the facts modern inquiry can produce. Does that mean a trial and only a trial? No. It may well be that the facts will not support a charge even of manslaughter. Should the district attorney of Sanford make such a charge without evidence, the city would be in for a nasty Sharpton-fueld lawsuit and probably will be anyhow. If the evidence on the spot that evening were thoroughly cut and dry does anyone truly doubt the police would have made their charge? Why? Believe it or not, all the infuriating and contradictory elements of our system of justice are there for a reason. If the shoe were on the other foot, would the Zimmerman camp want the benefit of the doubt and an open system of trials; Due Process, as we call it, apply to him? I suspect so. All the self-clicked photos of black Americans in “hoodies” that are papering the virtual earth imply, I hope, an objection to being railroaded rather than tacit support for violence, however justified.

Yes, I am certain this is the case in America’s big heart. I say extend to Tayvon at least half of the patience and forbearance recently, if improvidently, shown for Casey Anthony but lay on the same scrutiny. From that case Florida should know that justice is often denied through no lack of effort or competence by the authorities. Still, we live with it. We swallow it. We participate in it as honestly as we can because the alternative of frustration and revenge is far worse. We can be thankful that there has been at least ONE figure acting with propriety. When asked to comment on the Florida controversy at an unrelated Rose Garden press conference this morning, the President declined.

Today, Yahoo had a link on their main page to an alarming Time story about an alarming trend — actually, it’s more like an epidemic! — of children (who are our future and our most precious resource) asphyxiating themselves in an effort to achieve a “high,” to just feel something in this callously dull world. This deadly dangerous activity goes by many names, but the most alarming by far is “The Choking Game,” and only the most naive among you don’t believe it’s already infected your community.

Researchers at The Crime Victims’ Institute at Sam Houston State University surveyed 837 students at a Texas university and found that the behavior, which works by cutting off blood flow to the brain in order to induce a high, was frighteningly commonplace:

•16% of students said they’d played the game, and three-quarters more than once
•On average, students first played the game at age 14
•Males were more likely to have played than females
•90% of students who had played the game learned about it from friends, and most students said they first played in a group

16% of a group of 837 students at one Texas University might have choked or hyperventilated themselves at some point in the past. And three-quarters of those might have done it twice!

That is “frighteningly commonplace” (by the way, emphasis added, because, see below)! That’s practically everybody!

It turns out that The Choking Game is a crisis that media outlets have been trying to manufacture for some time. With limited success, because today was the first I’d ever heard of it — now, of course, I’m panicked. Anyway, back in 2010, Time also sounded an alarm:

Known by various names around the world — including funky chicken, space monkey, sleeper hold and the blackout, choking or fainting game — the activity involves applying pressure to the neck to stop the blood flow to the brain and then releasing the pressure to create a temporary sense of euphoria. It isn’t new: French medical books mention the scarf game as early as the 18th century, and deaths in Britain, Canada and the U.S. have occasionally made the headlines over the years. What is new — and frightening — is that teenagers are now uploading instructional videos to the Internet that glamorize the potentially deadly practice.

Are you “frightened” by this “frighteningly commonplace” activity? People have been doing it since the 18th century for crying out loud! But, thanks to the murderous internet, that is literally killing people in Asian countries, these misguided children have a new and frightening way of promoting their frightening activity.

But let’s get down to it. How many people are dying thanks to this frighteningly commonplace activity? As it turns out, “many.” Back to Time’s 2010 expose:

Many teenagers already are dying. Figures on choking-game deaths remain sketchy — a lack of awareness among police means that cases often end up being classified as suicides. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta estimates that at least 82 people died from the activity between 1995 and 2007. But according to the Wisconsin-based campaign group Games Adolescents Shouldn’t Play (GASP), as many as 1,000 young people die in the U.S. each year playing some variation of the game. In France, officials identified 17 deaths in 2009, but they suspect that many more go unreported.

Hold on a second — you mean that police have a “lack of awareness” of this frighteningly commonplace epidemic??? How could they be unaware of something that has killed 82 people between 1995 and 2007?

Oh, but wait, a special interest group formed to fight this frightening commonplace scourge claims that “as many as 1,000 young people die in the U.S. each year playing some variation on the game.” Are you frightened of that astonishingly equivocal statement?

Okay, let’s head over to the GASP website. They’re the experts on this epidemic I’d never heard of before, despite all the frightening stories out there. What kind of statistics do they have? I bet they’re frightening.

Or, maybe not. Here are a couple of screenshots.

According to their spreadsheet, thus far in 2012 there’s been one incident. Worldwide. In 2011, that number was a frighteningly commonplace 45. In 2010? 50. Remember, these numbers are from all over the world, and the GASP website doesn’t seem to have any information about how they come by them. Oh, they have a “contact us” hyperlink, where users can send an email to report something, but we have no way of knowing where the numbers actually came from.

Even when they don’t tell us where they get their numbers, the group dedicated to fighting this frighteningly commonplace problem can’t muster more than 151 worldwide incidents in a given year (2006).

But, these are the people who claim that “as many as 1,000 young people die in the U.S. each year playing some variation on the game.” Their own statistics — the statistics available on their own alarmist website — are nowhere near that number. So where did they get it?

I don’t know and they won’t say. But here’s something interesting from a 2008 attempt by the New York Times to jump on the frighteningly commonplace bandwagon:

The deaths identified by the C.D.C. are based on media reports of the game over the past decade, but more than 60 of the deaths have occurred since 2005. The agency says the number of deaths is probably understated, and other experts agree, noting that choking game deaths, which involve accidental strangulation with a rope or belt, often look like suicides.

The Web site GASP, which stands for Games Adolescents Shouldn’t Play, reports that 65 children died in 2007 alone. Mark Lepore, an assistant professor of counseling psychology at Chatham College in Pittsburgh, told The Houston Press last year that he believed 1,800 people in the United States had died playing the game in the past 10 years; most were children and teenagers.

These frighteningly commonplace Choking Game deaths sometimes look like suicides — which actually are much more common — so we can just make up numbers that we think represent the actual frightening statistics that we don’t have because the media hasn’t done enough to draw attention to this frighteningly commonplace problem they’ve been trying to turn into crisis for several years.

But look at what the New York Times says about GASP’s 2007 numbers — “65 children died in 2007 alone.” Now look at the screen shot that I took of GASP’s 2007 numbers. For the USA, they list 77 “Choking Game” incidents, and 12 “Recovered.” I don’t know what that means, and there’s nothing on GASP’s site to explain, but the New York Times reporter apparently believes that it represents people who “recovered” from their choking game injuries and survived, because 77 minus 12 is 65. But, if you look at the 2007 total, and add all the numbers together (I used a calculator!), you find that the total includes all of the “Choking Game” incidents and “Recovered” added together.

The “recovered” people are being counted twice? And they still only made it to 147.

As for Mark Lepore, and his “1,800 people” (notice the article says “people,” not “young people”) dying every year from playing the Choking Game, here is that Houston Press article, and here is the paragraph with Mr. Lepore’s quote:

But Mark Lepore, assistant professor of counseling psychology at Pittsburgh’s Chatham College, believes 1,800 people in the United States have died playing the game in the past ten years. The majority were children and teens. However, Lepore acknowledges that “it’s really hard to make an accurate determination” as to exactly how many deaths can be attributed to the choking game. (Deaths attributed to the choking game are not to be confused with those attributed to autoerotic asphyxiation, in which masturbation and asphyxia are combined in the quest for a more powerful orgasm, and which typically involves older practitioners.)

And, that’s it. Mr. Lepore believes it’s 1,800 people in ten years, but he’s got absolutely no evidence whatsoever to back up his claim. (But the majority of his wholly made up number were children and teens.) Frightened yet? 1,800 in ten years, up to 1,000 a year, 85 people from 1995 to 2007… who really cares? The important thing is that this is a frighteningly commonplace epidemic that is literally choking our future.

So, what is a panicking parent to do? Back to today’s Time article:

The good news is that learning that a number of teens and college students have suffocated to death from playing the Choking Game helped deter students from playing. Parents, talk to your kids. And schools can play a role too: related research found that 90% of parents think that including information about the dangers of the game in school health and drug prevention classes is a smart idea.

Talk to your kids.

Except. From the Today show, 2009:

Their son Kevin was a good kid — a bright and generous 15-year-old who seemed to have everything going for him. But the boy played what is most commonly called the “choking game” — a fad among teenagers that experts say could more accurately be called “suffocation roulette” — and he lost. Kevin was discovered unconscious in his room by his 11-year-old sister.
…
Kevin Tork died on March 30. What made it even more painful for his parents was that Ken Tork had seen a televised report on a young person who died playing the game and talked with his son about it. He told Kevin to promise he would never engage in anything so dangerous, and Kevin promised.

This father saw an alarmist television report about the “frighteningly commonplace” choking game, and decided to talk to his son about it. And then his son died from the very activity that the alarmist report alarmed him about.

What if Mr. Tork hadn’t seen that televised report about a manufactured crisis that is literally killing maybe a couple of dozen people a year, if that, we really have no way of knowing because even though it’s frighteningly commonplace the actual numbers that we have are awfully small, too small to be accurate because we just know there’s got to be more dying from this than we think because, well, the internet, and, well, kids these days, you know?

Even one death from this dumb “game” is one too many, and I feel terrible for anyone who has to bury their child, for any reason. But for crying out loud this isn’t a “frighteningly commonplace” “fad,” this is exploiting fear to sell advertising. Maybe the real crisis is lazy “journalists” manufacturing crises? Maybe parents need to sit down and talk to their kids about the importance of being skeptical about the news. That is, if they can calm down enough from their own panic.

In December of 2010 my car was stolen from a packed pay lot on a Thursday afternoon. The cops thought it a routine event, and to them it was. The sentiment was that most likely it would turn up in a day or so, probably that very evening. As it happened it was a couple weeks before it was identified, chased and destroyed as a result. The offender, a Marcus Jones, 24 years old, drove my Jeep squarely into a light pole and grabbed his girlfriend’s five month old daughter to use as a human shield, leaving the mother at the scene with an impressive cache of marijuana and cocaine. He was apprehended but claimed to be an innocent bystander who had picked up the abandoned baby on this night of icy, driving winds. That diversion failed, as did his first attempt at legal defense. He told the court he was hearing voices. The State shrinks called BS on that. He complains that he is suicidally depressed, as well he may be, now facing some twenty charges including kidnapping and the considerable weight to his conscience added by the fact that the child in question is permanently paralyzed from her injuries and facing her second birthday in a few months’ time. Monday morning he will either plead guilty and receive his sentence or plead not guilty and receive a trial. I will attend. The grave nature of the baby’s injuries have been reported in no media I can find. A functionary of the Atlanta prosecutors’ office told me of the sad fact while informing me of the court date and their desire for my presence to add, however sparsely, to the bill of atrocities laid on this career criminal. All the parties involved, probably including the judge, are black. 

No one is supposed to mention that, or remember it, or draw any inference from it. We have been cowards on matters of race, as Eric Holder informed us some years ago and there is scant incentive to change course now. In fact the carrots and sticks are arrayed to mark out a single course of determined, practiced ignorance; a platonic ideal of non-judgemental even-handedness which in practice is a program of leniency and forbearance that explains away even wanton depravity like this as mundane; regrettable but unsurprising. I deliver the same diagnosis as the Fulton County psych-squad did to Mr Jones. I call bullshit. I call it loud and long.

My exposure to black people, black culture and black behavior could only be more complete if I were black myself, in which case I would be even more subject to the peer pressure to circle the wagons; said pressure I recognize and thoroughly renounce. Marcus Jones speaks and acts far more for his race than, say, Magic Johnson or local philanthropist Luducris. But with precious few exceptions, they all speak from the same hymnal. I predict Monday’s proceedings will be quick and without rancor from anyone. Jones will plead guilty, have his prison sentence commuted to the time already served in lock-up with rehab, community service and a levy of restitution that will never, in the meagerest fraction, be paid. If it goes otherwise, I will inform you but in this case and any like it, expect the expected.

This is not to say that an identical set of circumstances might occur with a white malefactor. Dangerous loons abound. But just as certainly as Mr Jones will be excused the firmest punishment on racial grounds, the others will not. If they escape the full weight of the law it will have to be through old-fashioned luck, pluck or skillful lawyering. Their race will be no asset. Who can deny it?

Oh, we know who. The criminal justice system is diabolically weighted against the Black Man. This is a white man’s world! as I have been volubly reminded on several occasions. Thank providence for repeated confrontations, they hone your skills. On MARTA or in the precincts or just on the street it is common for racial grievances to be hollered at the nearest white face. Common indeed. But even these ruffians are perplexed by a simple truth; that while it may be arguable that this is a White Man’s World, it is irrefutable that this is a Black Man’s Town. Nearly all of the city and local government is black from bottom to top with minor exceptions, one of which was Judge Rowland Barnes. We say “was” as this man was shot to death on the bench by Brian Nichols while under the delusion, he claims, that he was an escaping slave. Nichols, not Barnes. So he was convicted then? Isn’t that a triumph of The System and a counter-argument to your vile race-baiting, white boy? No. What criminal, in the dock for rape, could beat up a (black) female deputy, turn her gun on his judge as well as a few other people and then not be subject to execution in a capital punishment state? Only a black one. He played the race card with great skill making a capital charge impossible given the jury pool and perhaps the preferences of the DA. Hey, he thought he was Kunte Kinte! Do we believe that? No, but for the sake of racial solidarity we shall pretend that we do.

A similar state of affairs obtains in our schools. Complaints abound that black students are subject to much harsher punishments than non-blacks (though hispanics split the middle). This is not and cannot be anything other than invidious racial profiling and dogpiling. In the popular treatments, the immediate question of whether black students offend at a greater rate or with greater severity is written right out as further racism. In the academic treatments, they claim they find no evidence of this, but they have not looked very hard. Where the student body is largely black you will find the teachers are largely black and management uniformly so. Does this make a difference? Where the situation is inverted it certainly does. White dominance in any office, in any field, in any corner of society is taken as racism on its face by those who make their millions casting all Brothers and Sisters, like Nichols, as runaway slaves, absolved of any legal or moral code excepting only race loyalty, and even that is situational. Clarence Thomas or any other black figure that is other than a Rainbow Coalition enthusiast is bleached out culturally. He is an Oreo, an Uncle Tom as are the few students who do manage to buck the tide that makes Jay-Z some sort of hero and book learning, even discernible english, the mark of the sellout. But where black officials blatantly gorge themselves on the blood of black children; selling the educational opportunities of our entire city for six-figure contracts, it is the children who take the hit. The cannibals are lionized and, of course, the charges against them dismissed as racial animosity.

What foundation there is for complaining of continued invidious racism against our black citizens is limited to the area of drug crimes. Yes, the famous sentencing divide between crack and coke does exist and is most unfavorable to the crack-smokers. On this obvious fact all the other charges are hung. But the Drug War is obsolete, illogical and damaging for all while it is condemned by nearly NO high figure of any color. Is Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson, Jr or Sr against the Drug War on principle? Ah, heck no. Here we find race solidarity selectively applied as even black bigwigs in government or media can expect lenient treatment as opposed to a street thug like Marcus Jones who will murderously flee rather than face even the small risk of further, lengthy confinement. His only hope would be to learn to rap on the cell block and gain his Get Out Of Jail card for later use. Better to game the system on the front end as his looney-tunes defense attempts to do, and go for a race-assisted acquittal.

What nasty disparities exist however, you will find at the federal level where only the biggest fish are taken for cleaning. The vast majority of offenders will sit in State or municipal courts. In Atlanta the black defendant may take heart while the victim of any hue had best expect little in the way of justice. The much revered Judge Marvin Arrington went a bit too far (or just too publicly) in having bailiffs clear the court of white faces to administer some tough talk to augment his breezy sentencing but his admission of impropriety altered exactly nothing. Still the chambers have a revolving door; still it is a march of recidivists and still laughable sentences are handed down for repeated, heinous crimes which are not even served, being likewise commuted for reasons of racial solidarity by paroles, pardons and judicially ordered mass releases. When even attempted murder with the most obvious and well-witnessed malice draws essentially NO penalty because the thug in question goes to a prominent black college, what hope is there for deterrent punishment? And when the gangsta culture with all its violence, misogyny and naked race hatreds is rewarding a reputation for thuggery with millions, where does the weight of incentive lie? Even further does the Black Ship of Race turn into a malignity which blames, perpetually, its prey for its predations.

Chuck D, eschewing his “slave name” (at least the slave surname) made a pile with Public Enemy; a pioneering institution of rap and hip-hop but STILL is a grievance merchant of the most odious stripe. The title of one album is exemplary of this infectious mindset. “It takes a nation of millions to hold us down!” This millionaire of free enterprise and free speech complains that now, and no doubt, for always, even the record label is no more than a slavemaster and its captive contractors, merely slaves. This while responding to semi-decadal challenges to his wisdom, that he and PE firmly believe in equality, racial and otherwise. Needless to say, denying obvious bunkum like this is also racist. Well, strap in for some amazing racism then. Chuck, you have it twisted. It has taken a nation of millions to prop you up! No one has been holding you down except other black hands and black minds; said impediments you wave as badges of black honor on your black holidays and in your black classrooms paid largely with white funds; taxed or donated.

Which brings us to the obvious target of my redneck race-assed ire. Yes, that is Barack Hussein Obama although he is merely the tip of a black iceberg that has already done so much to damage this nation and all her people. There is scarcely a black public figure out there, excepting only the few, courageous black conservatives, that are not now on record as blissfully and intentionally ignorant of politics, economics, the law, current events, geopolitical issues or indeed any substantive aspect of public affairs. These Public Enemies frankly state, as Samuel Jackson did, Obama’s policies never meant shit to them. Indeed, they never could tell one from another as the brutally revealing youtube archives show. The campaign and vote for Barack Obama was, is and shall ever be nothing but an exercise in race solidarity, the country or simple decency be damned. Literally. As fake preacher Jeremiah Wright damned America so is every vote or other act of support for Barack Obama or his legion of race-hustling self-dealers a damnation of this country and ALL its inhabitants of any color. The white Obama vote? This is nakedly marxist when it is not nakedly ignorant and pusillanimous. The black electorate holds the white voters in thrall, including a program of thuggish intimidation. The threat is to be denounced as a racist if there is any objection to a racist regime destroying all it finds within its tentacles.

The upside? It is vast and just. The black population, whether explicitly on handouts or merely serving a market that would not exist without handouts, is thoroughly dependent on the balance of the nation. Now, whether we care to or not, we cannot continue the exertions that have propped up the black seventh of this country. No, no. The accounts are as exhausted as the hearts, so bitterly disappointed at the valueless assessment black Americans have laid on their chance to be, yes, full and equal participating citizens. Blacks have spat on America and white Americans in particular for fifty years while drawing their sustenance from us. Expect no wisdom or regret at this; that would be as unmanly as treating a woman or a baby with something approaching respect. That doesn’t change the fact that black America trucks in greenbacks; dollars, not just bling-bling. YOUR pockets are being picked just as quickly as anyone and you have forgotten or renounced the habits that could refill them. As that old gag headline reads; World Ending, Blacks Hardest Hit. This applies to the political and fiscal world as well. It’s the end of the world as we know it so maybe, just maybe, one braindead ghetto loser who has taken his baseless grudges out on the innocent will feel the pinch. Good thing it was a little black girl he maimed, otherwise the Troy Davis crowd would be down there bustin’ him out.

As the vast majority of Americans have never been polled, so the vast majority of Americans have never made their viewing or listening habits public knowledge through the ratings systems. In radio there is Arbitron and in TV, the Nielsens. The politicians and their staffs live and die by the polls as the professional talkers go on air and off by the ratings, just ask Keith Olberman (if you can find him). The dealers in brouhaha, have a moist, delicious controversy on their plates. The most coveted delicacy, a Rush of Limbaugh seems to be within reach of their forks, knives and fingers. Who could expect them not to tuck in? The implements for cracking the shell and exposing the delicious Limbaugh underneath are many but one is foremost. The ratings and for the same reason Willie Sutton robbed banks and Mitt Romney is hurtling towards Washington; it’s where the money is.

A Cenk Uygur is on the case. Heck, they all are, but this character who could not reveal his Easter Island head in public if we didn’t know where Mohammed Atta is, shows up foremost on Bing. Statistically you are unlikely to know the name as this Delta smelt of media barely registered in the ratings system when he was on MSNBC of which you may also be blissfully ignorant. The Young Turk has landed on his feet after being replaced by Al Sharpton. He has, like Olberman and Algore, carved out a place for himself on the internets at CurrenTV, from which perch he assails Limbaugh’s much vaunted audience claims as phony-baloney, plastic banana, good-time rock ‘n roller codswallop. Since this is an attempt at media nose-punching we should weigh in the contenders. Uygur asserts that he and Limbaugh may well be in the same class. He refers us to his youtube channel where, at my viewing, nearly all the vids have almost exactly 300 pageviews with one exception. His manly challenge to Rush has ten thousand.

Cenk denounces Limbaugh as a “paper tiger”. His ratings are not ratings at all! By this he means that there is no national radio survey, rather national estimates are agglomerated through local market testing. And how is that done? Until ’07 or so by the laughably uncertain means of Arbitron diaries; that is folks are sent little black books in which they record their listening history. On this I can do a bit of first-hand reporting. I was an Arbitron participant right around the time Limbaugh was coming to prominence. Randomly I was identified by phone and sent a diary with a modest stipend, bit less than $10 as I recall, which is why I claimed to be the head of a radio-listening household of four. My compensation covered the bar tab while I set to my project, not of recording my consumption which consisted purely of the college radio station I was on, but rather filling out the books with what I thought my fictional Arbitron Bunch might like as well as high-brow programming I felt a civic duty to promote. Opera and public affairs programs reaped the ratings rewards. Ignorant of AM myself, the local affiliate favored by my beloved auntie drew powerful numbers. How many hours are in a day again? People listen to the radio while sleeping, yes? Sure, that counts. Or would, if it were not all bollocks. So we can agree with Mr Uygar of the Steppes. The ratings were fraudulent. In that banner year of ’07 a bit of technology sprang to the rescue with the Portable People Meter which listens as you listen, detecting subsonic codes and recording precisely what you hear. This new methodology did indeed trim Limbaugh’s numbers last year. That fact was flogged by reliable Rushfoes but it is a tricky business for one ratings whore to question the takings of another. There could be collateral damage. Black 0r “Urban” radio stations, for instance, took a tremendous hit as well. It seems hip-hop pop is not as big a seller as the broadcasters would want igniting claims that the gadgets are, you guessed it, racist. Non-english stations also saw their official audiences trimmed as did NPR. Whoo! Better keep the lid on that! Cenk also observes that the audience numbers may be skewed by double-counting, a curious complaint from a guy who’s own numbers go up with the click of anyone’s mouse, any number of times  (like, say, 300?) but for the ad rates, da money, that is not really material. Repeat listenership is still exposure to the ads.

Given all the givens we can stipulate to Cenk’s complaint and come to a compromise figure one half of Limbaugh’s biased claim; a nice round ten million unique listeners in a week tuning in for some substantive fraction of his fifteen broadcast hours. Ten million. Of which, yes, I am a reliable Army of One since  my involuntary retirement but Limbaugh is not Appointment Radio (as he puts it) for me. That honor goes only to the fiery Mark Levin. Politics aside, and I could chronicle serious disagreements with the man, this is a media titan; a gas giant, a super-massive blackhole. By any per capita measure he is the biggest thing there is by several orders of magnitude. American Idol drew seven million this week being, as usual, the most watched show so even our cropped figure for Limbaugh leaves him the big winner but that barely begins to tell the tale. The most watched television event to date was the last Superbowl. 111 million people worldwide viewed the game, a crushing defeat for Limbaugh, right? Yes, certainly he wept salty tears in his skybox until remembering that sporting events, movies, television, cable shows and even pornos are the industrial products of numberless, ah, hands. Limbaugh’s product has one source, apparently limitless. That is his copious cigar-hole. As he likes to remind us when, as lately, he is under attack from media munchkins, captains of industry, government, academia and the semi-pro hordes of RusHaters, he is literally Just a Guy on the Radio. He gives away his thoughts, however expressed, and then sells the excess attention he finds lying around in the dust. Such it is with all media (excepting subscriber services) but everyone else’s impact must be divided by the number of worker-bees in front of or behind cameras and mics while the EIB Network uses a denominator of One. In this more literal sense, Limbaugh’s numbers, unlike Uygar’s mouseclicks are Real Numbers. They are Whole Numbers. They truly reflect that in any week at least 3% of America has heard the voice of Rush Limbaugh, said voice almost solely pontificating on public affairs.

His fans listen to him. His enemies listen to him. Entire lucrative careers have been made largely by criticizing him. Books, magazines and of course numerous radio imitators seek the slenderest reasons for mentioning his name because, as we saw even in Uygar’s untraveled corner of the internets, those three dulcet syllables Rush Limbaugh are the closest thing to a magic incantation we know in the media industry. Even a media paramecium like Yours Truly can, perhaps, hopefully, draw sustenance in his wake; sending out the echo of his name to the searchbots of allies, enemies and commercial aggregators drawing precious, finite attention to my own wares, like his, of clear thoughts frankly, sometimes humorously expressed. If a Big Wheel like Cenk Uygar can do it, why should I refrain? Maybe I’ll even make 300 hits like the Young Turk. But Limbaugh, no matter what you hear, is not going anywhere unless he goes the way of Andrew Breitbart.

As for me, my traffic is WAY up. Thank you, megaheads.

The United States of America, the world’s greatest force for good, has lately been using drones to bomb the crap out of Muslims in the Middle East. Drones are especially convenient tools because they are light, maneuverable, and unmanned. The government — the government that works for me, and you (if you’re an American), and does what it does for your benefit — has only increased the number of drones it’s used in those areas in which it is fighting kinetic military actions.

Some people have expressed concern that these drones that we’re using to bomb the crap out of Muslims aren’t only hitting those that our government has deemed to be the *bad* ones. Official numbers are difficult to come by, because they don’t exist, but some have estimated that, well, a significant number of innocent, non-terrorist Muslims, have been killed in drone strikes.

Well, the Associated Press has used some impressive journalism to discover that those people are full of beans. They have convincingly shown that drone bombing the crap out of Muslims is actually a pretty efficient way to conduct a war, so you can stop worrying about that and concentrate on presumably more important issues, like, you know, contraception. And yesterday they helpfully released the fruits of that journalism:

“[A]n AP reporter who spoke to about 80 villagers at the sites of the 10 attacks in North Waziristan, the main sanctuary for militants in Pakistan’s northwest tribal region along the Afghan border, was told that a significant majority of the dead were combatants.
Indeed, the AP was told by the villagers that of at least 194 people killed in the attacks, about 70 percent — at least 138 — were militants. The remaining 56 were either civilians or tribal police, and 38 of them were killed in a single attack on March 17, 2011.”

See? Nothing to worry about. Only about 30% of the people who are being drone bombed aren’t militants. Of course, we have no way of knowing how many of that 30% had it coming for whatever reason. Maybe some of them had meth on them at the time.

I really want to congratulate this intrepid AP reporter. This person spoke to “about 80 villagers.” That is 80 more than none at all, so you know that he got some amazing insights. I mean, those 80 “villagers” are right there on the front lines, so to speak. They have the full view of what’s going on. They should know.

Also, kudos for showing more than one side to this complicated story:

But the civilian deaths in the covert CIA-run program raise legal and ethical concerns, especially given Washington’s reluctance to speak openly about the strikes or compensate the families of innocent victims.

It’s kinda quaint to still have qualms over a program that’s efficient enough that a full 80% of its hits (probably) strike our “enemies.” I mean, war isn’t exactly an exact science. Neither is journalism for that matter. You work with what you got. I think it was George Orwell who said, “Don’t let the enemy of the perfect get in the way of doing what you know is good,” or something like that. I might be misquoting it and I might have gotten the wrong attribution but I’m fairly confident that I got it 80% correct, so I’ll just leave it.

Anyway, if you’re one of those people with “legal and ethical concerns,” let no less an authority than the president of the United States himself put you at ease:

The drone program is so secretive that only last month did Obama publicly acknowledge its existence. He said the strikes “have not caused a huge number of civilian casualties,” but gave no details.

Who needs “details” when you’ve got reassurances like that? So the next time some worrywart tries to guilt you over civilian drone bomb deaths, you just give them the response of your mathematically sensitive leader. After all, this is the same sensitive president who apologized for that whole Koran burning thing.

And, by the way, on the very same day that the Associated Press released its in-depth report on our drone bombing the crap out of Muslims policy, they also released an insightful story on the “mainstreaming” of drones.

They’re coming to America!

Those things that don’t cause “a huge number of civilian casualties” will soon be flying over your head. And you might not even be a Muslim.

“Civilian cousins of the unmanned military aircraft that have tracked and killed terrorists in the Middle East and Asia are in demand by police departments, border patrols, power companies, news organizations and others wanting a bird’s-eye view that’s too impractical or dangerous for conventional planes or helicopters to get.”

It’s kinda fun to think about these new drones as “cousins” of the “military aircraft that have tracked and killed terrorists.” Can you imagine what that family reunion is like? “Oh, Droney, why can’t you be more like your cousin Milly? He’s out killing terrorists with 80% efficiency, while you’re out just flying around, looking for cows in the middle of nowhere!”

Cowsearchers are only one use for these new drone cousins:

“Potential civilian users are as varied as the drones themselves.
Power companies want them to monitor transmission lines. Farmers want to fly them over fields to detect which crops need water. Ranchers want them to count cows.”

Doesn’t that sound awesome? But what’s even more awesome is that your new drone cousins will be working hard to help keep you safe:

The hungriest market is the nation’s 19,000 law enforcement agencies.
Customs and Border Patrol has nine Predator drones mostly in use on the U.S.-Mexico border, and plans to expand to 24 by 2016. Officials say the unmanned aircraft have helped in the seizure of more than 20 tons of illegal drugs and the arrest of 7,500 people since border patrols began six years ago.

It’s hard to believe that anyone might be opposed to this, especially after learning of military cousin drone’s 80% accuracy rate. And yet, the AP gives space to the concerns about this amazing technology:

A recent ACLU report said allowing drones greater access takes the country “a large step closer to a surveillance society in which our every move is monitored, tracked, recorded, and scrutinized by the authorities.”

Ooh, that does sound scary. “Surveillance society.” Should someone who’s not doing anything wrong be concerned? Only as concerned as you are about the Muslims we’re drone bombing out in the Middle East.

“Today anybody— the paparazzi, anybody — can hire a helicopter or a (small plane) to circle around something that they’re interested in and shoot away with high-powered cameras all they want,” said [Dan] Elwell, the [Aerospace Industries Association's vice president for civil aviation]. “I don’t understand all the comments about the Big Brother thing.”

See? A paparazzi hiring a helicopter to fly him around so he can shoot photos of Kim Kardashian’s wedding is exactly the same as each of the 19,000 law enforcement agencies using one of those little hummingbird-sized cousin drones to peek in the window of someone that they just got a tip might be running a meth lab in his bathroom.

What? Are you all of a sudden worried about Kim Kardashian’s privacy?