SCRIPTOIDS

Tripping on Twizzlers

2010-07-29T00:56:00.005-04:00

I was a liberal Democrat when I was young. I used to wear a green Army jacket with political buttons on it — for Hubert Humphrey, Birch Bayh, John F. Kennedy and Franklin Roosevelt. I even wore that jacket in my high school yearbook photo. -- BoBo Brooks

Effigies of Sen. Lindsey Graham hanged, beaten by Randall Terry and followers until little plastic fetuses fall from pinata-like wombs

2010-07-27T05:13:00.002-04:00

　
You know, just substitute Kabul for Greenville, South Carolina, and the mayor of Kabul for Lindsey Graham, and Sec Def Gates would be urgently requesting a few thousand additional troops.
　
　
Via Wonkette. Full slide show here.

10 people, one post-fetal cell collection die when van hits truck

2010-07-26T14:30:00.003-04:00

Devout anti-choice blogger Dr. Stolinsky reads a nondescript headline from an unnamed, unlinked, undated newspaper article and goes all DaVinci Code. Where we see a sad but tragically common story, he sees nothing but encrypted media bias against the preconceived, the preborn, and the recently postborn.

Some time ago, a newspaper began a report on a terrible accident with the headline, ‘Ten People, Baby Die When Van Hits Truck.’

Stolinsky is outraged. No, no, no -- not that 11 people were instantly wiped off the face of the earth, but that the headline, in Stolinsky’s warped view, downgrades the dead baby’s personhood.

Huh?

Stolinsky is divinely convinced that the baby’s being singled out and tallied separately from the “ten people” means the headline writer (and by extension the evil liberal media) views the child as less than a full human being.

Have to admit, that was not my first thought. Or my last.

Well, yes, babies are counted differently in articles about tragic events. In emotional currency, they have more value than adults, not less. That’s why the headline writer worked the baby’s demise into the headline.

Had the van and truck gone up in flames, the headline writer probably would have played up the flames: Van Hits Truck, 11 Perish in Fireball.

When space is tight, fireballs always trump babies in vehicle crash headlines.

We might think this is all farkin’ obvious, but Stolinsky is blind. As further proof of the evil liberal media’s bias against the full personhood of the preconceived, the preborn, and the recently postborn, he snags and grills an anonymous editor* who’s conveniently vague and shruggy about everything yet nonetheless adamant that babies are not persons.

When I questioned an editor, he saw no reason to reword this as ‘Eleven People Including Baby Die,’ or ‘Ten Adults and Baby Die.’ To him a one-year-old was not a “person.”

When I asked at what age a child becomes a “person,” he was unable to reply. Nor did he express an opinion about when an elderly or disabled individual ceases to be a “person.”

What an incredibly useful tool that anonymous editor proves to be, assuming he actually exists. The rest of us sort of know that individuals pretty much cease to exist once the death certificate is signed. Only gods and corporations are immortal. And maybe Dick Cheney.
_____

*Is he the editor of the newspaper that generated the headline? Apparently not. Is he the editor of Journalism for Dummies? Not specified. Is he the editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association? Probably not. Regardless of his particular area of expertise, if any, the anonymous editor, like all the anonymous waiters and cab drivers that populate opinion writing in America, is readily available for comment at a moment's notice.

Shirley Sherrod -- This Is Your Life!

2010-07-21T07:07:00.003-04:00

Good god. If you worked a little overtime on the night shift early this week, you probably missed out on the screwball tragedy involving USDA official Shirley Sherrod. It’s a malicious farce that has less to do with farming Georgia clay and more to do with the stupidity and amorality of media people (whose salaries are a lot more than yours, mine, and Shirley Sherrod’s combined) who continue to let escaped Heaven’s Gate cultist Andrew Breitbart wreak havoc on the lives -- and livelihoods -- of innocent people.

Disgraced via Breitbart’s media manipulation, branded racist and rejected by the NAACP, compelled to resign by the sackless Secretary of Agriculture, and now fully vindicated, Ms. Sherrod most likely will be back at her desk, helping small Georgia farmers, before you clock out by week’s end.

In other news, after a 3-year-binge of flipping off the LA County Probation Department, Lindsay Lohan's finally in jail....

Blingee thingee via Wonkette.

One of the biggest threats to democracy: Other people's brains

2010-07-14T16:21:00.001-04:00

Misinformed people often have the strongest political opinions, and they almost never change their minds.

Here’s why.

Absolutely the only nice thing I'll ever say about Michelle Bachmann

2010-07-13T02:14:00.002-04:00

El manana me pertenece

2010-07-11T21:33:00.003-04:00

Over at Big Government, Michael Zak offers the kind of in-depth yet historically expansive political analysis that only a wingnut can: Hope and Change and the Scariest Movie Scene Ever.

Here's my brief synopsis. [Spoiler alert: Hitler makes a guest appearance.]

The scariest movie scene isn’t in a horror movie. It doesn’t involve zombies or slashers, but it is about a real monster, “the kind of monster that people choose to rule over them,” with or without the help of ACORN and the New Black Panthers Party.

Something. Something. Something. Quote from the Book of Ecclesiastes. Something else.

Cue Cabaret video clip of Hitler Youth singing “Tomorrow Belongs to Me -- complete (bizarrely) with Spanish subtitles.

Segue to the present day: Could America fall prey to a demogogue?

Oh snap punch line: Yes we can!

Zak doesn‘t realize that “tomorrow belongs to me” is not far removed from “taking our country back” (for those needing Spanish subtitles: retirando nuestro país). And wouldn’t you know it, there’s already a catchy twangy theme song on YouTube. No Aryan aria is this little ditty.

Ped-Egged by reality

2010-07-01T12:21:00.003-04:00

John Stossel talks up the Great American Entrepreneurial Spirit by interviewing A.J. Khubani, president of TeleBrands, and British TV pitchman Anthony Sullivan. These guys are just schlock merchants. America is not going to survive if its GDP depends on two people pitching and shipping Sham-Wows, which, by the way, actually are made in Germany.

Just how much ad time does TeleBrands buy on Fox channels anyway?

*Most Ped-Eggs are made in China.

Things I just learned I didn't know

2010-06-30T08:53:00.002-04:00

Courtesy of President Richard Nixon and Senator Robert Byrd, Morgantown (WV) has pod cars. While the personal rapid transit cars technically are not pod cars, they’re nifty nonetheless. Morgantown’s PRT system has been in service for more than 30 years, and has been astonishingly safe and reliable.

PRT car (above); really cool-looking experimental pod car (below)

Comments from the strongly food-motivated

2010-06-22T22:38:00.001-04:00

No friggin’ way. Not with GaGa’s tatas in the same issue.

Jonah wraps it up with this stunning endorsement: “I should also say that I came away liking McChrystal a lot more. He really is an impressive guy.“

Tonight, an extra ration of Cheetos for Jonah.

For some people’s fathers on Fathers Day: The Rightwing Forward Museum

2010-06-20T22:45:00.003-04:00

Absolutely adore this site: My Rightwing Dad is “dedicated to following the course of American history through a unique lens -- the emails ‘Red-America’ forwards worldwide.”

But be warned: The site “displays unedited, often offensive and untrue material with no endorsement intended by curators or contributors.” Shorter warning: Red-America can be vile.

On the less vile end of the spectrum is this post, Oh Hell!!!… Let’s offend everybody!, an email forward that does pretty much that while insisting that “sometimes you just have to look at a lighter side!!”

A-huh.

Choke on it

2010-06-19T22:18:00.005-04:00

A news report about a horrifying shooting in a San Bernardino fast-food restaurant…

A man carrying two guns walked inside a Southern California [Del Taco restaurant] and shot four people who were eating lunch together, killing two—including an 8-year-old boy—before turning the gun on himself, police said Saturday.

…triggered a series of callous-beyond-belief responses at Free Republic (yeah, where else?).

Posted by Jet Jaguar
I wish I had Del Taco in S.C.
1 posted on Saturday, June 19, 2010 9:51:16 PM by Jet Jaguar
[ Post Reply Private Reply View Replies]

To: Jet Jaguar
There was one here but the tore it down to build a Walgreens.
4 posted on Saturday, June 19, 2010 9:54:29 PM by Rebelbase (Political correctness in America today is a Rip Van Winkle acid trip.)
[ Post Reply Private Reply To 1 View Replies]

To: Jet Jaguar
I can fed ex you some
5 posted on Saturday, June 19, 2010 9:54:42 PM by al baby (Hi Mom sarc ;))
[ Post Reply Private Reply To 1 View Replies]

To: Jet Jaguar
There’s a Del Taco near Spartanburg :)
6 posted on Saturday, June 19, 2010 9:54:43 PM by Amanda King
[ Post Reply Private Reply To 1 View Replies]

To: Jet Jaguar
Tacos Del Carbon - Steak
8 posted on Saturday, June 19, 2010 9:55:01 PM by Jet Jaguar (*)
[ Post Reply Private Reply To 1 View Replies]

To: al baby
Thanks for the offer. I will be in Nevada again in a few days.
More Tacos Del Carbon - Steak!!!
9 posted on Saturday, June 19, 2010 9:56:22 PM by Jet Jaguar (*)
[ Post Reply Private Reply To 5 View Replies]

To: Jet Jaguar
There used to be one in Atlanta. Much better than Taco Bell.
10 posted on Saturday, June 19, 2010 9:56:27 PM by kalee (The offences we give, we write in the dust; Those we take, we engrave in marble. J Huett 1658)
[ Post Reply Private Reply To 1 View Replies]

To: Amanda King
2 hour drive.
I could do this.
Tacos Del Carbon - Steak
12 posted on Saturday, June 19, 2010 9:57:59 PM by Jet Jaguar (*)
[ Post Reply Private Reply To 6 View Replies]

I rarely get this nasty but: Hey guys, choke on it.

UPDATE Free Republic has since "bartoned" the thread.

Troll vs Troll

2010-06-15T07:01:00.002-04:00

Click image to embiggen.
H/T to Fark and The Rude Pundit.

Hooters

2010-06-14T07:00:00.004-04:00

Sarah Palin titles her latest Facebook post, Fuel America with Terrorist-Tarred Oil Instead of Drilling Our Own, Baby?

From there it goes downhill.

Simple Sarah wants a simple answer to her simple question: Why won’t terrorist cock-sucking liberal Democrats unleash the full glorious sheen of America’s “safe, warehoused onshore and shallow water [!] reserves waiting for permission to be extracted” from places like, you know, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and, oh, Miami Beach.

That’s rather sweet: The oil reserves are just biding their time until a cruel government bureaucracy sets them free from the prison of their geological “warehouses.” No one anthropomorphizes crude oil better than Sarah Palin.

Shoot, I must have lived such a doggoned sheltered life as a normal, independent American up there in the Last Frontier, schooled with only public education and a lowly state university degree, because obviously I haven’t learned enough to dismiss common sense (a prerequisite for power in Washington these days).

Help me out, friends! Help someone like me – and the majority of Americans – understand why we would ever kowtow and bow to foreign regimes that hate us, instead of doing all we can to starve the beast of terrorism in our plight for security, prosperity, and peace.

Our plight for security, prosperity, and peace?

Close enough for the public-schooled and recently augmented, I guess.

On first thought

2010-06-11T03:16:00.002-04:00

Wild Ammo redoes the movie posters for some blockbuster hits as originally -- but not ultimately -- cast. Tom Hanks as Jerry Maguire? Yep. Robert Redford as The Graduate? Of course. And then there’s O.J. Simpson as the Terminator.

Speaking in tongues: A freeper blegs

2010-05-19T06:07:00.002-04:00

RINO Retard Masochist from RNC on Rachael SickSows show last night???

Last night, flipping through channels, I caught the tail end of an interview with an RNC "spokesperson" (for lack of a more accurate descriptor).

Anyone know who this masochistic fool is, and what his story is, that he would go on *any* PMSDNC freakshow?

Is he a RINO? or a RNC "insider"?...Or just a masochistic dumbass hoping that VanderheaveUppal would be guest hosting...in her KGB dominatrix cone titty outfit??

Posted on Wednesday, May 19, 2010 5:26:46 AM by DGHoodini

At least it’s not a pop-up book

2010-04-28T19:32:00.003-04:00

George W. Bush’s long unawaited memoir, Decision Points, is due out in November 2010 ... let's just imagine the marketing department’s internal memos about releasing it on 9/11. Gawker’s having fun revamping the cover photo (more alternate covers here). Over at True/Slant, Nick Obourn ponders the tricky business of marketing Dubya's drek. And for a parody excerpt involving Dubya, a mysterious bald man, some drawing paper, and a lot of grunting, check out The Awl.

　

Beware non-rhetorical rhetorical questions

2010-04-14T22:07:00.004-04:00

The proprietor of Citizen Palin 4 President scoffs at President Barack Obama’s nuclear experience:

Has President Obama ever stepped foot on a missile defense base or even seen an interceptor?

But ask Well, has Obama?, and the proprietor refuses to post the question, let alone answer it.

I’m guessing the citizen for Citizen Palin 4 President hasn’t a clue.

Things I just learned I didn’t know (tax prep edition)

2010-04-14T18:01:00.000-04:00

Parent of a Kidnapped Child

The parent of a child who is presumed by law enforcement authorities to have been kidnapped by someone who is not a family member may be eligible to take the child into account in determining his or her eligibility for the head of household or qualifying widow(er) filing status, the dependency exemption, the child tax credit, and the earned income credit.

From 2009 1040EZ Filing Instructions, Cat. No. 12063Z

Pasqua felice

2010-04-04T00:32:00.000-04:00

Choosing to marque el numero dos

2010-03-30T21:14:00.003-04:00

Astonishing, really. Freepers mulled over which countries they’d like to move to now that America is a communist-fascist-socialist Muslim theocracy and cop-targeting Christian militias are being rounded up. The big winners in the pick-a-country contest: Spanish-speaking third world countries.

This from people who constantly bitch about having to hear Para Espanol, marque el numero dos!

The most frequently mentioned freeper expat valhallas were Panama; Costa Rica, El Rushbo’s influence, no doubt; and Honduras, probably because HGTV’s House Hunters International has featured the country several times.

A few had trouble grasping the reality that even Spanish-speaking third world countries have their standards when it comes to resident aliens, especially nagging details like income and property ownership requirements, and realized they were just stuck forever in the USA. Others, of course, brayed loudly they’d fight and die in the USA -- we’d have to take their last, uncashed Social Security checks from their cold dead hands.

Still, freeper hampdenkid lobbied hard for Honduras: “My water bill is $31 a year. My electricity is free. I have a live-in maid for $50 a month.”

Why is his electricity free? Because it’s government provided.

Vaya con Dios, hampdenkid.

Death panels and sponge baths

2010-03-29T20:36:00.000-04:00

FOXNews is what it is -- that I already knew -- but I didn’t know that Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) is an idiot.

Lord they're dumb

2010-03-25T00:18:00.003-04:00

NRO republishes a doctor’s letter to her patients describing how, in protest of ObamaCare, she’s now going to screw them over -- and the wingnuts see not a petty, vindictive, and somewhat paranoid medical practitioner but a rightwing heroine with unlimited access to oxycontin.

For this reason, I am responding to the situation created by this new law by exercising my right not to participate in any health insurance program…. This means that I will provide you only with a receipt for the services you have paid for, but without the additional information that is required to submit your receipt for reimbursement to your health insurance company. That is the only way I can make sure there will be no conflict between following the law and serving you. Because the law is now in effect, so must these changes be to my practice.

Hey, I have no problem with a doctor running a cash-only practice, but at least give the patients a properly coded bill to send to their insurance company. What a bitch!

Of course, where I see a doctor putting her political beliefs ahead of her patients’ well-being, freepers see something else.

God bless this doctor for putting her PATIENT’S ahead of this crapola.

It's a miracle!

2010-03-22T01:37:00.002-04:00

Pundit Numerology

2010-03-14T15:07:00.005-04:00

Would you trust a pundit whose math skills are this whack?

Almost every act passed under reconciliation (8/15) has in fact been a budget bill.

That’s James Joyner of Outside the Beltway trying mighty hard to stretch 53.45% into “almost every.”

Then there’s Daniel Cross of American Thinker. He’s blaming an increased tax rate on high-income earners for the flight of millionaires from Maryland.

Early in 2009, Maryland raised its tax rate to 6.25% for income earners of $1 million or more and saw a decline in tax revenue as high-income taxpayers emigrated to tax-friendlier states.

Funny thing, Cross provides absolutely no data to back up this claim. Have millionaires precipitously sold their mansions and high tailed it over state lines? Just how much of the state’s decline in tax revenue can be attributed to the Great Recession and how much to fleeing millionaires? Well, Cross isn’t telling. (He’s certainly not telling me. I emailed asking for the data; no response.) Plus, it might just be too early to tell anyway, since tax collections for 2009 don’t end until April 15, 2010.

Finally, there’s the much ballyhooed CNN/Opinion Research poll that supposedly defines just who Tea Partiers are. According to CNN, Tea Partiers tend to be male, rural, upscale, and overwhelmingly conservative. They also are apparently well educated.

Well, maybe they are, maybe they aren’t.

According to CNN, roughly 11% of those surveyed qualified as Tea Part Activists. CNN gives the number as 124; according to my calculator, the number is even smaller: 11% of 1023 = 112.53. Because of the small sample size, the margin of error for the survey section on TPAs is +/-9, which is pretty ghastly.

At least CNN includes a link to the actual survey data (PDF), which reveals some other methodological weaknesses.

According to the survey, Tea Party Activists -- all 124 (or 112.53!) of them -- were identified as such because they “actively supported” the Tea Party movement. What qualifies as active support?

Well, contributing money. Okay -- giving money’s the best show of support.

Attending a Tea Party rally or meeting. Okay -- feet on the ground or asses in the seats is always good.

Or “Took any other active steps to support the Tea Party movement, either in person or through e-mail or on the internet.”

See, that third definition is not okay. Too vague, especially the e-mail/internet part. Signing up to be on a Tea Party e-mail alert list should not really make you a Tea Party Activist, nor should mass forwarding a lot of crap about Sarah Palin to your friends and relatives count.

So here’s how it breaks down. Of the 124 (or 112.53!) people identified by Opinion Research as “Tea Party Activists” --

__20.46 people contributed money to the Tea Party

__51.15 people attended a Tea Party-related rally or meeting

__71.61 people did something Tea Party-related on the internet or maybe stuck a Tea Party-themed bumper sticker on their car.

Extrapolate away!

Doug Giles makes me go out and buy a new red Flair pen

2010-03-07T13:25:00.001-05:00

Click here for jumbo size image.

Click here for the full Giles article.

More signs of the times

2010-03-05T09:44:00.001-05:00

From I’m edumacated over at Agonist.

The Nuclear Kool-Aid Reconciliation Test

2010-03-05T07:23:00.002-05:00

Expect non-stop media bombardment over the next few weeks featuring all sorts of grossly incorrect usage of House and Senate legislative terms.

Will these definitional mashups be intentional or unintentional? Meh. What’s the difference, unless it’s FOXNews.

So get ready for it. Be prepared. Amaze your friends and family with your devastating grasp of parliamentary arcana!

Go visit the House and Senate websites. Review current House Rules. See for yourself how the Senate defines pesky terms like filibuster and reconciliation. For even more info, check out the Senate’s Virtual Desk Reference.

And for those of you who crave a little bit more context, google recent reports by the Congressional Research Service. This one’s my current favorite: “Entrenchment” of Senate Procedure and the “Nuclear Option” for Change: Possible Proceedings and Their Implications.

This democracy stuff is hard work.

Goofing around

2010-03-04T01:01:00.004-05:00

If you're easily distracted, as I am, don't visit Memegenerator, where you can spend all day putting silly captions to silly pictures.

The point at which I stopped reading

2010-03-02T09:10:00.002-05:00

From Bret Stephens' WSJ op/ed, How Milton Friedman Saved Chile.

Milton Friedman has been dead for more than three years. But his spirit was surely hovering protectively over Chile in the early morning hours of Saturday.

Alternative terms

2010-02-26T05:45:00.001-05:00

Kevin K. at Rumproast has challenged his commenters to come up with some new descriptors for the Nor’easters up with which we who live in the Nor’east are once again putting.

Snowmageddon, Snopocalypse, Snowicane, and Snowtorious B.I.G. all have their charms, but Mr. Nearing and I have our own special code.

Our traditional term for a huge winter storm is fuck it.

Our traditional term for the frenzied pre-storm dash to the grocery store is We’re all gonna die!!

Our traditional term for the insanity encountered during the pre-storm supermarket run is fall of Saigon.

Finally, our traditional term for officially being snowbound is Jersey’s closed.

It’s very peaceful when Jersey’s closed. The infrastructure actually stops vibrating and crumbling for a few hours. There’s no stacked up air traffic circling overhead. There are no tractor trailers grinding gears in the distance. It’s rather pleasant, at least until I run out of coffee.

Further adventures in a post-fact society

2010-02-24T19:50:00.003-05:00

I’m guessing Ken Thompson is a birther.

This is from a recent column by Leonard Pitts, Jr.

Henry Johnson…was awarded the French Croix de Guerre in World War I for single-handedly fighting off a company of Germans… who threatened to overrun his post.

Johnson managed this despite the fact that he was only 5-foot-4 and 130 pounds, despite the fact that his gun had jammed, despite the fact that he was wounded 21 times.

My mention of Johnson's heroics drew a rebuke from a fellow named Ken Thompson, which I quote verbatim and in its entirety.

"Hate to tell you that blacks were not allowed into combat intell (sic) 1947, that fact. World War II ended in 1945. So all that feel good, one black man killing two dozen Nazi, is just that, PC bull."

Jeebus -- how many points did Thompson get wrong here, other than the decade, the war, and the enemy?

When given a link to information about Johnson on the official Arlington National Cemetery website, Thompson blew it off.

"There is no race on headstones and they didn't come up with the story in tell (sic) 2002."

Okay, I’m also guessing that Ken Thompson is a proud TeaBagger too.

When religions and sports metaphors collide!

2010-02-22T03:04:00.003-05:00

This also reminds me of the time a FOX News analyst offered his expert opinion that "a nuclear Iran would scare the bejeebus out of Israel."

(Via)

It’s coming, it’s coming. Just not here.

2010-02-15T01:13:00.003-05:00

Well finally some people are getting a la carte cable programming.

Bell Canada is offering à la carte television channels in Quebec as part of an ever-deepening war with cable provider Vidéotron.

The company on Friday announced new options that will allow television customers to subscribe to individual channels, rather than bundles that include unwanted channels. Customers must first take a basic $25 package that includes standard channels… and can then choose 15 channels for $15, 20 for $19 or 30 for $22. Bell is also offering individual channels for $2 each.

I’ve been begging Comcast for a la carte pricing for years, especially when I’m calling them to once again downgrade our cable service. Maybe other customers are happy with the bundled packages, but they just don’t mesh with our viewing habits and interests.

Now we’re down to basic cable, which somehow includes the Eternal Word Television Network, FOX News, and two different channels running the same Wendy Williams show a total of four times a day. Oh, and the municipal access channel, which keeps reminding us lately that we have to shovel our own damn sidewalks.

When the sell is broken

2010-02-14T00:58:00.004-05:00

“I don’t owe him shit. He really screwed my life up, is how I look at it.”

That’s Joe the Plumber bitching about his ex, John (he made me feel dirty) McCain.

“McCain was trying to use me. I happened to be the face of middle Americans. It was a ploy.”

And that’s how Joe the Plumber -- pity him, he didn’t ask to be born with the face of middle Americans -- came to be forcibly put on board the Straight Talk Express and driven around and around until McCain had no further use for him. Then Joe was forced to write a book about his trauma. And then endorse and cash the advance and royalty checks he got! And then deposit them into his own bank account!!

Those with weaker psyches never would have survived.

Now that the whole sordid McCain business is over, Joe the Plumber, his life forever altered, has found comfort with the few people who still accept him for who he is ~~was~~ will be for the time being: the Tea Partiers.

Like a pulpy faced victim of spousal abuse turned advocate, Joe says it’s his duty to take advantage of the platform he’s been given. Politicians seek his endorsement, a responsibility he doesn’t take lightly.

“We have a series of conversations – 20 to 30 minute conversations – and I grill them. I ask them questions about energy, education – make sure they’re straight.”

Oh, and he’s on the outs with Sarah Palin too, whom he once described as “the real deal.”

Which reminds me, whatever happened to Tito the Builder?

And I absolutely hate Nor’easters

2010-02-10T01:05:00.004-05:00

Corporation tosses hat in ring

2010-02-03T00:05:00.001-05:00

A Maryland public relations firm, citing the recent Supreme Court ruling that allows corporations to be treated as people in making political contributions, is now seeking to represent Maryland’s 8th Congressional district.

In a press release announcing its candidacy, the company, Murray Hill, Inc., explained:

Thanks to an enlightened supreme court, corporations now have all the rights the founding fathers meant for us. It was their dream to build the best democracy money can buy. The strength of America is in the boardrooms, country clubs and Lear jets of America’s great corporations. We’re saying to Wal-Mart, AIG and Pfizer, if not you, who? If not now, when?

The company promises to run a campaign that "puts people second, or even third,” which might actually move the average voter up several slots.

(h/t)

Things I just learned I didn't know

2010-02-02T22:47:00.002-05:00

The Band recorded The Band album at Sammy Davis Jr’s house.

Hyper-local news

2010-02-02T17:51:00.003-05:00

This was the best news story in our extremely modest local paper since the one headlined, Overeaters Stage Marathon.

Man, 26, Charged with Assaulting Police Officer

Police arrested a township man who they say head-butted a co-worker during a training session for new employees at a local business on January 20.

[Name omitted] was charged with aggravated assault on a police officer, terroristic threats, simple assault, and resisting arrest.

He was hired to work at National Protection Service [and] was sent to a training session for new hires, but eventually was asked to leave just before noon because he was disruptive.

Well, you can imagine what happened after that. If you can't, let's just say that Mr. Name Omitted started a fight, cannon-balled a bunch of cops, kicked one cop, and then threatened to kill everybody.

I'm guessing his unemployment insurance claim is in jeopardy.

Coastline gel spill

2010-01-29T13:07:00.002-05:00

First my poor brother had to endure The Sopranos craze. The show, which was filmed in his hometown and surrounding areas, triggered an influx of tri-state Sopranos fans making weekend pilgrimages to the various location shots. My brother was not amused.

Now it’s my turn with Jersey Shore, which I find hilarious. Down the Shore purists view these kids as Yawker spillage. As a transplant myself, I can’t judge too harshly; and as a pragmatist, I’m guessing the show will boost summer vacation rentals.

For all things beachy Guido and Guidette, check out Guido Fist Pump.

No country for old progressives

2010-01-28T05:00:00.001-05:00

Finally back among the living. On top of Scott Brown’s election and the legislatively jammed up HCR bill, news of Obama’s suggested spending freeze just pushed me over the edge. So I went to bed and slept for 18 hours straight.

Maybe I’m taking things too personally. Or maybe I’m dangerously close to maximal exasperation. I’ve been politically active for four decades now -- since before I was even old enough to vote -- and nothing I’ve done has ever stopped a war before it began; ended a war before the powerful chose to end it; significantly decreased racism, sexism, disease, poverty, and hunger anywhere on the planet; or otherwise generally tamped down the levels of willful ignorance and evil.

But things look different after 18 hours of sleep, two cups of coffee, a short Three Stooges video, and a quick re-think of the (admittedly minor) things I’ve accomplished in life.

Okay, once more unto the legislative breach, dear friends, once more….

Things I just learned I didn't know

2010-01-27T01:51:00.001-05:00

In French, vagina is a masculine noun: un vagin.

The builders of megalithic monuments are gone, Woolworths is gone. I see a pattern emerging here.

2010-01-22T11:49:00.004-05:00

Via Fallacy Files, some fun connecting the dots: Did aliens help to line up Woolworths stores? Click here for the answer.

The Glad Game

2010-01-22T04:09:00.005-05:00

Following in the (only temporarily paralyzed) footsteps of the pre-Prozac-era Pollyanna and her Glad Game, I’ve been drawing up a list of things to be glad about Tuesday’s win by Republican Scott Brown as the new junior senator from Massachusetts. In no particular order, here are the things I've found to be glad about.

__ The birth of Brown’s new nickname: Senator-elect Zoolander

__ Roy Edroso’s insta-classic headline: Scott Brown Wins Mass. Race, Giving GOP 41-59 Majority in the Senate

__ Glenn Beck’s new obsession -- Scott Brown’s libido….

After Sen. elect Brown offered his daughters as ‘available,’ at his victory speech, Beck remarked: ‘I don't trust this guy. This one could end with a dead intern.’ Beck’s solutions: an ankle monitor and a chastity belt.

__ The orgasmic spates of Clem Kadiddlehopper faces by Fox & Friends’ Steve Doocy (the man missed his true calling)

__ The resumed and totally deserved irrelevance of Senator Joe Lieberman

__ Cosmo’s tucking and stapling of naughty bits

Update
Add to the list: Ataturk’s selections, via Gawker, from the Brown family album, including music video vixen (and excellent handjob mime) Mrs. Senator-elect Zoolander, circa 1982.

Just in case, let's repo the Big Dig

2010-01-18T22:38:00.003-05:00

Just gotta love America, a country that “lets” a crucial policy issue for 300 million people -- healthcare reform -- come down to one person: a hunky state senator/nude model or a wonky attorney general who doesn’t know baseball.

It’s a false narrative of course.

We were -- and are -- never going to get anything resembling the healthcare coverage enjoyed by the citizens of other advanced nations. We’re just not that kind of country.

When not totally bamboozled, which is rare, we citizens are too indoctrinated: the invisible hand… free markets… laissez faire… corporations uber alles… I got mine, screw you!

Plus, to shift that much federal money around, the government would have to tweak the defense budget, which will happen in nobody’s lifetime. We are always at "war" somewhere, with someone or against something. We virtually besieged citizens won't be happy until we each possess our very own predator drone, complete with two Hellfire missiles, all safely stored in our garages, attics, and crawl spaces.

And while corporations always will graciously accept government bailouts, tax breaks, and other subsidies, they will never will agree to givebacks. Go cut someone else’s market share.

It’s unfair to Scott Brown and Martha Coakley to make them seem so critical to the very future of healthcare reform. But the media only does horse races, so a horse race it is. Should passage of healthcare insurance reform come down to “the vote” of either Brown or Coakley -- oh, how exciting, just like American Idol -- millions of people will be aggrieved and will personalize their aggrievement by blaming both the winner and the loser of the special election for Ted Kennedy‘s senate seat.

Not a great way to end up as historical marginalia.

Like clockwork

2010-01-13T18:49:00.002-05:00

The thing about natural disasters in foreign lands is that the media narrative is set in stone for the next few weeks. We Americans can safely skip watching the TeeVeeNewz at least until Groundhog Day. Note that Steps No. 2, 3, and 4 typically occur even before the first dead are buried.

First: The horror -- Haiti Earthquake Damage Staggering

Second: Pat Robertson declares the disaster to be God’s punishment on the people who are still trying to claw their way out of the rubble.

Third: Rational people denounce Pat Robertson’s claim that the 7.3 magnitude quake occurred because the Haitians’ made a "pact with the devil" two centuries ago while seeking liberation from the French.

Fourth: The chest-beating begins that the United States is the most generous nation evah!1!

Fifth: Anderson Cooper arrives on the disaster scene with a 2-week personal supply of tight cotton T-shirts (pastels for the tropics), tailored jeans, and, of course, his piercing blue eyes.

Sixth: Stat-Heads begin to argue that the United States is not the most charitable nation if the data are viewed as the percentage of Gross National Income rather than in absolute dollar terms.

Seventh: The Hiroshima Maidens brigade begins, making those Americans who now know we’re not No. 1 charity-wise according to GNI feel somewhat less guilty.

Eight: Week-long Super Bowl XLIV festivities begin!

Got balls?

2010-01-09T18:51:00.005-05:00

Here's the devastatingly emasculating teaser copy from a google ad for a martial arts course...

Never would have been approved by Sterling Cooper Draper Price.

Where do I apply to be on a Death Panel?

2010-01-08T20:21:00.002-05:00

Okay, I’m back from my extended Xmas/New Year tour of duty with my overextended family, all of whom listen to Rush, Hannity, Beck, and that adorable Michelle Malkin. My revenge? I gave them all got copies of Atlas Shrugged for Xmas. The young ones in the genetic cohort got copies of An Island Called Liberty, a picture book described by its publisher as

A cross between Dr. Seuss and Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged.Younger children will enjoy the rhyming verse and beautiful, full-color illustrations on every page, while older children and adults [presumably Larry Kudlow and Jonah Goldberg] will enjoy the strong message that speaks in favor of free markets and against excessive government regulation, bureaucracy, and taxation.

They all have been warned they will be quizzed in detail about their reading at the next Easter feaster. This is, after all, in my own rational self-interest.

Your choice: airport motivational posters

2009-12-28T11:32:00.001-05:00

Info on British wartime posters here.

Xmas Psych 101

2009-12-26T08:40:00.002-05:00

Via Ryan Sanger at True/Slant comes this whimsical collection, The 12 Psychology Studies of Christmas. The collection encompasses:

1. How to have a happy Christmas

2. What's the best type of chocolate?

3. When gifts go wrong

4. Don't give money!

5. It's all about the giving

6. What do your decorations say about you?

7. The smell of Christmas

8. Good food is mostly in the mind

9. Hallucinating

10. Searching for the Christmas spirit

11. Bad jokes

12. Santa Claus

Mr. Nearing and I had a really bad case of No. 3: When Gifts Go Wrong during our second Christmas together.

Giving and receiving gifts can be a no-win situation. We assume people close to us know us well enough to get us good gifts. So when a bad gift comes it tends to reflect poorly on the relationship. However men and women seem to have different psychological defence mechanisms for dealing with poor gifts: women pretend the gift is just what they've always wanted whereas men are more likely to say what they think. And then the arguments start.

Ah, the silliness of youth.

Just seems like the Christmassy sort of thing to do

2009-12-25T06:22:00.004-05:00

“What do firearms and this blessed holiday have in common? Well, for one, liberals don't like to talk about either.

“Christmas is coming. And for many Americans, that means opening gifts around the tree, big family dinners and Midnight Mass. No disrespect to Norman Rockwell - but Christmas always reminds me of shooting. Sure, I love seeing my family, gorging on...food and drink…. If I'm honest, it's also about the gun.

“And I'm not alone. For many Americans, the holidays wouldn't be the same without their guns.”

From “A Gunowner’s Ode to Christmas,” by S. E. Cupp, Townhall

Photo via Fark.

Chairman Mao's ball

2009-12-24T05:57:00.003-05:00

Don’t know why I do but I do -- I get obsessed about the little things. Like, does one of the White House Christmas trees really feature ornaments of Chairman Mao, a transvestite, and an Obama-headed Mount Rushmore?

Now, I’m old enough to remember Gary Aldrich’s flaccid tale about cockrings on a Clinton White House tree. Said rings were actually five golden rings, part of the themed decorations for The 12 Days of Christmas. But a gay florist told the usefully gullible former FBI agent that the rings were cockrings, so there you go. (There also are non-Aldrich tales about condoms and intravenous needles as tree ornaments on a Clinton WH tree. Jeebus, come on people. Really?!) When I heard the new variation of the tree ornament story, I thought, Reruns? So soon?

There’s no break from wingnut rat-fucking, even on Christmas.

Stupidly, I press on with my search for the truth about Chairman Mao’s ball. Of course, that’s completely missing the point, the wingnut point being, as one freeper declared:

Frankly, it doesn’t matter if those items are on the tree... what does matter is that it is believable. Obama is a traitor, period.
　
Now, a paranoid schizophrenic has an excuse, that wingnut doesn’t. Oh, wait….

Your choice: ironically subversive or simply stupid?

2009-12-23T08:12:00.004-05:00

　
AOL story teaser

The point at which I stopped reading

2009-12-10T18:10:00.001-05:00

"The forebodings the Jews of Europe had as they were herded onto cattle cars to an unknown destination are the same feelings of helplessness I have as the Copenhagen Climate Summit reaches its conclusion."

From Musings From Sanibel Island, here.

No global warming?! Look, she’s bare armed in December. In Norway!

2009-12-10T03:33:00.002-05:00

Via Yahoo!

Fair warning

2009-12-09T18:31:00.002-05:00

Found somewhere.

At some point there’d be a post like this

2009-12-07T21:09:00.003-05:00

He wouldn't bow to Hitler but American Democrats/trial lawyers expect him to bow to … his Homeowners Association! -- Town Hall

There’s a contradictory impulse in America. Okay, two contradictory impulses if you include our sex-is-sacred-everybody-lets-fuck hypocrisy. The other one is our love/hate relationship with homeowners associations.

Twice a year -- usually around Memorial Day/Fourth of July and then again around Veterans Day -- there’s the inevitable story of a war vet (or sometimes the parents of a deployed soldier) engaged in a war (obligatory metaphor) with his/her homeowners association.

Now, the whole idea of an HOA is to protect everybody from everybody else’s bad taste, lax attitudes about lawn grooming, unclaimed dog poop, overly exuberant holiday displays, and the covert installation of 2 ½-story high flagpoles.

But nobody ever reads the g-dang HOA manual, except for the HOA board members themselves. In fact, homeowner-members are shocked to discover that such a manual actually exists, usually because it was included with copies of all the legal papers they signed, dazed and confused, on closing day. Sadly, the discovery of the HOA manual usually follows the arrival of a threatening letter about some infraction or another.

The latest story involves a 90-year-old (nice touch, that) Medal of Honor recipient (really nice touch) and the 21-foot-tall flagpole (really big touch) he decided to put up in his front yard last September.

Did he double check with his HOA before the work crew arrived? Fark no. This is America. He’s a Medal of Honor recipient. Did I mention he’s 90?

And so because it involves the Most Sacred and Holy Shroud of the Nation as well as a very old and well honored veteran, the media are alerted, national politicians get involved, neighbors’ homes are threatened with being torched (because apparently there are roving gangs of arsonists-with-a-cause out there), and everyone heaps scorn on the unpatriotic, fascistic, terrorist-loving HOA.

The HOA will explain over and over that it’s not the flag that’s the problem, it’s the flagpole. But they lost this battle before it began. They will inevitably back down or offer some special one-time-only dispensation for vets in their tenth decade of life with Purple Hearts and Medals of Honor.

And then it will all stop. Until the next time.

America the dsylexic (and fritely dressed)

2009-12-07T00:05:00.000-05:00

Farksters have fun with Buzzfeed’s 50 Best Protest Signs of 2009 and add of few of their own as well, as featured below.

Why God created politicians

2009-12-06T20:27:00.002-05:00

Conservative columnist Warner Todd Huston grumps that for decades American schools (surely only the non-voucher ones) have been creating "citizens that mindlessly expect that politicians exist only to ‘give us stuff.’"

You, me, our families, our neighbors, we’re all gimme-gimmee-gimmee all the time. We wussified Americans have been indoctrinated into wanting stuff like, you know, untainted food, uncrashing planes, undrunk truck drivers, uncontaminated water, uncollasping economic markets, unpolluted air, unpandemic-ed communities, unexploding microwave ovens, and on and on.

Warner Todd Huston is having none of that. He wants to revive American’s independent spirit, one salmonella outbreak at a time.

But if politicians don’t exist "to give us stuff" like, you know, good government, then why do they exist at all?

Well, if we all hadn’t been so thoroughly indoctrinated by our grammar-school teachers, the answer would seem perfectly logical and obvious to us: Politicians exist to make sure that only the market determines whether we get stuff like untainted food, uncrashing planes, undrunk truck drivers, uncontaminated water, uncollasping economic markets, unpolluted air, unpandemic-ed communities, unexploding microwave ovens, and on and on.

How does the market decide? Only God knows -- and stop asking such silly questions.

That, says Warner Todd Huston, is what America’s schools should be teaching.

Cross-posted at Rattlebrained

We don’t need no stinkin’ "successful conclusions"

2009-12-03T23:50:00.002-05:00

Conservative columnist Bill Dupray huffed deep and heavy on the talking point about the V-word missing from Obama’s West Point speech. Hissy and pissy, he mocked "the cold gruel of a Harvard politician" that offered no Dupray kind of victory -- the kind involving still-beating hearts carved out of the enemy’s chest and raised above one‘s head with great whoops -- but only wars brought to successful conclusions and responsible ends.

For some reason, the use of "milestones" ticked him off too. You can almost hear his fist pounding the table next to the mouse pad. Our guys don’t fight for frickin’ milestones, those are rocks on the side of the road, he digitally bellows -- Bush’s sliding-scale "benchmarks" and gauzy "aspirational goals" rather conveniently having been forgotten. Personally, I’m convinced the dead no longer express a preference.

Anyway, Dupray had to take to the comments thread to defend himself, and jeebus what a glass chin this guy has!

(Large view.)

Karma on the cheap, no exchanges

2009-12-02T23:01:00.001-05:00

Oh big deal! Don’t act so surprised.

2009-12-02T18:34:00.002-05:00

So we are going to send more troops into Afghanistan. There is no other way, karma-wise. It’s our national Lieutenant Dan fate. We think we have this honorable destiny to fulfill (droning comparatively unarmed countries into some vague idea of submission in order to achieve something TBA later) when all we’re really doing is getting our psychic legs amputated and our national treasury tapped out.

We’re an empire. That’s what empires do. Noblesse oblige -- even if you're an unemployed roofer living in a ramshackle ~~trailer~~ manufactured home with an adult Down syndrome child afflicted with a badly abscessed tooth. Remember: You and your adult Down syndrome child are God's chosen citizens. You are AMERICAN.

It finally came

2009-12-01T18:37:00.003-05:00

The 2009 Bad Sex in Fiction Award has been copiously discharged to Jonathan Littell for his novel, The Kindly Ones, particularly for a passage involving sex on (in?) a guillotine and an orgasmic “jolt that emptied my head like a spoon scraping the inside of a soft-boiled egg.”

For true devotees of Bad Sex, here are the notable excerpts for this year’s short-listed works.

Guess who said this

2009-12-01T01:31:00.004-05:00

Two weeks ago Rush Limbaugh, citing a RedState blog post, went all asshole profondo, declaring that the "Obama administration intends to purge Republicans from the civil service retroactive to five years ago, starting in the year 2010."

It was all crap, of course, but it did remind me about someone who seriously wanted to purge (and still does) the ideologically unsuitable from government.

First, we want to remove liberal personnel from the political process. Then we want to capture those positions of power and influence for conservatives. Stalin taught the importance of this principle. He was running the personnel department, while Trotsky was fighting the White Army. When push came to shove for control of the Soviet Union, Stalin won. His people were in place and Trotsky’s were not…. With this principle in mind, conservatives must do all they can to make sure that they get jobs in Washington.*

Indeed, that is the conservative‘s conservative, Grover Norquist, the guy who absolutely adores Stalin and Lenin and absolutely detests government.
__________

*As quoted on p. 160 of Benjamin Hart’s The Third Generation: Young Conservatives Look to the Future; published by the Heritage Foundation in 1987.

Certain ridicule is one man’s most feared weapon

2009-11-29T18:43:00.003-05:00

I don’t know why Snarky Basterd at Feed Your ADHD won’t post my reply to his compassionate conservative sans compassion comment about food stamps.

(Enlarge)

For a site whose mantra is Ridicule is man's most potent weapon, they really can’t take it.

Maybe not such a good idea

2009-11-29T16:05:00.003-05:00

Local news station posts breaking news tweets to billboard. Awful juxtaposition occurs. Drivers drop cell phones while laughing, forced to drive erratically with both hands on wheel.

(Via)

ThanxGiven

2009-11-26T12:05:00.000-05:00

Image via Fark’s Annual Thanksgiving Eve Draw a Hand Turkey Contest.

Sarah Goes Mad

2009-11-25T19:05:00.008-05:00

On Thanksgiving, gather your slightly buzzed family and friends to play Mad-Libs, Going Rogue-style. Text is based on the first few pages of Palin’s memoir.

It was the Alaska State Fair, August 2008. With the gray Talkeeta Mountains in the distance and the first light covering of volcanic ash about to descend on Pioneer Peak, I breathed in an autumn bouquet of everything small-town America with rugged splashes of _____.

Crystal meth and foot-long _____. Reindeer _____ on a stick. _____-___ed salmonberry wine. Banjo music played. Aborted fetus posters flapped in the wafting Arctic breeze. Bristol gasped at the record-breaking giant __________ grown under the midnight sun.

Since being elected governor in 2006, I had managed to rack up _____, though I didn’t _____. To me, it signaled that Alaskans, with their _____ spirit, wanted _____ and not _____-as-usual. In the Right to Life Booth, I smiled, dropped _____ into the can, and didn’t care who might be _____, including local reporters. Alaskans knew my _____. No news there.

At that moment, _____ vibrated me back to work. I ducked behind the booth, hoping it wasn't some _____ political _____.

I punched the green _____ and moaned, This is Sarah.

It was Senator John McCain, asking if I wanted to help him change _____.

UPDATE
Click here for my fill-in answers.

Image via Fark.

Things I just learned I didn’t know

2009-11-24T00:05:00.000-05:00

South Africa did not have television until 1975. Although the country was technologically and economically advanced enough to support broadcast television -- and although it would be another 25 years before the creation of Family Guy, South Africa's censorial government and church leaders viewed “the devil’s box” as a threat to their authority.

Someone should have thought this through

2009-11-23T10:35:00.000-05:00

Click here for full-size image.

From the opening web page of Vision: Catholic Religious Vocation Network.

No cute puppies in Asia

2009-11-23T09:55:00.003-05:00

"[I]t's bad all around when American press coverage makes people feel that perfectly predictable results constitute a shameful failure for the country and its leadership."

James Fallows “marvel[s] at how badly the mainstream American press distorted the picture of what happened during Barack Obama’s just-ended tour of Asia.” (See here, here, and here.)

Or you could just read this NYT’s “news analysis” piece, which really gives the game away. While the article pretends to examine why “Asia was always going to be a tough nut for [Obama] to crack,” what it admits, right up front, is that Obama’s Asia trip was a media failure because:

(1) Michelle Obama didn’t go, so there were no ladies fashions to cover.

(2) Israel wasn’t involved, so there was nothing of interest to Christian Zionists.

(3) There were no side trips to Indonesia, so there were no soft and fuzzy stories to crank out about Obama’s boyhood days in the Pacific.

Dagnabbit

2009-11-21T14:08:00.004-05:00

Too bad -- some of my friends had a pool going on the date of the first exchange of gunfire by drunk patrons once the Tennessee law allowing people with handgun permits to be armed in alcohol-serving bars and restaurants went into effect.

Judge Strikes Down Tennessee Guns-in-Bars Law

"Tennessee's new law allowing people with handgun permits to be armed in bars and restaurants that serve alcohol is unconstitutionally vague, a judge ruled on Friday."

The unconstitutional vagueness in question? This: "Tennessee previously banned handguns in all locations where alcohol was served. The new law made an exception for establishments that serve at least one meal on five days per week and that 'the serving of such meals shall be the principal business conducted.' Tennessee has no legal definition to distinguish bars from restaurants."

In addition to getting around to legally defining what a bar is and what a restaurant, Tennessee lawmakers might want to establish a legal definition for what a meal is.

Anonymously attributed direct quotes of indirect quotes of paraphrased presumed translations taken out of context: Great American journalism!

2009-11-20T17:52:00.004-05:00

Today, instead of mocking rank amateurs such as the indefatigable Pastor Grant Swank and the lowest-tier digital rags such as WorldNetDaily, I am focusing my ~~wrath~~ attention on this update from ABC News The Blotter From Brian Ross, both for its suspiciously diced-and-sliced quote-in-title and its astonishing lack of detail.

In Major Hasan’s E-Mail: “I Can’t Wait to Join You” in Afterlife, Ross’ source is identified as “an American official” who claims he has top secret access (even though he blabs things to ABC News’ Brian Ross) to 18 e-mails exchanged between Hasan and cleric Anwar al Awlaki. The scuttlebutt, you see, is that "Hasan told Awlaki he couldn't wait to join him in the discussions they would having [sic] over non-alcoholic wine in the afterlife.”

I don’t know, isn’t that a semi-standard Islamic e-mail closing?

At least Brian Ross & the ABC Investigative Team got a great quote from Lt Col Tony Shaffer, who I’m guessing is retired from the military because Ross doesn’t bother to say. Ross identifies him as a “military analyst” with the nonmilitary, nongovernmental, nonprofit (I had to look it up because Ross didn’t say) Center for Advanced Defense Studies. Shaffer’s got quite an impressive google trail, but it’s unclear whether he’s actually seen the e-mails themselves because, of course, Ross doesn’t say. We’ll assume Shaffer is responding to Ross’ iteration of the anonymously attributed direct quote of the indirect quote of the paraphrased presumed translation taken out of context. And this is what Lt Col Shaffer says:

“It sounds like code words.”

Never give up, never surrender

2009-11-20T01:38:00.002-05:00

Of course, it’s WorldNetDaily.

Men married to smart women live longer

2009-11-19T11:52:00.002-05:00

Swedish scientists have the proof!

Mr. Nearing, aspiring chef and reformed food sanitation scoffer, learned this the hard way when I solved the mystery of his repeated bouts of salmonella poisoning.

Do we have to argue about abortion over our Lucky Charms?

2009-11-17T13:03:00.003-05:00

It’s 8 something in the morning and Morning Joe brings out the hedgehog-headed Rep. Bart Stupak to discuss abortion.

Zap.

FOX News has some twitchy-eyed bogeyman on to tell us that a civil trial of Khalid Sheik Mohammed means certain death -- of New Yorkers, not KSM.

Zap.

CNN’s got something on about the possible sex-trafficking death of a little girl in one of the Carolinas -- does it make any difference which one?

Zap.

The local news is giving us live coverage of some horrific concrete-divider launched flying car accident on some 1950s designed highway.

Zap.

Now CNN is promoting a story about why scientists are taking cinema apocalyptica -- in this case, 2012 -- very seriously. Shouldn’t these scientists be working on stuff for the upcoming techno-cornucopian triumphalism exhibit?

Come on guys. Whatever happened to “happy news” -- you know, the stuff that got us through the 70s before we all discovered cocaine?

I finally settle on a rebroadcast of some monster truck competition. It is a thing of beauty.

Things I just learned I didn't know

2009-11-15T19:00:00.003-05:00

Baron Georg von Trapp, the patriarch of The Sound of Music family, was first married to Agathe Whitehead, granddaughter of the inventor of the modern self-propelled torpedo, Robert Whitehead.

(Via)

Adhesive-backed hate

2009-11-15T07:50:00.002-05:00

This seemingly innocent bumpersticker (available from CafePress) has been stirring up chatter on wingnut sites. Here’s the psalm in its entirety.

Here are the lines the wingnuts say they are joking about:

8 May his days be few;
may another take his place of leadership.

And here are the lines that immediately follow:

9 May his children be fatherless
and his wife a widow.

The bodyguard’s severed tongue, or: Maybe not

2009-11-13T12:58:00.003-05:00

Never ever believe anything other than the most basic of facts about a breaking news story. It’s the rule of the Bodyguard’s Severed Tongue, learned during the frenzied early days of la mort de princesse Diana.

And we’ve been getting a lot of severed tongues, so to speak, with the Fort Hood shootings.

Like how Maj. Nidal Hasan formally sought to separate from the service, to buy out his obligation. Or maybe not.

Like how “tough cookie” Sgt. Kimberly Munley “took down” Hasan. Or maybe not.

Like how Hasan yelled (what else) “God is great” in Arabic before opening fire. So far, still maybe/maybe not.

Mark Benjamin’s Salon article focuses on the completely whacky political correctness angle in the news coverage. That is, the Army not only did not discharge but actually promoted the maybe psychotic, possibly delusional (and my, aren’t Hasan’s anonymous medical colleagues at Walter Reed suddenly very chatty) all because of the tyranny of political correctness.

“Too much political correctness in the military?” scoffs Benjamin. “You know, the place where they fire you if you admit you’re gay?”

Butt cheeks for Jesus

2009-11-10T19:49:00.002-05:00

What happens when Westboro Baptist Church pickets a Ron White (Blue Collar Comedy Tour) show?
It ain’t pretty.

Just don’t call them prefabricated, paper-based tea infusers! Ever!!

2009-11-10T06:45:00.006-05:00

UPDATED BELOW

For reasons known only to themselves, some Red Staters went nuts over Obama’s use of a teabag.

According to The New York Times, on Saturday evening the President of the United States used a thoroughly disgusting gay-baiting slur to refer to people that previous presidents might have called “My Fellow Americans”. Speaking with congressional Democrats, our situationally unaware, amateur-night chief executive asked,
“Does anybody think that the teabag, anti-government people are going to support them if they bring down health care?”

This was pretty much the standard response -- “The lop-eared grinning ninny that’s bringing all this ‘hope and change’ to our country is immature, inexperienced, and in over his head. ‘Teabaggers…’ What a stupid, political clown comment!” -- except that other comments featured more generous use of madrassahs, czars, communists, and street thug.

I helpfully pointed out to the Red Staters that their very own bloggers and commenters had enthusiastically latched on to the term, as did Free Republic, FOX News (Neil Cavuto: Score one for the Teabaggers!), and the organizers of the original Teabaggings.

JadedByPolitics refused to swallow this: “I don’t care how it’s said and by whom, IT IS A SLUR!”

Yeesh. No doubt, JadedByPolitics is busily sending hell-fire emails to some totally baffled customer service rep at the Lipton Tea Co.

UPDATE

Well now. It seems that Obama may not have used the term "teabag" at all. According to Talk Radio News Service, the so-called quote may not be a direct quote but a paraphrase by Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore).

The point at which I stopped reading

2009-11-09T09:00:00.001-05:00

“Muslims take full advantage of America’s freedom of speech to broadcast the Revolution Muslim cultic line per their own street vendors’ open season.”

From the irrepressible and incomprehensible Pastor J. Grant Swank, Jr., at All Voices, The Leading Source for Credible Citizen Reporting.

Your morning screech

2009-11-08T09:59:00.002-05:00

ResistNet -- Home of the Patriotic Resistance -- expresses its displeasure with the man who cast the lone Republican vote for the House’s healthcare bill, Louisiana’s Joseph Cao.

JUST LIKE COMMUNIST VIETNAM HE CAST HIS VOTE WITH THE AMERICAN COMMUNIST

Stay classy ResistNet.

Anh "Joseph" Cao was born in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City), Vietnam. His father, an officer with the South Vietnamese Army, was imprisoned by the Communists. At the age of eight, Joseph escaped to America with two of his siblings.

So at the age of eight, little Anh decided to flee to America to form his own Communist sleeper cell. He learned English, grew up, bided his time until Democratic Rep. William Jefferson got into legal trouble, got elected to Jefferson's seat, and unleashed his Communist plot for providing sort-of universal health care coverage to the citizens of the country who bombed the crap out of his native land.

Of course.

Forgive us this day our daily carnage

2009-11-07T14:41:00.003-05:00

Those of us of a certain age have been through this many, many times before. I cannot say I’m shocked or even surprised anymore, which is not to say that I don‘t tear up and say my secularist‘s version of a prayer.

James Fallows, in response to the Fort Hood shootings.

In the saturation coverage right after the events, the “expert” talking heads are compelled to offer theories about the causes and consequences. In the following days and weeks, newspapers and magazine will have their theories too. Looking back, we can see that all such efforts are futile. The shootings never mean anything.

Forty years later, what did the Charles Whitman massacre “mean”? A decade later, do we “know” anything about Columbine? There is chaos and evil in life. Some people go crazy. In America, they do so with guns; in many countries, with knives; in Japan, sometimes poison.

We know the emptiness of these events in retrospect, though we suppress that knowledge when the violence erupts as it is doing now. The cable-news platoons tonight are offering all their theories and thought-drops. They’ve got to fill time. I wish they could stop. As the Vietnam-era saying went, Don’t mean nothing.

RIP

It’s a violent world. America is a violent country. If the criminals don’t get you, the nutters will. And if the nutters don’t get you, the zealots will.

Duck and cover, friends, duck and cover.

Frontal lobe ping pong: Special wingnut edition

2009-11-04T03:17:00.003-05:00

Erick Erickson at Red State whacks himself upside the head. Hard.

In NY-23, Conservatives Win

The race has now been called for Democrat Bill Owens.
This is a huge win for conservatives.
“Whaaaa. . . ?” you say.

There are two big victories at work in New York’s 23rd Congressional District.

First, the GOP now must recognize it will either [a] lose without conservatives or [b] will win with conservatives. In 2008, many conservatives sat home instead of voting for John McCain. Now, in NY-23, conservatives rallied and destroyed the Republican candidate the establishment chose.

Not quite sure how long Erickson worked on this paradigm since he clearly forgot about a third possible outcome -- the GOP loses with a conservative -- which is just what happened when Democrat Bill Owens bested Conservative Doug Hoffman and won the seat from New York’s 23rd Congressional District. Owens will be the first Democrat NY-23 sends to Washington since the first term of President Ulysses Grant.

So buck up conservative buckaroos: You might have spitefully broken a 140-year-old electoral streak, but boy did you ream Newt Gingrich and whoever else was on your shit list for the past month.

Keeping Ala-fuckin-bamans proud… and prematurely dead

2009-11-03T01:34:00.002-05:00

US Rep Artur Davis (D-Birmingham) announced
that he will vote against the version of health care reform legislation pending in the U.S. House of Representatives.

All four Alabama House Republicans and all three Alabama House Democrats have vowed to vote against healthcare reform legislation.

Why? Well it’s not because Alabamans are the healthiest and most long-lived Americans, that’s for sure.

Current ranking of Alabama for life expectancy among the 50 states: 48th.

Alabama ranks 8th in childhood death rate.
Alabama ranks 5th in teen death rate.
Alabama ranks 7th in firearms death rate.
Alabama ranks 5th in reported gonorrhea cases.
Alabama ranks 5th in reported syphilis cases.

Finally, Alabama consistently ranks among the worst in the nation in infant mortality -- and the US rate itself is a national disgrace.

*More charts and data available here.

** Mr. N.'s dad is from Ala-fuckin-bama -- that's what he calls it. As soon as he was old enough, he enlisted in the Navy and got Ala-fuckin-out.

Just imagine this as a pumpkin carving

2009-10-31T19:06:00.003-04:00

To: Kimberly Daniels, CBN guest columnist
Re: The Danger of Celebrating Halloween

Original column (since deleted by Pat Robertson and CBN) cached here.

(h/t)

All coming up next, but first…

2009-10-31T03:15:00.004-04:00

From A Conversation With Gore Vidal.

Q. What are “American values”?
A. Lying and cheating. There’s nothing better.

Q. During the 1970s, Warren Beatty, Jack Nicholson, and producer Robert Evans were celebrated for lifestyles of sexual extravagance.
A. Well, they’re all virgins, every last one of them. I can testify to that. And the last one you mentioned, he’s a super virgin.

##

Neuro-Bush: Smarter than expected but worse than thought.

President Bush’s bold, ebullient personality and bias for action helped bring together Democratic and Republican elites to fundamentally reform American public schools. This may be his greatest legacy. The President’s boldness in Afghanistan seemingly succeeded, though his disdain for details limited the scope of that success.

Finally, on the signature decision of his administration, President Bush’s tendency to make quick decisions, reluctance to admit error, disdain for details and experts, inability to entertain dissenting opinions, and tendency to categorize opponents as enemies, meant that his administration did not sufficiently plan the invasion of Iraq. Further, he failed to systematically review occupation policy even as countless voices both inside and outside of the administration urged such a review. [orig emph]

##

My guy does dead guys better than your guy, nah nah nah nah nah.

The son Dick Cheney never had -- that would be Liz, not Mary -- joined in that most cherished of TV-age political traditions: squabbling over which president’s motives are the purest when honoring fallen soldiers. Disgraceful behavior erupted on all sides.

Folks, generally speaking, if you’re booing, hissing, and name-calling, you’re not remembering the fallen in a respectful manner. Maybe instead of covering mirrors, as observant Jews do during shiva, agitated partisans should just slap some duct tape over their mouths for a few days.
##

Oddly enough, also a well-known weakness of Joe Lieberman.

Advice from veteran pitcher Rube Currie to rookie pitcher Piggie Powell:

You know what their weakness is? A fastball between the eyes.

“Big Hollywood Victoria Jackson” is really Tony Clifton in drag

2009-10-23T23:22:00.002-04:00

Don’t know why, but I still hold out hope that Victoria Jackson is really an extraordinary performance artist and not a goofy D-list celebrity riding the gravy train of conservative welfare.

Take, for example, her latest column for Big Hollywood, A Love Letter (to Glenn Beck).

I think of you often.

I’m getting my fake fingernails put on and I’m thinking of you. I have a pitch meeting at Pie Town tomorrow and I chewed all my real fingernails off last night watching Anita Dunn express her admiration for Mao Tse Tung. Thank you for exposing yet another enemy of our freedom. You are so passionate and curious and smart and real….

But I must especially thank you Glenn Beck for your blackboard. I love your blackboard! And your thorough research. Your facts. Your diagrams. Your teaching. Finally, someone is clearly explaining to us, the taxpayers, exactly what is happening inside that mysterious, gigantic, corrupt political system we have.

We, the working middle class, have always been afraid of the machine, and I think the politicians/criminals wanted it that way. With their pompous, pious faces and sneaky hands, they have been stealing and lying. We were too busy raising children, working and going to church to have time to research them.

Now, finally, one man has done it. Cracked the Code. Exposed the Fraud. Shone the Light on the Basement Rats! Now, the rats are all scurrying around, all nervous. They are calling The Man With The Flashlight names. Mean names. Squeak! Squeak!

Glenn Beck, thank you for answering my questions….

I absolutely refuse to believe this is for real. It has to be a world-class punking.

Flooze

2009-10-21T20:09:00.003-04:00

Listen up, people: Get your flu shot, or don‘t. I don’t give a ragged filament on a phagocyte’s ass either way. Just don’t tell me why you decided the way you did and, for God’s sake, don’t sneeze on me.

Some poseurs think they’re being all cool, edgy, and self-destructive by proudly playing immunity roulette.

As we all know, there's no better way to show the world that you're truly independent, that you're not some mindless media-controlled zombie, than by doing precisely what Bill Maher tells you to.

Just remember how tragically hip you are as you endure bone-shaking rigors.

Some vaxnoids think that by refusing vaccination they’re cleverly outwitting the government’s evil plan either (1) to kill them with unsafe vaccines or (2) to implant computer nano-chips along with the vaccine.

Just keep remembering the tremendous benefits of your hyper-vigilance as you lower great grandma’s casket. Poor old gal never had a chance, what with your flu and her congestive heart failure.

Still other vaxnoids are, to put it most charitably, completely mental. According to them, not only is the swine flu vaccine unsafe and unfit for human use, but the oppressive Obama regime is refusing to distribute it to Red States.

That's right: If you didn't vote for Obama, you will be spared injection with Obama's poisonous flu vaccine....

Things I just learned I didn't know

2009-10-20T21:43:00.002-04:00

Bill Scott, the voice of Mr. Peabody in Sherman and Mr. Peabody, was blacklisted in Hollywood during the 1950s.

Proud graduates all of the Leonard Plinth-Garnell School of Op/Ed Writing

2009-10-12T11:58:00.007-04:00

These are my absolute favs from Renew America. No, really, it's not The Onion. The writers' looks, it should be noted, roughly match their political bent.

Click image to embiggen, but consider yourself warned.

Yada Yada La Scala

2009-10-11T15:53:00.001-04:00

My but wasn’t Obama’s controversial!!1! Nobel Peace Price a media godsend!!1!

Does Obama deserve the Nobel Peace Prize?
Should he accept it?
Should he reject it?
Should he hang the medal on Bo’s dog collar?

Should Bill Clinton have gotten the award, so we all could cue up the Monica Lewinsky videotapes and revisit the curse of the blue-stained dress? Oh, and impute all sorts of nefarious subtexts because Bill’s wife is the current Secretary of State?

Well, you know the media drill. All that speculative yada-yada-ing gives the media the perfect excuse not to address Bob Somerby’s eminently reasonable question: Why the fuck does the US spend two to three times as much as comparable nations on comparable health care?

It’s not as though the answer is harder to figure out than what’s next in the Jon & Kate saga.

Pearls should never be clutched; they should be gently “worried.”

2009-10-11T00:05:00.001-04:00

My best advice to you is some that my brother Danny received the very year that Ronald Reagan was elected president.... Just be the ball. Be the ball. Be. The. Ball.*
__________

Gawd. Peggy Noonan is a Visiting Whatnot at Harvard this year, conducting study groups on the Latest Whatever in Contemporary Wherever and What It All Might Mean Eventually. Gawker has a hilarious roundup of Noonerisms as faithfully recounted by study group attendees.

My personal favorite: I'm not a brain surgeon. You have to be a professional. I did my best and I didn't kill anybody. I can't remember what the point of my answer is.

The study group has been described by one attendee as “two hours of listening to a woman who should not be permitted to operate heavy machinery.”

Next time, kids, sign up for the Beowulf seminar instead.

*A faux Noonerism by a clever Gawkerer.

Best FARKing peace prize headline (so far)

2009-10-10T08:44:00.001-04:00

So much mooting, so little time

2009-10-09T09:54:00.003-04:00

Town Hall columnist (and former Marine, don’t forget) Michael McBride finally gets around to mocking Obama -- Our President, Chauncey Gardner -- for coming back empty-handed from the IOC meeting…

A less egotistical President would have stayed home and let the chips fall where they may on such an unimportant issue.

Instead we have a self-absorbed narcissist as a President who believes that his mere presence and some vacuous oratory will carry the day.

Swing and a miss.

How did we get such a vapid minor leaguer as a President?

… and wouldn’t you know it, the very next day Obama gets the Nobel Peace Prize.

TownHallers remain undeterred, however, and continue to root against the home team.

Wonk fun and more

2009-10-08T08:24:00.003-04:00

This is a clickaholic’s delight! Via Justin Gardner: Go visit Recovery.gov, where you can follow stimulus money on the national and state levels and, via zip code, geolocated to specific businesses, not-for-profits, and other entities.

See for yourself just how much stimulus money the hometowns/districts of anti-stimulus congressmen are receiving….

Do it on the radio

2009-10-07T07:46:00.002-04:00

“How do you solve the staging problems inherent in a production of Ibsen’s rarely performed Peer Gynt?

“Do it on the radio” is the solution so famously quipped in Willy Russell’s “Educating Rita”.
__________
Q. How does the United States solve the military problems inherent in waging war in unconquerable Afghanistan?

A. Get the fuck out.

We’re safe[r] now, right? People can no longer bring boxcutters on jets -- or maybe they once again can, I can’t remember and never fly so I’m not googling it. There’s no shortage of gravel quarries in America, which means this isn’t a camouflaged resource war. And good god, if you thought Iraq wasn’t a photogenic military adventure, Afghanistan is even worse: It’s not just the caves and barren mountains but the shadowy valleys of death for personnel stranded by broken down Humvees. Pride be damned, Americans know this war is a military indulgence we can no longer afford.

Michael Hastings ironically observes that Obama “wants to give the appearance of hearing many points of view before he either a) sends the 40,000 more troops or b) figures out an elegant way to not send 40,000 troops.”

There is a third option: Do it on the radio.

Somewhat admittedly, some people have had some suspicions for some time

2009-10-05T08:22:00.003-04:00

Gotta confess, I love the latest blog genre, the prove you’re not, you farkin’ basterd website. The genre is brilliant in its simplicity, and the farkin’ basterds who are targeted are richly deserving. Cases in point: Dan Riehl and Glenn Beck.

Is Dan Riehl a Child Predator? is in retaliation for wingnut Riehl’s totally baseless post about the census taker recently murdered in Kentucky. The title of the post: Was Census Worker Bill Sparkman a Child Predator? Does Riehl provide absolutely any evidence? No. Riehl acknowledges that his suspeculations rest solely on the fact that the late Mr. Sparkman was involved with the Boy Scouts of America.

See, the farkin’ basterd deserves it.

The other classic site in the genre is Did Glenn Beck Rape and Murder a Young Girl in 1990? It wonderfully plays off Beck’s wacked-out metier.

Why won't Glenn Beck deny these allegations? We're not accusing Glenn Beck of raping and murdering a young girl in 1990 - in fact, we think he didn't! But we can't help but wonder, since he has failed to deny these horrible allegations. Why won't he deny that he raped and killed a young girl in 1990?

Because it’s prominently billed as “the official parody site about the controversy,” Beck’s lawyers have taken just about the only avenue that’s open to them. Rather than using the US legal system, where failure is all but guaranteed, they’ve filed a complaint with an international domain name arbitration panel. International. Arbitration. Panel. Pretty wimpy, Glenn.

So let’s keep at it, bloggers and bloggerettes. Let mega-pixels of carefully worded yet totally irresponsible speculation rain down on those farkin’ basterds.

In retrospect, hindsight is a cruel bitch

2009-10-02T23:12:00.003-04:00

To counter the effects of the wingnuts’ going all happy happy joy joy over Chicago’s lost Olympic bid, I’ve been trolling Amazon for heavily discounted laughs on Bush hagiographies.

These are reviews for Jerry Bowyer’s 2003 gem, The Bush Boom: How a Misunderestimated President Fixed a Broken Economy. Brace yourselves: There's a foreword by Larry Kudlow! According to the book’s publisher, “If you like books by conservative authors Ann Coulter, Michael Savage, Mona Cheran [sic], and Gary Aldrich, you'll love Jerry Bowyer.”

And if you don’t love those great thinkers, then you’ll write reviews like these.

*As a serious study of current political economy, this book is a joke. As an example of the total disconnection of conservatives with basic human reality, however, it is a tour de force.

*Finally! A book that proves the existence of an alternate universe. Obviously, a rip in the space/time continuum between this universe and the other universe where Bush is presiding over a “boom economy” opened up and this book fell through. Can there be ANY other explanation?

*Unintentionally hilarious cultural artifact! I read the title of this book and my jaw dropped. It’s a goof right? Wrong -- unfortunately the author was serious.

*It's really the perfect [gag] gift to a banker. Maybe wrap the book in Zimbabwean 100 million dollar bills or the like...

*Hahahahahaha! Haha, hahahaha ha hahahaha, hahahaha.

Works like a charm every time.