I was gonna make a LOLPalin

Then I realized that you could see her quite well.

So instead, here's this - it's an actual product.


The ad copy on the side? "Cheap, fast and easy."

Important health safety tip

The Trophy Wife made borscht last night for dinner (in case you don't know, it's beef stew with beets, usually served with a dollop of sour cream); it's one of the most traditional of Russian dishes.

But here's something you should think about. Never get so drunk that the next morning, you can’t remember that you ate beets the night before, or you will come leaping out of the bathroom to make a panicked call to a gastroenterologist.

But that's just me, talking shit again.

Stocky photos

Buzzfeed put together a collection of 60 Completely Unusable Stock Photos (gleaned from a blog I've never heard of prior to this, Awkward Stock Photos). And you have to ask yourself, "What the hell are these people thinking?"

I mean, yeah, if the opportunity comes up, they want to have the product available. And you can see where there might be a use for some of this.

And then there are some where you think, maybe, in certain circumstances, somebody might have a use for some of them.

But then there are some where you ask yourself "Just what the hell was this idiot thinking?"








"Bobby! We need a blond hillbilly midget giggling in a bathtub, and we need it NOW!!"

Newtie needs help

Newt Gingrich has recently received a lot of flak for the complete reversal of his position on Libya within a three-week period. But I don’t think that the problem is entirely that Newtie is a venal, lying, opportunistic load of horse manure in an expensive suit. I think that he’s sick, and he needs to find a doctor right away.

Newton Leroy McPherson Gingrich has always stood in stark repudiation of every action he has ever taken. He had been in the House of Representatives for fifteen years when he wrote the "Contract On With America that demanded twelve-year term limits on members of Congress; and in the course of his remaining five years in Congress. led impeachment proceedings against President Clinton for having an affair, while he was actively cheating on his wife.

The man who served his first wife divorce papers while she was in the hospital for cancer surgery is now trumpeting the importance of "traditional marriage"; the man who was just quoted as saying "If you don't start with values, the rest of it doesn't matter," was the first Speaker of the House ever disciplined for ethics violations (for which he was fined $300,000).

But more recently, on February 22, he went on Fox & Friends to say:

I wish the administration — the Obama administration was as enthusiastic about democracy in ... as it was in Egypt, which was our ally.

Qadhafi’s been our enemy for years. This is an opportunity to replace that dictatorship, and I think the United States ought to be firmly on the side of the Libyan people in replacing this administration.“

When asked by Greta van Susteren on March 7, “what would you do about Libya?” he said:

Exercise a no-fly zone this evening... We don’t need to have NATO, who frankly, won’t bring much to the fight. We don’t need to have the United Nations. All we have to say is that we think that slaughtering your own citizens is unacceptable and that we’re intervening. And we don’t have to send troops. All we have to do is suppress his air force, which we could do in minutes.

But when Obama did exactly that, on March 23, Newt went on the Today Show to say:

I would not have intervened. I think there were a lot of other ways to affect Qaddafi. I think there are a lot of other allies in the region we could have worked with. I would not have used American and European forces.

So, not a complete reversal. He still wouldn’t have used the Europeans.

He’s offered several explanations for this, and they all contradict each other, too. On Twitter, for example:


So maybe he would use the Europeans, after all.

And then he went on Facebook to explain:

On March 3rd, President Obama said publicly that “it’s time for Gadaffi to go.”

Prior to this statement, there were options to be indirect and subtle to achieve this result without United States military forces. I made this point on The Today Show this morning, saying “I would not have intervened…there were a lot of other ways to affect Qaddafi…I would not have used American and European forces.”

The president, however, took those options off the table with his public statement.

So, no Europeans again, but now no Americans either. And now the president shouldn’t have opposed Qaddaffi.

At first, I thought that it was possible that there were no contradiction: Newt has always had one primary, overriding concern in all this. He is firmly opposed to whatever Obama does.

But now, it turns out that this is some kind of mental aberration in Gingrich’s brain: he has to contradict himself on every subject, and those contradictions are coming closer and closer together. On Sunday, this twice-divorced Catholic went to an evangelical Protestant church to explain that:

"I am convinced that if we do not decisively win the struggle over the nature of America, by the time they're my age they will be in a secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists and with no understanding of what it once meant to be an American."

He didn’t bother to explain where we would find these radical atheist Islamists, but I’m sure it made sense to him at the time.

Newtie needs a doctor before it’s too late. Before he accidentally says that he's happy to be alive, and his brain simply shuts down in stolid opposition to this idea.

Atheist Apologetics

OK, so I was toddling around teh intartubes again, annoying people, and I start to notice that a lot of the atheist hecklers are still using some of the same old arguments. And there's one that they seriously need to back away from. "Why are you still eating shellfish, dude? Isn't that an abomination?"

Well, you know, it's in there, but the Christians can ignore it. The kosher dietary laws have been canned (so to speak).

There's a couple of reasons for this. Leviticus 11, where they list the clean and unclean food, begins “Tell the Israelites” – not “tell the people.” Admittedly, this one’s always seemed like picking nits to me, but the Israelites are His chosen people – not that it’s done them much good over the centuries, but still...

Apparently, God decided that His Chosen Folks had more rules to follow than everybody else. I guess it's tough being the son of Abraham or something.

But that brings us to Matthew 15:11, where Jesus came out and said it.

What goes into someone’s mouth does not defile them, but what comes out of their mouth, that is what defiles them.

Which is actually kind of cool, if you think about it. So they ran with it. But let's dig a little deeper.

Now, add to that Acts 10:9-22, where apparently Peter got hungry and started hallucinating. It includes the line “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.”

Traditionally, this has been taken to mean that if you say “grace,” your food just became kosher (or whatever the Jesus-equivalent would be). They have to look at it that way, because otherwise, it raises the question "why didn't God just make them pure in the first place?"

But the answer to that is "Because then a big chunk of Leviticus is a lie, and people might call the rest of it into question." Simple.

But that also brings us to Romans 14:14, which is where it gets a little interesting. (Or, at least, I think it's interesting. But then, I'm a big ol' geek.)

I am convinced, being fully persuaded in the Lord Jesus, that nothing is unclean in itself. But if anyone regards something as unclean, then for that person it is unclean.

See, your average fundie doesn’t like to bring this quote up, because, because they like to say that atheists have "situational ethics" or no basis for their morality. But apparently, if you don't believe it's a sin, then... Ta - DAAAA!!! It isn't a sin!

Hey, Paul said so. Don't argue with me - take it up with him.

In the news

I have nothing earthshaking to add to any of this. I'm just wasting time while my son is in the shower.

Maybe growing up with that name didn't help?



Well, that search didn't take long, did it?


This one's gotten a lot of play, but... really?

Come on, Boehner - it's not the size of the boat, it's the motion of... aaahh, skip it...

I kept seeing variations of this last week.

Then I saw this.

And, really, where do you go from there? "Moony-eyed," maybe?


Incidentally, Leonard Nimoy turns 80 today.

If you have to ask "who?" then you have no further business here.

So, happy birthday, Bellie.

Oh, and it's also time to whip this out again.

Just a "quick" (seven minute) video

The daughter and her fiancée went to Phoenix this weekend (where it's apparently going to be in the 70s, so not bad) to see Lady Gaga, who apparently isn't coming to Albuquerque this tour. So, you know, this is for her.

(But in the intro, Ms Germanotta intones "Thus began the beginning of the new race." Really? Redundant much?)

Connect the dots

So, let me see if I've got this straight. 100 years ago today, in lower Manhattan, the Triangle Shirtwaist fire killed 146 people (a third of the people working in the building) who couldn't escape a ten-story factory because the owners, in an effort to prevent theft, had locked the exit doors.

Because there were no unions to protect their rights or ensure workplace safety, the employees who died were often underage, worked twelve to sixteen hour days, six days a week, and earned less than $2 a day.

Out of that two dollars, they had to pay the owners for the needles, thread and electricity they needed to do their jobs. And they could be fired for any reason, including missing a day of work or talking to the person working next to them. Or joining a union.

In fact, unions were under assault. Literally: with clubs, knives, guns and dogs - until a quarter of a century later, when the Wagner Act was passed, supporting unions and collective bargaining.

Oh, and 15 years before the fire, the National Guard was sent into the Homestead Steel Works to break up a strike by steelworkers. Just so you know.

But, the Triangle Shirtwaist fire. That was 100 years ago today. Happy Birthday.

One hundred days ago today, in Bangladesh, a fire in a Bangladesh sweatshop killed dozens of people and injured over a hundred more. To prevent theft, the doors had been padlocked shut by the owners,

That was 100 days ago today.

The workers in Bangladesh are among the lowest-paid in the world, and frequently die because of workplace safety, which isn't enforced by anyone. Like, say, a union.

This was one of two manufacturing plants run by the Hameem Group, who makes clothing for the Gap, Wrangler, JC Penney, Target, Abercrombie & Fitch, and Osh Kosh B'Gosh.

Oshkosh B'Gosh. Founded in Oshkosh, Wisconsin in 1895. Three years after the Homestead Steel Strike.

Last month in Wisconsin, Governor Scott Walker was mobilizing the Wisconsin National Guard, in case unions protested his attempts to destroy collective bargaining rights. In the course of the next few weeks, that same Governor Walker, outraged because striking workers were occupying his Imperial Palace the Wisconsin State Capital Building, had doors locked and windows bolted shut to keep strikers from getting food.

Initial reports that the windows were welded shut proved to be merely rumors. There are, however, pictures of the new bolts preventing the windows from opening.

So, locking people inside a building with a sporadic record of safety inspections. Because he's trying to bust unions.

Quick test: what have we learned in the last century?
A. Jack.
B. Shit.

Two notes from my reading list

Citizen K leads us to a New York Times article by Timothy Egan, who points out that the Fox "News" channel's latest buzzword isn't quite as bad as they want us to think. Go read the entire article, entitled In Defense of ‘Dithering.’

Had Obama done nothing, as the Dennis Kucinich fringe Democrats and the Ron Paul isolationist Republicans would have it, the blood of many civilians would be filling the streets of Benghazi. Don’t forget: the regime had promised to chase its own citizens into closets and butcher them.

Or, had Obama put U.S. troops on the ground, as the imperious former Bush “diplomat” John Bolton insisted, a humanitarian mission would now be seen as another superpower invasion of an oil-rich Arab nation.

In his deliberative fashion, Obama ultimately saved countless lives in the short term, and will allow the rebels in Libya to own their revolution in the long term, if they can push ahead — a big if, of course. In the meantime, the economic and diplomatic noose will tighten around Qaddafi and the people he pays to kill on his behalf...

Still, Republicans can’t cope with a president who tries to think before he leaps. Mitt Romney, who wakes most mornings in a groggy scramble to find his principles, faults Obama for the nuance of his Libya policy. How dare the president see shades of gray instead of black and white!

Newt Gingrich first criticized Obama for not imposing a no-fly zone, but now hits him for imposing a no-fly zone. You read that right. "I would not have intervened," Gingrich said a few days ago. This followed a statement, barely two weeks ago, where he said he would intervene "this evening." And he now calls the air strikes over Libya the worst foreign policy blunder in his lifetime.

Overstatement and misjudgment are Gingrich’s stock in trade — two reasons why he’ll never be president. He can always be counted on to fulminate on demand, with consistency the only casualty; the subject doesn’t matter.

The real problem for Republicans is that they are perplexed over what position to take on an issue that defies partisanship. So, Obama’s least-thoughtful critics attack him for thinking.

And Progressive Eruptions points out that, in the process, all this "dithering" has given America a 14% boost in our global popularity ratings. From one of the least popular countries in the world, to the single most popular, in just two years. Making us both safer and more secure.

Just thought I'd point that out.

The Eighth Doctor

The Trophy Wife and I are both major Whovians. We both, as kids, watched Doctor Who reruns on PBS - mostly the Tom Baker years, in both our cases. For us (as for much of the world, I understand) Tom Baker was the Doctor.

In 2005, we heard that Doctor Who had been restarted in the UK, and we champed and quivered and hoped until the SciFi Channel finally condescended to show it a year later. And we loved it. Christopher Eccleston was completely over-the-top as the ninth Doctor, and the production values were so infinitely better than the original series' had been.

And we didn't just watch the new series. We sought out the old - we rented episodes, we bought them (when they were cheap), and, of course, we own most of the new series as well. A lot of it was a sort of misplaced nostalgia: we enjoy the old Doctors for their camp value (except the first Doctor - most of his stuff that we've seen has been relatively boring); and since Russell T. Davies, the man who reincarnated the Doctor, was also a major Whovian, he's kept much of the original continuity, reviving the original villains and referencing the original series in little ways that bring a certain depth to the characters.

But there's always been the one Doctor we could never see - the Eighth Doctor.

In 1996, Paul McGann played the Doctor for a single movie, in an American coproduction as an attempt at a pilot for an American series on the Fox network. When it played originally, I got to see just a few minutes before I had to go to work, and could never find it again (the Trophy Wife never saw it, for whatever reason).

And it's been like the Holy Grail ever since. It was never released in America, and only available on videotape and DVD's for every Region except Region 1 (the USA). We've read about it; we've heard people talk about it. We've never seen it.

Finally, late last month, it was released in America. On DVD. For the first time ever. Just in time for the Trophy Wife's birthday (I'll bet you can see where this is going).

As it turns out, the Eighth Doctor's sole live-action outing was only a Grail-shaped beacon. There's a reason this movie never made it as a series: it's a steaming pile of suck.

It has good points: Paul McGann would have made an awesome Doctor, if he'd had a script, decent costars, and maybe a director who had some clue what the hell he was doing. A writer and producer. And if somebody had managed to shoot the committee who finally put this turd on the small screen.

The production values are good. The special effects are mostly acceptable. His companion is even a good actress, well played by Daphne Ashbrook.

In fact, there are only two major flaws to this particular production. First, the entire script. Which, you know, is a major problem for a movie to overcome, but there's one even bigger puke-inducing factor in this film.

The villain is played by Eric Roberts.

The words "Eric Roberts" are rarely the sign of a quality movie. He hasn't always sucked: he did a decent turn in The Dark Knight, and he really didn't drag down the quality of Heroes. But let me say some other titles.

Cecil B. DeMented.

Miss Castaway and the Island Girls.

For the love of all that's holy, Sharktopus!

One of his earliest roles was on the soap opera Another World. And when they brought his character back two years later, they didn't invite Eric to play him.

And I'm willing to put his performance in Doctor Who up against any other role he's ever played as a pure, unadulterated fecal stain.

Many of the early seasons of Doctor Who fall into that "so bad it's good" category. This didn't even rise to that level. It's another fine example of why no artistic endeavor should ever be created by a committee.

Without dropping any spoilers here, let me just say that this movie failed to live up to my expectations.

Icky Sticky - JGeek and the Geeks

There's a Maori electro-pop subculture? Who knew?

Actually, they look slightly like the reincarnation of Adam and the Ants.

(Except that it would appear that Adam Ant is still alive! Again, who knew?)

I've got to say, "I've got some icky sticky love to give/when you're licking up my face" is approaching the Eeeww Threshold, but manages to avoid it. Mostly.

This is actually the second song released by JGeek and the Geeks, fronted by former TV presenter, Jermaine Leef. Their previous song, "Maori Boy," made it to #33 on the RIANZ (Recording Industry Association of New Zealand) charts. Strictly on the strength of a single and a video only available via download.

Much of the music industry doesn't want to adapt to the "digital age." Maybe they need to consider newer business models.

Bachmann to the Future

What can you say about Michelle Bachmann that hasn't already been said about Charles Manson, Emperor Norton, or that guy in the laundromat fondling himself and muttering as he watches a dryer full of Power Ranger sheets tumble around and around and around?

Understand that I have no verifiable evidence for this, but I have to assume that at some point in her childhood, Michelle Bachmann was told “you’re so pretty” by an older man as he touched her inappropriately. And that‘s why she adopted this “wide-eyed lunatic” persona, as a defense mechanism. Because a high-functioning paranoid schizophrenic would have a hard time getting reelected even in the rural parts of Minnesota, where the population is so thin on the ground that sometimes a close relative is the only sexual partner available when the snows close in.

That does not, however, mean that I think she's sane and hiding it, like some of the commenters here seem to be positing. Hers is a special kind of bugfuckery only found where the gene pool is frighteningly shallow.

Yes, she did graduate from Winona State University, but she then went on to Oral Roberts University for her graduate studies in law. (Yes, Oral Roberts University, founded by televangelist and comic book publisher Oral Roberts, widely known for casting God as a loan shark and thug.)

This is not a storied academic career.

Bachmann is more than happy to drive blindly into the Alleys of Madness, seeing conspiracy theories at every turn. She claims that Obama is promoting "gangster government" and the healthcare bill is hiding $105 billion that Congress had no way of knowing about. (That would be the funds built into the bill to allow it to operate, something Bachmann's own party has been pretending to care about.)

No way of knowing about, unless they'd actually read the bill. (Of course, this isn't the first time that Bachmann has proven that she'll willingly make shit up about healthcare, so it's difficult to see why she gets airtime to wave around her colostomy bag of lies. But there she is.)

When Michelle Obama took a completely non-controversial stand in favor of breastfeeding, Bachmann (whose shriveled mammaries could only produce battery acid and liquid fear at this stage) started emitting harpy-like shrieks accusing the Obamas of creating a "nanny state." (If nothing else, the word she was looking for was "wetnurse" - a nanny is a completely different job.)

And now she went in front of an audience in New Hampshire, to inform them that "you're the state where the shot was heard around the world in Lexington and Concord."

She, of course, later went on to claim that she simply "made a mistake," and "should've said Massachusetts rather than New Hampshire."

Which is complete horsecrap. Yes, she should have said Massachusetts instead of New Hampshire. And she should have said it when she wasn't talking to a crowd from New Hampshire. And she shouldn't have repeated it the next fucking day.

That hollow space behind her eyes allows concepts entirely unrelated to reality take root. When even Chris Matthews (a man who practically wet himself over Bush's flightsuit codpiece) can take her apart without even trying hard, that shows the breadth of this woman's rambling inanity.


The money shot here? "People on the right who've gotten into this anti-intellectual cant, as if not knowing anything is somehow knowing everything." A topic for a future time.

Duck, Gilbert!

You know, I don't normally go in for celebrity gossip, but sometimes you just have to pass one along.

Seems that Gilbert Gottfried got fired from a job where all he had to do was say the company name. One word. That was it. Not a difficult gig by any stretch.

Over the weekend, he might just have ridden the Twitter pony into well-deserved obscurity. He puked up an even dozen "Japanese = drowning" jokes, like:

Aside from the whole "taste" issue (never his strong suit anyway), Gilbert failed to take into account the fact that Aflac does 75% of its business in Japan.

Wow. The third most annoying man in the world is also one of the stupidest. I wonder why I don't feel much sympathy?

Don't worry, Gil. There'll be another job floating by...

Any...

minute...

now...

How does Scott Walker think?

The Republican members of the Wisconsin Senate on Wednesday passed the budget repair bill without the Democrats, by stripping the fiscal elements out of the bill, which meant that they no longer needed a quorum, and could pass it without any Democrats present.

Now, weirdly, the taking away the union's right to collective bargaining was left in the bill that was passed. Which means one of two things: either Walker has been lying all this time by saying that collective bargaining was bankrupting the state, or the Senate just passed an unconstitutional bill and will now be spending more of the budget on defending it in court. I wonder which result Walker prefers?

Likely, neither one. See, Scott Walker believes that God talks to him personally; he claims to have actually heard the voice of Jesus telling him what to do, in the manner of delusional psychopaths throughout history. And you can almost believe that with his attempts to ass-rape the teachers. He's just judging them strictly.

¹Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly. ² We all stumble in many ways. Anyone who is never at fault in what they say is perfect, able to keep their whole body in check. (James 3:1-2)

OK, admittedly, this isn't presented as a good thing, but a case of other people's unreasonable attitudes towards teachers. But there it is.

It is frightening that the highest executive in our state suffers from the delusion that God dictates his every move. Consider the personal and historic devastation inflicted by fanatics who think they are acting in the name of their deity. (Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation)

(h/t Uzza)

Of course, this biblical perspective doesn't explain Walker cozying up to the Koch Brothers. Maybe he feels that the eye of the needle that will get them into Heaven is located somewhere in Wisconsin - he's just trying to save their immortal souls.

There's a certain cold-blooded logic to Walker setting himself up so that he can sell the Wisonsin power industry to the Koch brothers for two dollars per plant. After all, many of Winconsin's coal burning power plants require millions of dollars in upgrades to make them compliant with environmental regulations. Let the multi-billionaire Koch brothers pick up the tab.

Here it is, early March, and the average low temperature in northern Wisconsin has been hovering between 10 and 15 degrees Fahrenheit (remember, that page is updated daily - YMMV). The average temperature in the state drops to 5 degrees F in the winter; the lowest temperature ever recorded in the state was -55 degrees Fahrenheit, on February 4, 1996 at Couderay).

So if a couple of 80-year-old Social Security recipients freeze to death because they can't pay the newly-privatized energy bills? Hey, it's not the state's fault, right? (And it's that much less drain on that damned Social Security system that the Republicans can't seem to destroy. So that has to be another bonus right there! Right?)

Sometimes the jokes just write themselves

David Davis of New Haven, CT, was getting a haircut in an apartment in Stamford, and says he was approached by another man “in an aggressive manner.” And then the other guy apparently turned his back on him in an aggressive manner, too. Forcing Davis to stab him in the back with a pair of scissors.

There aren’t a lot of details out there about the stabbing yet, and I want more. Because either Davis fled the scene right then; or maybe his amateur barber refused to finish the haircut (and that doesn’t seem like an unreasonable attitude on his part); or maybe Davis grabbed the scissors that had been cutting his hair, thereby bringing the whole operation to a halt all by himself.

Regardless, I think that Mr Davis just got an important lesson about controlling his impulses. On the plus side, this whole business did lead to the invention of what's quickly coming to be known internationally as the Halfro. So there’s that.

And where else can we go for our daily dose of schadenfreude? Well, how about Florida? Late last month, a 40-year-old man named Tomas Bautista was arrested for having sex with a chihuahua.

Tomas shared a house with Clemente Velasquez, 67. According to the Broward County Sheriff's office:

Velasquez, who is Bautista's roommate, arrived home Thursday and found Bautista drunk. He told him to go to bed, but Bautista instead went to the backyard. The dog followed him outside.

Soon after, Velasquez heard Mimi yelp, so he grabbed a flashlight and ran outside. He saw his dog running from Bautista and found Bautista passed out with his pants down.

Mimi was bleeding, so Velasquez notified authorities and took her to the Coral Springs Animal Hospital.

Now, the messed-up part about all this...

...I'm sorry. There's really nothing about this story that isn't messed up.

First, we have a grown man who owns a chihuahua. The world's most annoying dog. I mean, that, right there... OK, again, I'm sorry. Maybe that's just me.

Secondly, the dog is apparently suffering PTSD from the rape. According to Clemente (who owns a chihuahua... really...), "she is now just lying down on the sofa... She's not happy like she normally is."

(The fact that he dresses her in a pink sweater has nothing to do with that...)

Third, they had to charge Bautista with "cruelty to animals," because Florida is one of the very few states where it isn't illegal - you're apparently allowed to have sex with dogs if it's consensual?

And finally but most importantly, we've got some guy who tried to have sex with that same chihuahua. Of all the things that I've ever tried to do, or even thought about doing...

...how drunk do you have to be...?

OK, I will admit that I have called people "pencil dick" in the past. But I have honestly never met a man who tried to prove it.

So, if you take nothing else away from this post, look at that face to the left. Memorize it. If you are ever in Florida (although, god knows why anybody would want to) and if there is any chance that you might end up in jail, you want to know who this guy here is.

If you do nothing else that's good in your life, you have to make sure that Bautista can't get away with saying "Why am I here? Oh, they tried to say I raped some bitch..."

I'll be your Huckleberry

Let's see if I've got this straight. Mike Huckabee went on a radio show this week and said that Obama was raised in Kenya. Of course, as his spokesman later explained:

Governor Huckabee simply misspoke when he alluded to President Obama growing up in ‘Kenya.’ The Governor meant to say the President grew up in Indonesia. When the Governor mentioned he wanted to know more about the President, he wasn’t talking about the President’s place of birth - the Governor believes the President was born in Hawaii. The Governor would however like to know more about where President Obama’s liberal policies come from and what else the President plans to do to this country - as do most Americans.

So, he just "misspoke," right? Slip of the tongue. Nothing to see here. Let's just move on.

End of story, right?

Not even close.

Two days later, our boy Huckleberry went on Bryan Fischer's radio show and said once again that he'd made a simple mistake:

And it's really an indication of just how pathetic some of these folks are who claim to be journalists and reporters and have failed to do a decent job. You know, I admitted that I misspoke on that, but I corrected it. But what I have never done is taken to position that Obama was born in Kenya or Indonesia or anywhere other than Hawaii where he claims to have been born.

(Cute, right? "...claims to have been born...")

But that just shows that Huckleberry is, in fact, a lying ball of snot.

First, let's go back to the original "mistake."

I would love to know more. What I know is troubling enough. And one thing that I do know is his having grown up in Kenya, his view of the Brits, for example, [is] very different than the average American.

...if you think about it, his perspective as growing up in Kenya with a Kenyan father and grandfather, their view of the Mau Mau Revolution in Kenya is very different than ours because he probably grew up hearing that the British were a bunch of imperialists who persecuted his grandfather.

Now, if you're paying attention, he didn't just say "having grown up in Kenya," he repeated the claim, and then specifically referenced the Mau Mau revolution. Which happened, not in Indonesia, but Kenya, in 1952.

If he had meant to say "Indonesia," why would he talk about Kenyan history?

Mostly because he wanted to talk about Obama's view of the British. If he'd said "Indonesia," he might have had to talk about Obama's view of the Dutch, who the Indonesians overthrew in 1949. (Really? The Dutch? Wooden shoes and tulips? Who wouldn't want to overthrow them? That would be almost as bad as being ruled over by the fucking Belgians...)

Golly, Obama returned the bust of Churchill! Which, you know, wasn't ours to begin with - it was on loan from the British government. But let's not let some pesky facts get in the way of a good narrative, right?

(And you know, really, who gives a crap that Obama lived in Indonesia? For four years - ages six through ten. God knows all my behavior patterns were set in stone by the time I was ten...)

As Capt Fogg already pointed out, Huckabee just wanted to paint Obama as "alien." Foreign. "Different from you and me."

Dark-skinned. Evil.

Huck went on O'Reilly, too. Which made Lawrence O'Donnell a little cranky.

In the interview, O'Reilly and Huckabee agreed that Obama grew up very differently from most people. Huckabee said that, unlike regular Americans, Obama did not grow up "going to Boy Scout meetings and playing Little League baseball in a small town." O'Reilly concurred, saying that Obama is "not a traditional guy," and that he's had a "different experience" from the "mom and apple pie" upbringing of most Americans.

This drew O'Donnell's ire. "Welcome to America, where most of us didn't grow up going to Boy Scout meetings," he said. "In fact, the vast majority of American men never had anything to do with the Boy Scouts."

O'Donnell then played a clip of Huckabee on a radio show, saying, "our communities were filled with Rotary clubs, not madrassas." That comment caused him to say that Huckabee was not telling the truth:

"If Huckabee and O'Reilly can stop lying about Barack Obama long enough to actually do some research...what they will soon discover to their utter astonishment, is that Barack Obama grew up in Hawaii, where there are Rotary clubs everywhere, but where I, for one, have never seen a madrassa,"

Other people have pointed out a few other problems with this view of Obama, too.

But in their attempts to portray Obama as devoid of traditionally American experiences, Huckabee and O'Reilly are pretending as if everyone else is growing up in fifties suburbia. In reality, we have a diverse country, and American upbringings are similarly varied. It's no less American to play basketball instead of baseball, or to spend your time at the beach instead of the Boy Scouts. As for O'Reilly's "mom-and-apple-pie upbringing," we're pretty sure Obama had a mom.

If the absence of Little League or Scout meetings is really so disconcerting to Huckabee, we wonder what he would say about Ronald Reagan, who also never participated in either of those things ("I never cared for baseball ... because I was ball-shy at batting," he once said). In fact, out of all our presidents, only George W. Bush is a former Little Leaguer, and only John F. Kennedy, Gerald Ford, Bill Clinton, and Bush were in the Boy Scouts. All of our other presidents, we guess, had an exotic, un-American upbringing, and a skewed worldview.

Of course, this is Huckleberry, who wants to establish a theocracy in America... (OK, maybe that's not fair. He just wants to amend the Constitution "to be in line with the Bible.")

He probably shouldn't have brought up scouting, either. After all, his son David was kicked out of the Boy Scouts for torturing and killing a dog. (Yup, that's the same son who was arrested a few years ago trying to smuggle a gun onto a plane.)

I'd say there's something wrong with how that boy was raised, for sure.

Oh, yeah. And by the way. Obama "probably grew up hearing that the British were a bunch of imperialists who persecuted his grandfather"? You know what other country had to throw off the yoke of British imperialism?

The United States.

Joey the Rat was late

Just for giggles, because I've found a similarly twisted soul at work, I established "Blasphemy Wednesday" last week, as an opportunity to tell jokes that... well, that my boss probably wouldn't appreciate.

So, today, on Thursday, I find out that "irony" has been, once again, defined. This time, the pope has written a book where, it turns out, he's determined that the Jews aren't responsible for the death of Jesus.

Now, to begin with, the former Hitler Youth declared that Jews are innocent after all? And I learn this on a Thursday? Where the hell was this info on Wednesday when I needed it?

Past this, let me just point out the words of Max Canning over on Inebriated Discourse. Having pointed out that, in order for Christianity to exist, Jesus pretty much had to die, he throws in a little logic (always a mistake with religion, but still...):

Given the terms of this odious quid pro quo, the Jews—far from being villains in this sordid story—were crucially necessary players in god’s Divine Plan of human sacrifice and vicarious salvation. Without the Jewish elders’ entreaties to Pilate to persecute Jesus of Nazareth, the crucifixion does not happen, the sacrifice does not happen, and the salvation does not happen. Without this atrocious occurrence, there is no everlasting life, only darkness. The Jews are therefore heroes, deemed by god as such, who carried out this dastardly deed as foreordained by god himself. They were merely acting as the instruments of god, who knew damn well what was going to happen when he impregnated Mary, while poor Joseph was left to wonder whether his wife had been sleeping around on him.

If they can't hunt, put them on ice floes, right?

You know, it’s a funny thing. Every so often as I wander around the more religious blogs, I trip over the hair-rippingly stupid idea that atheists and agnostics have no moral center, and that morality is rooted in religion alone. You can occasionally run headlong into the matching idea that only conservatives are moral and upright, and liberals are twisted, evil libertines.

That being said, let me point out that the religious, conservative David Brooks just wrote a column for the New York Times in which he explained that, because money is tight, we should just let old people die and save our money for the young.

In case you think I’m taking him out of context, let me just hand you a towel as I reveal the money shot in the second paragraph.

Trim from the old to invest in the young. We should adjust pension promises and reduce the amount of money spent on health care during the last months of life so we can preserve programs for those who are growing and learning the most.

His mother must be so proud.