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.

Open mouth, disengage brain

Definition of irony: Tim Pawlenty, the third most boring, elitist multi-millionaire politician in the world, trying to gain Tea Party cred. But all he could manage was to alternately lie and contradict himself (admittedly, this is potentially the alchemical formula for Tea Party fame, so maybe he's on to something).

First, he claimed that Obama supported (or, more accurately, “coddled”) the unions, when that is a fight that Obama has been specifically staying out of, as both sides have pointed out.

Now, recall that the unions are fighting to keep their right to have a voice in contract negotiations, against a governor who wants to strip away those rights and keep them silent. So what does Pawlenty follow up with?

“We don’t share President Obama’s worldview. We don’t want a bigger government shoving mandates down our throats. He’s got it completely backwards. They the bureaucrats don’t tell us what to do, we the people tell them what to do.”

OK, Tim, pay attention: teachers, firefighters, cops – they are "the people." They may not be the people who come to your Eagan, Minn. mansion for tea, but they are "the people." Who are fighting against overreaching government.

How is this not clear?

The Next Ten Days

So, I'm at work clearing out my email the other day, and I find a piece of spam; somebody else's copy of it is here, if anybody cares. Although theirs was apparently addressed directly to them, and mine started out "Dear Pro-Life Friend" (which is two - two - two lies in one).

Now, I have no idea how they got my work email address - I'm fastidious about not using it for anything but business. They've got rules about that sort of thing. Nonetheless, it turns up on somebody's mailing list every so often. And since they'd gone to the trouble of tracking me down, it seemed only right that I should respond to it.
________________


Dear Ms Musgrave,

I realize that you probably didn’t actually write the fundraising letter I received, but it has a facsimile of your signature on it, so you get the blame.

I also realize that you seem to refer to yourself as “Congresswoman.” Well, I’m sorry, but you aren’t one anymore. And as far as I’m concerned, six years representing Colorado (where I’ve never lived) doesn’t entitle you to a lifetime honorific. I realize that it’s a sign of respect to refer to former Congressfolk by their title, but respect, really, has to be earned (and let’s not go there).

Plus, this is America: we threw off the yoke of our aristocracy a couple of hundred years ago. So, for any number of reasons, I think you should probably drop the title.

I also apologize for my delay in responding, but I’m not clear how you got my work email address, but, since I do, in fact, have a job, I have to access this from home, in my own time, to respond. Rules, y’know.

Now, let’s start with the fact that you’re being a spokesmodel for the Susan B. Anthony List, which has misappropriated the name of a staunch feminist and claimed that she was pro-life. Since there are no writings or speeches that can be reliably attributed to her regarding abortion, it’s a bit of an unfounded leap to decide Ms Anthony’s politics for her, isn’t it?

(Of course, I guess that “unfounded leaps” are a specialty of yours. For example, your support for “abstinence only” education, as if AO actually works: you should ask Bristol Palin how it worked out for her. Or your apparent belief that a woman without a functioning brain, like Terri Schiavo, still qualifies as “alive” in any functional sense of the word.)

Now, I understand that you can’t seem to stop your knees from jerking wildly whenever anyone mentions abortion, but your effort to defund Planned Parenthood seems a little bit excessive.

After all, over 90 percent of Planned Parenthood’s services go to preventative healthcare for low-income women, like STD treatment, Pap tests, breast and cervical cancer screenings, and other healthcare that they wouldn’t be getting otherwise.

The most telling argument would have to be that, without the birth control that they offer low-income women, these women would be more likely to get pregnant, which would lead to more abortions. So, by trying to defund Planned Parenthood, you are probably causing more abortions than you’d be preventing.

On the other hand, you’ve never been a big advocate for birth control, have you? Aside from being openly opposed to allowing "Plan B" emergency contraceptive to be available when needed, you actually had the gall to insert an amendment into the "Runaway, Homeless, and Missing Children Protection Act" making it a crime to allow runaways access to contraception - after all, it's right there in the Bible. "Honor thy father and mother." So if they're rude enough to run away from home, they deserve to get pregnant, don't they?

Ms Musgrave, you're a short-sighted, partisan fool who doesn't bother to consider the repercussions of her actions. Isn't it time to leave the public eye, and maybe go hide in a cave and wait for the Rapture?

_________________


Editor’s note: By the way, we all need to stand up for Planned Parenthood.

On, Wisconsin!

So, I'm clicking through Time Magazine yesterday, and I come across this column by Joe Klein, regarding the Wisconsin trade union debate. Now, I don't always disagree with Klein, but this column was just a revelation to me.

Revolutions everywhere--in the middle east, in the middle west. But there is a difference: in the middle east, the protesters are marching for democracy; in the middle west, they're protesting against it.

Actually, it sounds to me like the public employees in Wisconsin are demonstrating so that they can keep getting their voices heard, and so the government doesn't gain more control over their lives. Really, it sounds kind of like "democracy" to me.

But maybe I'm misreading the situation up there. Go on, Joe.

I mean, Isn't it, well, a bit ironic that the protesters in Madison, blocking the state senate chamber, are chanting "Freedom, Democracy, Union" while trying to prevent a vote? Isn't it ironic that the Democratic Senators have fled the democratic process?

Isn't it interesting That the Senate Republicans want to force through a bill to strip away decades of rights, and only allow it three days of debate? Why is it that they're in such a hurry again?

An election was held in Wisconsin last November. The Republicans won. In a democracy, there are consequences to elections and no one, not even the public employees unions, are exempt from that.

Absolutely right! There was an election! And because of that, you people have to lose your civil rights! That's just logic!

(You know, it's funny. I've been hearing that quote from the Right a lot lately. "Elections have consequences." It's funny, though. You'd think that if they really believed it, they'd have been saying it after the 2008 elections, wouldn't you? But I digress.)

There are no guarantees that labor contracts, including contracts governing the most basic rights of unions, can't be renegotiated, or terminated for that matter.

Uhh... Joe? Isn't that the point here? The unions want to be able to renegotiate as needed. The governor wants to take that right away from them.

Oh, yeah. And by the way, "contracts can be terminated"? (I reworded that a little; the double negative bothered me.) Yes, they can. But, being a contract, the courts get to step in, and if it turns out that one side is not "acting in good faith," they get to face penalties for being a lying bag of douche.

That's the point of a contract, isn't it?

And it seems to me that Governor Scott Walker's basic requests are modest ones--asking public employees to contribute more to their pension and health care plans, though still far less than most private sector employees do.

Well, yeah. When you factor in all the private sector employees who don't even have heath insurance, sure. (That's about 46 million people nationwide, incidentally.)

But here's the point you're missing, Joey. "Governor Scott Walker's basic requests" - what he's asking for now. Because he's also taking away any ability to argue later, when he gets completely unreasonable.

And he will. See, Scott Walker has always been against unions. He longs for the days when the worker had no rights, and the employer could pay slave wages and fire for no reason. It's been a dream of his for years.

But again, I digress.

When I covered local government in New York 30 years ago, the school janitors (then paid a robust $60,000 plus per year)...

OK, hang on here for just a minute.

You're saying that thirty years ago, a janitor was paid almost twice what he is now? Because the current median salary for a janitor in New York is $33,483. And in 30 years, without adjusting for inflation, janitors are earning 44% less than they did in the 80's?

Man, that union sucks!

(Quick math check - 60,000 - 33,483 = 26,517 / 60,000 = 44.195% - does that sound right to everybody?)

I'll skip a little here, while Klein spends about a paragraph whining about how mean unions are. I mean, I could point out the backbreaking demands of the industrial Barons of the 1800s, leading to the formation of labor unions, which were opposed by those privileged elite millionaires who hired thugs to yadda yadda yadda...

Nobody cares. Rich people want to stay rich, and don't care who they have to destroy to do that. If you don't know this history, you're probably too stupid to care.

But that does bring us to this:

Industrial unions are organized against the might and greed of ownership. Public employees unions are organized against the might and greed...of the public?

Uh... no, Joey, that would be the government. You know, like millionaire governor Scott Walker and his billionaire backers. How is that hard to understand?

But then Joey just gets stupid.

Despite their questionable provenance, public unions can serve an important social justice role, guaranteeing that a great many underpaid workers--school bus drivers, janitors (outside of New York City), home health care workers--won't be too severely underpaid. That role will be kept intact in Wisconsin. In any given negotiation, I'm rooting for the union to win the highest base rates of pay possible...and for management to win the least restrictive work rules and guidelines governing how much truly creative public employees can be paid.

Oh, god. I swear we've covered this. Read back up to the top. I'll wait.

OK, now, since Walker wants to remove any ability of the unions to bargain for anything except base salaries... what the hell are you saying here? That they'll win on topics that they can't even argue about anymore?

You're an idiot, Klein. In fact, let's go further than that.

The basic theme here is that public employees are overpaid. According to a study by Jeffrey Keefe, professor of Labor and Employment Relations at Rutgers, public employees are compensated 3.75% less than similarly skilled and educated private-sector counterparts.

And, in fact, Scott Walker is trying to say that he has to do all this to "save" Wisconsin, to plug a big hole in the budget. But you know the funny part? Wisconsin was doing fine (in fact, they had a budget surplus) until Scott Walker became governor, and created a crisis by giving the state's money away to his cronies.

So, basically, Walker is a lying, thieving bag of fuck, with all the integrity of a rabid weasel.

And here you are, Joey, supporting him. What does that make you?

OK, so I don't know what to say about this

I work in a medium-sized office building. Every office in it is related to healthcare in one way or another. As with most buildings, we have communal bathrooms.

I walked into the men's room today, opened a stall door, and stopped. Then I turned around, borrowed a coworker's cell phone (because mine doesn't have a camera), and went back to the same stall. (If you're curious, no, this isn't normal behavior on my part. But that's none of your business anyway, is it?)



Yes, that's a toilet. (I'll bet you worked that part out for yourself.)

And there, to the left of the toilet, are some newspapers. Not uncommon. Kind of a slob - hey, somebody's got to clean those up. (Plus, all he left was the ads. No comics, no sports section, nothing. Selfish bastard.)

And there, in the upper right of the picture? That's a plate of fries.

Like I said. I just don't know what to say.

Egypt - a brief look back

You know, with as short an attention span as the average American has, you'd think that the recent uprising in Egypt would have disappeared from the radar. After all, the first major protests against Mubarak started on January 25, and his government was overthrown in two and a half weeks.

And now, here we are, with a military council in power, saying that they'll ensure an orderly transition to an elected government. It's over, and American Idol is on. Why are people still paying attention?

Maybe it's the cognitive dissonance. We like democracy, but only on our terms.

Muhammed Hosni Sayyid Mubarak is not a nice man. He ruled Egypt for thirty years, primarily because the Egyptian constitution set him to be "elected" by a referendum of the Assembly, and nobody could run against him. When he grudgingly allowed a "democratic election" in 2005, he "won" by 89% of the vote, in an election so openly rigged that the Egyptians rioted in the streets. Mubarak's response? He had his chief political rival, Ayman Nour, convicted to five years hard labor.

(What Nour was claiming was, of course, totally unfair: of course you buy votes in poorer neighborhoods - that's just basic economics; and if security forces prevented people from voting for opposition candidates, sometimes with simple beatings, sometimes with tear gas, rubber bullets, and even live bullets - well, that's just high spirits on the part of patriots, right?)

Mubarak's government openly persecuted political opponents, and was a willing participant in Bush's policy of extraordinary rendition* (often orchestrated directly by his vice president, Omar Suleiman, who might have ended up in charge of Egypt had the the Egyptian people not opposed the "orderly transition" supported by the US and European governments).

Mubarak's police and security forces were blatant in their abuses:

In one video, a woman is forced to strip and is abused by a police officer and in another Egyptian mini-bus driver, Emad el-Kabir... is shown screaming on the floor as officers sodomize him with a wooden pole. The police then sent the video to el-Kabir’s friends to humiliate him. These videos remove the abstract quality of the debate over U.S. torture policies, both in terms of waterboarding and extraordinary renditions.

Both of the videos were put on Youtube and have been seen around the world. What is most striking about the el-Kabir video is that the police were so unconcerned about disclosure of torture that they sent it to the victim’s friends. It was only due to Youtube and public outcry that the officers were given relatively short prison sentences.

The Mubarak family amassed billions in crooked deals during his time with the government (both as a politician and earlier, as a high-ranking army officer).

The notably corrupt* Egyptian government bears some striking parallels to Iraq under Saddam Hussein: an almost cartoonish dictator (who was grooming one of this two sons for succession), security forces kidnapping people off the streets for rape and torture, corruption throughout all levels of government. But the American right wing cheered when Saddam was brought down. Why are they sobbing and clutching their pearls now that Mubarak has been ousted?

Is it because we weren't involved with the overthrow of this government?

Well, let's consider some of the people we did help put into power: the Shah of Iran; the Somoza family of Nicaragua; "Papa Doc" Duvalier of Haiti; General Suharto of Indonesia. (This ignores all the dictators America has helped keep in power.)

Maybe allowing other countries to decide their own fate is the best policy.

____________

* Note: Microsoft Word documents

Of course he can - he's rich!

(Since this is the first Sunday in February, I should probably have some kind of Superbowl post. Of course, if I watched football, that would be a lot easier to do; but at least I can write about something football-related, so maybe this qualifies as Superbowl-adjacent.)

You know, it's funny. A lot of people complain about the independent weeklies, those free papers that pay for themselves using advertising - I've been told that they're nothing more than a "free rag you pull out of a box on a street corner... that is, if you can find it among the brochures for escort services."

(Honest. We'll get to the football in a second. Relax!)

Personally, I've got nothing against these smaller independents. I've found that their style tends to be more readable than a lot of the "mainstream media," with a distinctly local flavor, and their reporters have been known to beat the more conventional news sources to a story. (For example, the place where I pulled that last quote is a fine example.)

Plus, they're free. My favorite price.

Although I lived near Washington, DC many years ago, I never saw the Washington City Paper. Dan Snyder, on the other hand, the owner of the Washington Redskins, apparently did see this story by Dave McKenna in this particular paper, and seeing it apparently made him unhappy. So unhappy that he's suing them.

(See? Football. Happy now?)

Now, Danny had some time on his hands. He always does, this time of year; the Redskins haven't made it to the Superbowl since he bought them in 1999. (Huh... I wonder if that might have something to do with why DC residents hate the man...)

Anyway, first he sent a couple of boys around to threaten the owners of the paper ; you know, to point out "Hey, nice little place you got here. Be a shame if something happened to it, wouldn't it?"

Of course, by "boys," I mean Daniel P. Donovan, general counsel for the Washington Redskins. And by "threaten," I mean... well, no, that's exactly what I mean. To wit:

We presume that defending such litigation would not be a rational strategy for an investment fund such as yours. Indeed the cost of litigation would presumably quickly outstrip the asset value of the Washington City Paper.

The paper put the entire three page letter on line - you know, in the spirit of full disclosure. And reading it, you can see that it's a good thing that this Danny got a nice cushy job sweeping "drunk and disorderly" charges under his plush shag carpeting; I don't think he was at the top of his class. (If nothing else, failing "Constitutional Law" has to drag that grade point average down a bit, doesn't it?)

OK, Dan, let's go over it one more time.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

See that part I bolded there, Danny? Read it again.

So Atalaya Capital Management (the owners of the Washington City Paper) put their lawyer on it, who probably fired off his reply over lunch; it wasn't like he had to try hard. And again, the letter mysteriously made it on line ("No, really. I don't know how that keeps happening..."). It's a straightforward smackdown. (And only 3 pages long, too - you should check it out.)

We encourage you to consult with First Amendment counsel in regard to your claims and would be happy to discuss the matter with such counsel at any time. I expect that, with the advice of counsel and upon further consideration, you will agree that continued debate over the relevant law serves little productive purpose.

Or in other words, "yo, counselor! Suck on 'dis!"

But Danny and Danny didn't take the hint. And they filed suit.

Now, the majority of this 11-page filing can be boiled down into "Waah! He said mean things about me!" Much of the press, on the other hand, has gone toward one claim, itself almost libelous, that the cover art, of a defaced picture of Snyder, was "anti-Semitic."

Well, as the paper explained it:

For the record: The story didn't mention Snyder's religion at all. And the illustration is meant to resemble the type of scribbling that teenagers everywhere have been using to deface photos for years. The image of Snyder doesn't look like an "anti-Semitic caricature"—it looks like a devil.

But we at City Paper take accusations of anti-Semitism seriously—in part because many of us are Jewish, including staffers who edited the story and designed the cover.

(If anyone was really interested, I could explain why the traditional representation of the Devil was intended to look Jewish, but let's move on.)

But, since libel requires specific allegations, Danny's "lawyers" (let's assume they were lawyers, although the evidence is a little shaky at this point) dug up four. Of course, the internet is a wonderful place to do research on stuff like this, and the Paper's lawyers have found all their work done for them. To wit:

a. that "Dan Snyder... got caught forging names as a telemarketer with Snyder Communications"

Well, let's check this AP story from Friday, April 27, 2001, entitled Verizon fined $3.1 million for telephone slamming:

Verizon and its former marketing agency, at the time owned by Washington Redskins owner Daniel Snyder, were fined $3.1 million for illegally switching Florida customers' long distance telephone service without authorization.

The state Attorney General's Office said representatives of Bethesda, Md.-based Snyder Communications forged thousands of customer signatures to switch them to service provided by GTE, which is now Verizon.

Investigators also found GTE employees forged signatures and "used deceptive tactics" to get customers to switch service.

OK, that's one. What's next?

b. that Mr. Snyder caused Agent Orange to be used to destroy trees "protected by the National Park Service" on "federally protected lands," a matter about which previously published reports have been publicly corrected

Wow. See, that would be cool, if it bore any relation to what the story actually said. Which was:

That’s the Dan Snyder who... made a great view of the Potomac River for himself by going all Agent Orange on federally protected lands

I mean, you understand the word "metaphor," right? It's not that anybody used Agent Orange, it's that somebody cut down a bunch of trees. You know, like in this this 2006 Washington Post story:

A high-ranking National Park Service official improperly helped Washington Redskins owner Daniel M. Snyder broker a deal to cut down more than 130 trees on a hillside between his Potomac estate and the C&O Canal, according to a report by the Interior Department inspector general's office.

OK, that's two.

c. that Mr. Snyder bragged that his wealth came from diabetes and cancer victims

Oooh... harsh. Of course, the writer was referring to his own story, where he was reporting on this video from 2000.

Snyder replies that at Snyder Communications, they had "weekly meetings" to come up with a list of what groups to market goods and services to.

"We'd make jokes, each niche would be a $5 million niche, and we'd go after each one," Snyder says.

Greenfield asks for examples of his targeting decisions.

"We were looking at trend lines," Snyder says. "We saw that the aging baby boomer demographics were coming on strong. That meant there's going to be a lot more diabetic patients, a lot more cancer patients, etc. How do we capture those market segments?"

The first 20 times or so that I saw the clip, I had pretty much the same reaction: "Uhhhh....Did Dan Snyder just brag to a crowd of college kids that he looks at folks on the business end of diabetes and cancer as a target market? As members of '$5 million niche?'"

And then I'd rewind the clip. And, dang if Snyder wouldn't say it all over again!

So let me type it again: "That meant there's going to be a lot more diabetic patients, a lot more cancer patients, etc." Snyder says. "How do we capture those market segments?"

Repeat after me: Yucky! I mean, sure, big business is a cold realm. But it takes a special kind of guy to boast about exploiting the downtrodden in front of a roomful of young strangers and TV cameras.

Aa-a-a-and next!

d. that Snyder was "tossed off" the Six Flags' board of directors

Ouch. That one had to hurt. I mean, Danny even has a witness that the whole departure was amicable and both sides were happy. So where does the truth lie?

How about in the actual filing from Six Flags at the time?

In addition, Mr. Shapiro shall serve as an initial director and shall be entitled to appoint the remaining director; provided , however , that such remaining director shall not be Daniel M. Snyder without the consent of the Majority Backstop Purchasers.

Yeah, that's exactly what they'd say during an amicable breakup, huh?

Really, what all this proves is that, by all appearances, Danny Snyder would seem to be a world-class douche, and hates it when people point this out.

Of course, this is only my opinion. I could be wrong. I freely admit that, and would submit this final paragraph as evidence of my fair-minded treatment of this situation into any court filing.

Saw this coming...

Well, our noble GOP congresscritters are certainly showing their idiot colors since they reconvened this month.

See, in their continuing efforts to do anything except get jobs for American workers, Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) introduced a bill, which currently has 174 cosponsors, called the "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act" which Rep Boehner (R-Sunkist) has called "one of our highest legislative priorities."

Because, you know, fuck the two to five million people who haven't had a job in over two years and no longer qualify for government relief (oh, and by the way, these are people who employers won't even look at any more). Those bastards'll be dead soon enough. And even if they survive, they aren't gonna vote, right?

So this New Jersey nimrod threw his antiabortion bill together without paying attention to a couple of little details. Fortunately, Nick Baumann from Mother Jones Magazine took the time to poke it with a stick, and discovered that it's kind of an abortion all on its own.

Republicans propose that the rape exemption be limited to "forcible rape." This would rule out federal assistance for abortions in many rape cases, including instances of statutory rape, many of which are non-forcible. For example: If a 13-year-old girl is impregnated by a 24-year-old adult, she would no longer qualify to have Medicaid pay for an abortion. (Smith's spokesman did not respond to a call and an email requesting comment.)

Given that the bill also would forbid the use of tax benefits to pay for abortions, that 13-year-old's parents wouldn't be allowed to use money from a tax-exempt health savings account (HSA) to pay for the procedure. They also wouldn't be able to deduct the cost of the abortion or the cost of any insurance that paid for it as a medical expense.

...Since 1976, federal law has prohibited the use of taxpayer dollars to pay for abortions except in the cases of rape, incest, and when the pregnancy endangers the life of the woman. But since last year, the anti-abortion side has become far more aggressive in challenging this compromise. They have been pushing to outlaw tax deductions for insurance plans that cover abortion, even if the abortion coverage is never used.

(...)

Other types of rapes that would no longer be covered by the exemption include rapes in which the woman was drugged or given excessive amounts of alcohol, rapes of women with limited mental capacity, and many date rapes... As for the incest exception, the bill would only allow federally funded abortions if the woman is under 18.

Yeah, well, even a compromise like that might get killed at the local level. The Arkansas Senate passed a bill to prohibit federal funding for abortions offered through an insurance exchange except where the life of the mother is at risk.

The bill's sponsor, Republican Senator Cecile Bledsoe, ignored calls to amend the bill to cover rape and incest.

Sweet Jesus Christ on a telephone poll, it's now officially time for all satirists to hang it up. Reality has just made it redundant to say things like "Well, in Arkansas, if you outlaw incest and rape, the state just disappears."

I don't know where to go after that. Except to ask if anybody's bothered to trace the family trees of Cecile and her "husband" James, just to see if it takes two generations before they intertwine, or three.

But hey, let's ignore every other problem in the country, and get back to making abortion illegal again! (Ignore that woman behind the curtain with the coat hanger!)

I'm just curious, though. Could somebody please check this list of co-sponsors, and see just how many ran on "the gub'mint is stickin' their nose inta' our lives too dang much!" It might be interesting to see them try to reconcile those two positions.

More Right Wing Idiocy

You know, there’s a lot of idiots out there, so I don’t like to concentrate on any one of them, to the exclusion of the other idiots who are still walking around in public, instead of being institutionalized and fed huge handfuls of antipsychotics.

Like Rush Limbaugh, for example. If I mention the Pilonidal Cyst That Walks Like A Man in one post, I like to stay away from him for a while. Which is usually a good policy, but becomes a little difficult to follow through on when he opens his slavering gob and spews out statements like this.

Liberals should have their speech controlled and not be allowed to buy guns. I mean if we want to get serious about this, if we want to face this head on, we're gonna have to openly admit liberals should not be allowed to buy guns, nor should they be allowed to use computer keyboards or typewriters, word processors or e-mails, and they should have their speech controlled.

If we did those three or four things, I can't tell you what a sane, calm, civil, fun-loving society we would have. Take guns out of the possession, out of the hands of liberals. Take their typewriters and their keyboards away from 'em. Don't let 'em anywhere near a gun and control their speech, and you would wipe out 90 percent of the crime, 85 to 95 percent of the hate and 100 percent of the lies from society.

This, coming from Rush Limbaugh, who, speaking about President Obama, said to a caller, "He's taking away freedom, incrementally each and every day, making another big grab at it. That's not hypocrisy. That's tyranny.”

But I suppose you have to be generous and remember that his audience is made up of socially-inept mouthbreathers who spell the word “hippockrassy,” So let’s look to vent our spleen elsewhere.

Pennsylvania, for example.

Former Senator Rick Santorum has been out of office for about four years now, and the lack of a public spotlight is starting to wear on him. After all, he’s kind of a pretty boy, and really, really wants to be the center of attention. So he’s putting out feelers to see if maybe he can run for President in 2012 (and if not as a Republican, maybe he can run as the candidate for the Invasive Theocracy Party).

Ricky is an awesome figure in American politics. I love this guy. I mean, I'm not sure what combination of medications he used in order to appear sane, at least long enough to get elected; but since then, he's built up a body of work that basically makes him a leper in Pennsylvania politics. At least, to anybody but a devout Catholic.

Santorum is a man who believes that consensual sexual relations between two adult men is exactly the same as a man having sex with a dog.

(And you know, he never even addresses the question of whether the dog is a top or not. But I digress.)

The controversy surrounding his blatant homophobia was so public, so acrimonious and so lung-searingly rancid that it prompted gay advice columnist Dan Savage to run a contest defining the word "santorum" (small ess, of course, and therefore protected by satire laws). And the final determination?

"That frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the by-product of anal sex."

This definition is now spread so widely across the internet that Santorum can't escape it. Nevertheless, he plans to try.

But in the course of his journey to an ignominious defeat, he's providing still more fascinating soundbites.



Yup, that's right. In the course of trying to make an argument against abortion, he actually says:

The question is -- and this is what Barack Obama didn't want to answer -- is that human life a person under the Constitution? And Barack Obama says no. Well if that person -- human life is not a person, then -- I find it almost remarkable for a black man to say, 'we're going to decide who are people and who are not people.'

Yup. Damn those uppity negroes. Why can't they see that it's the white folks who should make those decisions? We have their best interests in mind, after all.

Yes, I understand that what he's trying to say is that blacks, more than whites, should be opposed to abortion. Which is an equally stupid position. And since I get to choose between two equally stupid positions, I'm going with the one that I can have more fun with.

So I'll tell you what, Right Wing. You stop taking quotes from our guys out of context, and I'll do the same for you.

The Dumbing Down of the Right

Rush Limbaugh, never one to shrink from looking like a complete douche and already angry because he had to cancel his annual trip to the Dominican Republic to avoid their cholera epidemic, vomited up another spittle-flecked rant against all that is good and decent. Or, to be more accurate, showed his hatred of anyone with an IQ higher than 40.

Shortly after Obama’s speech at the memorial for the victims of the Tucson shooting, the Fox “News” show Special Report had a panel of bloviators (Brit Hume, Charles Krauthammer and Chris Wallace) who had the unmitigated gall to suggest that Obama had given a good speech. Limbaugh, practically choking on the bile rising up in his corpulent throat, spewed the following fascinating statement.

”They were slobbering over it for the predictable reasons. It was smart, it was articulate, it was oratorical. It was, it was all the things the educated, ruling class wants their members to be and sound like.”

Now, Krauthammer, who looks a bit like a cartoon child molester, didn't really appreciate that statement. But he actually managed to make sense in his response for once.

"As one of the three slobberers...I find it interesting that only the ruling class wants a president who is smart articulate and oratorical in delivering a funeral oration. It's an odd and rather condescending view of what the rest of America is looking for in their president.”

Unfortunately, there’s a portion of the American people who feel exactly that way. It’s a strain of anti-intellectualism that’s all too common in the right wing.

Joe (the "Plumber") Wurzelbacher, known liar and serial wife beater, got his fifteen minutes of fame based on a complete lack of understanding of government, taxes, or pretty much anything else. Sarah Palin, an articulate but sadly undereducated woman, seems to appeal to the great unwashed because she's "one of them" (despite having all her teeth and a seven figure income).



Ignorant of history, opposed to science, they hate anyone who seems to be "better than us." Which, for the most part, is anybody who can read at better than an eighth-grade level.

You know, I wasn’t particularly impressed by ABC’s recent revamping of “V”, but I used to watch the original show avidly when I was a teen. Still, there was one plot device that I never liked (I thought it was a little weak): one of the tactics employed by the aliens in their quest to enslave humanity was to demonize scientists and educated people as "enemies of the people."

But looking at America today, I’m suddenly seeing it in a whole new light.

I'm THIS many years old...

The other day, I went looking for something I'd written sometime back, and in thumbing through the archives, realized that today was the fifth anniversary of this blog.

I was, at the time, a frequent commenter on a blog called Hoffmania (Hoffman, a few years back, became disgusted with the country during the Bush years, and converted his blog to an internet radio station and a news aggregator, or in this case, Bloggregator).

There, I was "Mr. Bill" (originally "Sgt Bill," but then I retired); prior to that, under my current moniker, I was a contributor on a community-driven website called Plastic.com, which has recently declared its intention to close its doors too.

In fact, I first started using Nameless Cynic on a couple of old, long-gone BBS' (because I'm occasionally reminded how old I am). So, as it turns out, I am become Nameless Shiva, destroyer of websites. I stride through the internets, leaving only destruction in my wake.

Anyway, in my first post here, I bitched about the right wing making false equivalences, which was a thing I used to do years ago, when I was still young and angry.

And while one of the two specific examples I chose, Michelle Malkin, is, if anything, an even bigger bile-spewing harpy, it turns out that the other object of my derision is still limping along on his private Road to Perdition.

His latest posts include a story of a woman masturbating on a train, which he pulled from the German web-equivalent of the New York Post. He declares that this behavior is "THE DIRECT RESULT OF THE GODLESSNESS POSTMODERNISM (sic)" (yes, he now types everything in all caps), and it's apparently the end of civilization as we know it.

Of course, while she is a Harbinger of Doom, the Tucson gunman Loughner, two posts later, is just a random loon. No irony there.

Recycled talking points, all caps, jacked-up code in the header; it's just not pretty. I'd pick on him, but, you know, fish. Barrels. Bad.

So anyway, happy anniversary, y'all.

Just keep saying it. "Words have consequences"

Good freaking god, right wing! What the hell is the matter with you? Can't a guy take a break? I mean, don't you know that Fallout: New Vegas is out there? And it's not going to play itself! Can't you just chill the hell out for a while?'

But no. It's Glenn Beck, it's Sarah Palin, it's all the rest of you ignorant fucks. You go spewing your violent rhetoric when you don't think it means anything, and then try your damnedest to back away from it when your chickens come home to roost, don't you? Seems to me like the only person who would, you know, "retreat," instead of "reload"... well, hell, if you can't live up to the stupid philosophy you've been spouting for the last three or four years, then I guess you're kind of a pussy, aren't you?

I mean, come on!!

It's sad when you've got to let your congressbitches Durbin and Alexander make excuses for you because you're too scared to face the demon you raised.

And you know, it's even sadder when people have been pointing out that the crazies are coming out of the woodwork on this very issue, over this specific graphic, for almost a year, and you still can't figure out that maybe you're part of the problem.

OK, let's be real. Every time you meet up with some rightard screaming about how "liberals just want to blame this on Palin," there's a couple of things to remember.

If they say "well, lefties talk mean about Republicans, too," remind them that there's a big difference between "talk" and "shoot." (The saddest part, of course, is the right wing trying to justify Sarah Palin's rhetoric by digging deep into the farthest depths of the internet to find leftists making threats, too.)

On July 27, 2008, Jim Adkisson walked into a Unitarian church, killed two people and wounded two others, because he "wanted to kill... every Democrat in the Senate & House, the 100 people in Bernard Goldberg's book,” but knew he couldn't get to them.

On April 4, 2009, Richard Poplawski shot and killed three police officers, because he was scared of "the Obama gun ban that's on the way." He was an avid watcher of Glenn Beck.

There are literally dozens of examples of increasing, escalating rightwing violence over that last three years. It's time for these frothing media types to get a clue, that maybe their spittle-flecked rants are only making things worse.

As usual, Keith Olbermann said it best. And if you haven't seen this yet, you need to.


And, you know what? If you just have to get your violence on, you could try Fallout, where you get to kill people virtually for a while, instead of out here in meatspace. Give it a shot (so to speak). Nobody gets hurt, except for a couple of pixels. Try it.

Dear Right-Wingers: You Are All Muslims Now

You know, once again, the Rude Pundit hits it on the head. And then steals its wallet while it's unconscious.

Oh, dear, sweet conservative Americans, how you must have shit yourself on Saturday when you heard that someone had shot up an event with a Democratic member of Congress in, of all goddamned places, Arizona. And, worse, a Representative who had voted in favor of health care reform, which you have demonized as nothing short of a resurrection of the Nazi Party. It must have been awful for so many conservatives, thinking, praying, "Please, please, please, don’t let it be some Tea Party dick who says he did it because Glenn Beck told him to. Don’t let it be someone who wants to fuck Sarah Palin and thinks that if he starts taking out her congressional crosshaired targets, he’ll get into her pants."

How you must have heaved in relief when you saw that it would be quite easy to portray Jared Lee Loughner as a raving psychopath, an effort that’s helped a great deal by the apparent truth, which is that Jared Lee Loughner is a raving psychopath. Yeah, he's a psychopath whose mad rantings are heavily peppered with an insouciant flavor of Beck or Ron Paul or loony conspiracy theory nutsiness, but a psychopath just the same.

Now, ah, yes, now, lovely right-wingers, you could defend yourself. You could work yourselves into a huff about how unjustly you were accused of driving this obviously disturbed individual into an act of calculated, cold-blooded violence. But that's because you're sitting there in your shit-filled underpants, thinking, "I don't believe in violence. I don't approve this. I hope the government doesn't try to crack down on us."

So, welcome, assholes, because you are Muslim now.

How does it feel to stand in Muslim shoes today? Because, right now, yes, you are being treated like suspects. You are being treated like you are guilty of the crimes that are committed by the deranged in your number. Sure, you may think, you can spout all the blood-filled, gun-toting, war-flogging rhetoric you want against citizens of your own country. But those are just words, you know? You can’t, you know, be held accountable for the actions of a few. And, gosh, it’s just wrong to lump you all together, to stereotype you all as criminals in waiting. Like, you know, you have done with Muslims since September 11, 2001.

Here's the deal, though. The vast, vast, vast majority of Muslims decry not only acts of violence, but the rhetoric of it, too. The vast, vast, vast majority of right-wingers not only stay silent as conservatives shoot at targets with their opponents' names or initials on them, talk about revolution and violence, and accuse Democrats of getting ready to put Americans in forced health care camps. No, you embrace your extremist assholes and anoint them your idiot queen.

How will you live with yourselves in the future? Look, heated, vicious rhetoric is part of the political game. But, frankly, there’s a bit of difference between saying that you’re going to "target" an opponent and saying that there might have to be "Second Amendment solutions" to the nation’s problems. Let's not do the bullshit dance of false equivalence. While there was a period of time when the left was violent (which was met by officially-sanctioned violence by the government), in the last couple of decades, it hasn't been the left shooting shit up. It wasn't the left who let the assault weapons ban lapse. It wasn't the left that made access to guns as easy as a McDonald's drive-thru. It wasn't the left that cried "Fascism" to background checks for someone who wants to own a fucking machine gun. It wasn't the left that supported preemptive war and violence against individuals as solutions to our nation's problems. Time to welcome your chickens home, conservatives. Open your filthy arms.

So, yeah, yeah, cowering motherfuckers, Jared Lee Loughner was monkeyfuck insane. He wandered in the fringes of conspiracy theories and wallowed in the stinking pit of his own mad brain fluids. You can comfort yourselves and have a shaky drink to that.

But you know what, you ridiculous worms? At the end of the day, the Rude Pundit supports your right to say your stupid shit. And it's ironic that Giffords read the First Amendment during the House's big show last week of reading the Constitution. Free speech ain't a free pass. It never, ever comes without responsibility. You wanna spout crazy, violent shit? You wanna talk about end times and revolution, Glenn Beck? Then man up and know that some people will take you seriously, even if you are just a joke.

The Right's Doublethink

One unexpected side effect of the Internet was, not the unprecedented access to information available to the public, but the widespread propagation of openly ignorant, easily debunked bullshit. The easy availability of knowledge has been balanced by easy availability of conspiracy theories, lies, and unintentional errors. Add to that the unprecedented ability to cherry-pick preferred oversimplified answers to complex situations, and one thing becomes obvious.

Despite the potential inherent in what evolved from the ARPANET, it has become apparent to those of us who think about stuff that we've actually entered the Misinformation Age.

For example, today’s front page story on that flaming stack of ignorance and mendacity calling itself Conservapedia is a fascinating story called “Atheism and obesity,” where they determine that, apparently, if you don’t believe in God, He makes you fat (as you could probably tell from the title, but I thought I’d spell it out for you).

The crux of this theory (so to speak) is a Gallup poll, which reached the conclusion (repeated in the first line of the Conservapedia story):

Very religious Americans are more likely to practice healthy behaviors than those who are moderately religious or nonreligious.

Now, I could get all statistical and point out that a poll measures how people answer questions, not how they behave. And religious people are more prone to guilt, so wouldn’t they be more likely to lie when answering questions like “Do you do things you aren’t supposed to?”

But that would be the easy answer. (Plus, some actual atheists, as opposed to one nameless doubting agnostic, are cheerfully ripping this one apart.)

Instead, let me point out that, two weeks after the Gallup poll was released, we hear from New York that 1300 people are now in danger of contracting Hepatitis A, because they all took drinks from the same communion chalice. And remember, very religious Americans practice healthy behaviors. Like sucking down the backwash of other diseased Catholics.

Should I point out that they’re all at risk because they came in contact with the blood of Christ? Has He been shooting up with dirty needles again? Or should I just move on, since it's probably endangering your immortal soul to be taking religious advice from people with the balls to rewrite the "inalterable Word of God"?

Maybe the easiest answer is to show the following two maps? First, this.



See that? That shows how religious Christians claim to be, in various parts of the country. The greener, the Godlier, right? OK, then. Now check this out.



Now, that one shows the distribution of weight, per capita, in these United States. The more red, the more rotund.

See how the dark green and the dark red tend to match up? It’s kind of like Christmas, isn’t it? I guess you can’t spell faith without F - A - T.

Not a new thought to me, by the way. We already knew this; it's one of those pesky "fact" things that the GOP is so desperate to rewrite.

Wikileaks - Nothing new here

Even before I took my little Christmas vacation from blogging about politics, I avoided saying anything about Wikileaks. I thought it might be prudent to wait and see if any of the revelations might actually be as damaging as some people (even, for example, Bill Clinton) were claiming.

But since even the US government has admitted that nobody is going to die because of any of the information Wikileaks has released, I think it's reasonably safe to point out one fact that the international media has, for the most part, been glossing over.

There was a time when this was exactly what reporters did. From the Pentagon Papers to Watergate, reporters used to live for this kind of thing. (On the other hand, perhaps our boys and girls in the media are just jealous that they've been taking dictation from whichever politician wanted to spread their message, and not bothering even with basic fact checking on any of these overblown claims, for fear of losing their all-important "access" to the Halls of Power.

Most of what Wikileaks has thrown out into the public view has been the type of "secrets" that everybody already knew. Diplomats make fun of each other and insult heads of state? No shit. And to be honest, the fact that the Secretary of State ordered diplomats to gather information on other countries? What's new there? That's pretty much how it's been done since Ramses II made peace with the Hittites.

And most of us already knew the fact that the Obama administration has been preventing attempts to investigate the Bush administration for war crimes and the torture of prisoners.

So what else did Julian Assange tell us? The Pope didn't let the Vatican cooperate in investigations into rapist priests? Wow, there's a revelation - how many different ways can you say "no shit"?

Afghanistan is already a quagmire? That wasn't anything we haven't known for centuries - wasn't it Alexander the Great that first broke that piece of news?

China hacked Google? Yeah, knew that.

So, why is it that right-wing idiots keep claiming that Assange should be killed?



Because the US government has been embarrassed?

After documentary evidence of what people already knew has come to light, maybe some people deserve to be embarrassed.