Strike Three!

From Bartholomew's Notes On Religion, all I can say is - heh...

It made me laugh

Via WTF:

Your Argument Is Invalid

Evidently, the phrase "Your Argument Is Invalid" is gaining some traction on the Inter-Webs with the young and hip. Since I am neither (and have only ever been one), this would seem to let me out eligibility for use of the term, but I check the patron-saint website (yourargumentisinvalid.com) occasionally and when it makes me laugh -- I give credit.

This made me laugh:


I think I need therapy.

Stupid as she Looks

Remember Victoria Jackson from SNL about ten years ago? She's surfaced, and she as stupid as she seemed on camera (h/t C&L):

I don't want a political label, but Obama bears traits that resemble the anti- Christ and I'm scared to death that un- educated people will ignorantly vote him into office.

You see, what bothers me most, besides being a Communist, and a racist (Obama writes in his book, From Dreams of My Father, "I found a solace in nursing a pervasive sense of grievance and and animosity against my (white) mother's race.") (Obama's "religion" of the last 20 years is Black Liberation Theology. What is that? "It is simply Marxism dressed up in Christian rhetoric. But unlike traditional Marxism, Black Liberation Theology emphasizes race rather than class. It's leading theorist is James Cone who says Jesus was black, African-Americans are the chosen people, and whites are the devil. Cone says, "What we need is the destruction of whiteness, which is the source of human misery in the world." The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor), is that he is a LIAR. He pretends to be a Christian and he incriminates himself everytime he speaks about Christianity. To lie about being a believer in Christ is very dangerous. Lightning could strike him at any minute! But seriously, he doesn't have a clue what the Bible says and yet he pretends to be a church- going Christian to win votes. That is sooooo evil.

Saw something similar on the inter-webs...

... and I thought I'd put something together myself because I had a lot of free time this afternoon:

Can this be true?

Got it from fivethirtyeight.com and, considering how cock-eyed our electoral system is as a result of the Electoral College, it looks like a doozy.

Indiana? Toss-up?

Nevada? Blue?

Montana, North Dakota & Georgia, soft on McCain?

I hope this is true. It will depress my father beyond measure and will potentially cause my mother to lock herself in the basement (if they had basements in Texas) in quivering, FOX-induced fear of the rampaging brown hordes that will surely be roaming the streets with unchecked impunity in B. Hussein's America looking for soft, white female faces to carve letters into.

Well, I must get my marching orders from Hussein HQ, so I'm heading down there tomorrow. So much defiling to do, I need clarification where to start.

The Jokes Don't Always Write Themselves

Sometimes they need a little help

(h/t to Michael Demmons at Balloon Juice)

Humor by analogy

From The Great Orange Satan, via AMERICAblog:

Funny, he doesn't look like a type of cotton fabric

Via SadlyNo, from Central Florida's CBS News 13:

That One, part 2

John Sidney McCain is a racist. He is a rich, white, entitled, contemptuous racist who can't believe that he has to go through the motions of acting like Barack Obama is somehow his equal as a candidate, much less sharing a stage with a black man who is actually beating him in the polls.

As the Pig With Lipstick might put it: "Gollygeewillakers, what has the world come to?"

First, McSnarl said this last night at the debate:



Which gave us this less than 24 hours after he'd said it (goddamn I love me some inter-webs):



Which I think is awesome for incorporating in a mocking & humorous way the Freudian racist gaffe of a stupid, bumbling, short-tempered, muddle-headed old man who doesn't know or understand how the world around him has passed him by, only dimly comprehending (as a barnyard animal dimly comprehends a change in the weather) that for some reason the world is refusing to conform to his will and that as a result he isn't getting what he wants RIGHT NOW and GODDAMMIT HE WAS A P.O.W. (haven't you heard?) and that uppity n*gger is not showing proper respect for the white man!

Or, as the Rude Pundit put it after Grandpa McSimpson refused to make eye-contact with Obama during the last debate:

John McCain looked like nothing so much as a plantation owner just after the end of the Civil War forced to have a conversation with one of his freed slaves. There's no way he was gonna look that nigger in the eye and allow him to think they're equals. Used to be you could lynch a darkie for addressing a white man by his first name. Now, they think they can talk to you like they're humans.

Refusing eye-contact? How about refusing a handshake! (h/t Broadway Carl)



Grandpa McSimpson is a racist motherfucker.

Fuck him and vote for That One.

That One

I Love Political Cartoons

Found this one over at Bob Cesca's place, (created by Kevin Kobasic)

Schadenfreude

Watch this video (via Wonkette):



Then read this news story:
GOP delegate's hotel tryst goes bad when he wakes up with $120,000 missing


Say it with me now: Schadenfreude.

Wingers Ain't Funny (UPDATED)

So, the main reason these motherfuckers aren't funny is that their entire reason for being is to behave like the cackling Gremlins from the eponymous films of the early 80's. They seem to exist only to smash and destroy and belittle and otherwise gleefully wreck the whole notion of civility. It's much more fun, I suppose, to act like a poo-flinging monkey than a grown-up who understands that sometimes people will disagree, and that's OK. Their only real joy in life comes from acting like a bully against whoever they decide to gang up on. The usual target is a liberal, since in their pinched, dessicated world "liberal" is tantamount to "wimp", "pussy" or "weakling." Malicious offense is fun for the whole family.

Glenn McCoy's cartoon here is just simply not funny. At all. I ran across it at Slate.com's Cagle Cartoons, far from the first unfunny "conservative" cartoon I saw, just the final one that pissed me off enough to knock together a blog post. This POS cartoon perfectly illustrates the winger mindset crystallized by Atrios when he wrote this:

It's long been the case that what really gets the Republican base excited is anything that pisses off liberals. There are genuine policy differences, of course, but to get an audience of Republicans on their feet and cheering you need to mention something, no matter how pointless, which pisses of liberals. It's the glue that keeps them together.

'Nuff said.

UPDATE:
Last night, I threw together the above post in a wicked fuckin' hurry, so I wasn't able to be as thorough as I wanted to be in my analysis of the "humor" in the above cartoon. First, I want to include this cartoon from October 2003, penned by the much funnier, more incisive and defiantly liberal Tom Tomorrow (he has his own blog, too!), which our buddy Glenn McCoy shamelessly ripped-off:

Anybody see a difference?

I'll give you a hint, it has to do with the items misidentified as provocations. In the McCoy cartoon, his Wingnut Warrior Hero lists three things which are, in order: a regurgitation of discredited White House propaganda, a non-sequiter and a sleazy mischaracterization of a crucial progressive issue which has no bearing on a liberal's feelings about Sarah Palin and thus amounts to a red-herring. This comes, of course, from the manufactured outrage people, of late "lipstick on a pig" fame, so why should anyone be surprised?

On the other hand, look at the items on the Tom Tomorrow list of provocations. They seem quaint, looking back on them now. Everyone at the time made fun of us, said we were traitors and chicken-littles and alarmists and rancorous partisans. Yet, nothing in the second cartoon is anything except true, however dated. The reeling, shambling horror show this country has become at the hands of these incompetent, hate-filled criminals is as heart-breaking as it is unsurprising. The GOP is run by a bunch of thugs, goons and gangsters and the ranks are filled out by mental & emotional children who are either too stupid to understand the ontological ramifications of temporal reality (actions have consequences - life ain't a physics-free cartoon nor is it the ethically & morally malleable world of your average Hollywood action flick) or they are too corrupt to care.

Either way, fuck 'em, because I'm tired of being lectured by fatuous TV gasbags and haughty print news demi-gods about how I'm supposed to be tolerant of them and their views, even as they call me a traitor (and much, much worse) and imply that my candidate for president is a pedophile. Why am I and my fellow progressives, liberals & Democrats expected to take the high road every single time? Why is the onus on us to make nice and maintain civility while the other side gets to wreck and rob the place with impunity, spewing hate and flinging poo like a monkey? Why are we supposed to just sit there and take it? It is almost as though they know these people are over-grown children and, like children, we grown-ups are required to be patient and tolerant while they go through some adult version of the terrible twos, except sustained and culture-wide.

Well, we've been tolerant and patient all the way into the sewer. You ever had a friend over who brought his poorly disciplined kids? You sit around your own house trying to have a civil conversation while they run around the place screaming and throwing things and wiping their grimy hands on your furniture and generally behaving like something out of Lord of the Flies, or maybe some kind of feral primate, and the parents just grin and act like they are the cutest thing in the world.

In fact, here is the American political system as surmised in one scene from "Raising Arizona":

Patriotic Stuff

Our Declaration of Independence:

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident:

That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.

The Preamble to Our Constitution:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Or, if you like, let the Muppets keep you patriotic:

All of which, to me, adds up to "Fuck You, Dick Cheney, Dubya and Johm McSame - this is my country and you can't have it, anymore."

At any rate, Happy 4th. Safe travels, all of you, and if you're reading this blog - go away and enjoy the holiday!

Now bugger off!

Muppets for President 2008

Just watch:

Empire Strikes Barack

Someone has way too much free time. It is kinda clever, except the part where Michelle Obama stands in for Princess Leah.

Ewww.

Anyway, enjoy (via Balloon Juice):

Fact-Averse & Irony-Immune 2.0

"You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts."
– Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan

So it seems a blogger named Psycheout, a primary contributor to the blog I reference in my previous post - the awesomely delusional Blogs4Brownback (yeah, I'm mentioning you by name with a hyperlink so your Google Alert will go off, Psycheout) - took umbrage to some aspect of my previous post and called me an elitist snob.

And while it is exciting to have my readership expanded by almost 10% with the addition of Mr. Psycheout, the more exciting part is finally having a reader whose name I don't know and whose phone number I don't have. When you know all of your readers personally (my readership consists of my sister, my best friend from college, three co-workers - two of whom are also neighbors - and my wife) it isn't so much blogging as just being one step removed from broadcast emailing. So, I hope Mr. Psycheout can become a regular reader so that he may help me stay at least one pair of eyes above what I consider to be the minimum threshold of what can actually be called a "blog." The above characterization assumes he has has two eyes and not one. Or three. And that he's a, well, he.

But, to the matter at hand... I guess I'm guilty as charged. I am an elitist snob. We heliocentrists are well-known for thinking we're smarter than people who disagree with us. Something about facts and scientific proof and global fucking consensus for three millenia. Now, to be fair, he may have been just kidding. In fact, the whole web site could just be one huge joke on all of us tightly wound, humorless lub'ruhl types who just want to sternly scowl at anything fun. In fact, the whole website reads like sophomoric attempt at a Colbert-ish spoof of right-wing lunacy, incorporating everything from every tin-foil hat conspiracy theory about the Clintons ever to spew like diarrhea from the mind and mouth of every right-wing radio mini-Hitler (complete with insulting nicknames downloaded directly from Limbaugh's ass into their synapse-deficient brains) to the whole "Barack Obama is a madrassa-trained Muslim and nevermind his Christian minister Jeremiah Wright" to every single persecution-meets-inferiority-complex driven fruit-loop conspiracy theory about the non-white, non-Christian, non-hayseeds who appararently run the world (who are out to get all those hard-working white Christian males who don't live on the coasts) that has ever floated through the collective fever-dream imaginations of the whole of the right blogosphere. If they were good at mocking all of those things, it would be funny.

But it isn't funny. Not even a little bit. Devoid of humor, in toto. Irony-immune, as it were. Which makes me think I'm smarter than these doofuses, not because I disagree with their opinions (although I do) but because they have completely hare-brained, fact-free reasoning to guide them to those opinions. So, yeah, I'm a heliocentric elitist who looks down at these morons.

You getting all of this, Psycheout? That little gnawing suspicion of inferiority that ties your stomach in knots and keeps you awake at night and resentful of all you see around you...

...It's justified.

I can understand why you are... (how should I say it?) ...bitter. If you think we are making fun of you, having a hearty laugh at your expense, we are.

So yeah, I think I'm smarter. I think I'm smarter than someone who would, without the merest hint of irony, write this:

Condi Rice, probably the best Secretary of State ever, is seriously considering injecting new life into the McCain candidacy

And I'm definitely more perceptive than a person who would write this:

We’ve pointed out before that Barack Obama is likely a closet communist and a gay homosexual crackhead, and now Senate colleague Joe Lieberman even admits that he’s unsure whether the boy Senator is a Marxist. Frankly, I don’t blame him. Who can tell?

And I'm far less a gullible and sycophantic dimwit than any person who would so much as think, much less actually write, this:

The liberal defeatocrats and America hating loons are constantly trying to embarrass our fine leaders. Whether it’s cutting up President Bush’s speeches to make it sound like he’s misspeaking or blowing all out of proportion a minor misstatement. They have also cruelly attacked Vice President Cheney, claiming that he was trying to divide up Iraq and steal its oil, a nutty conspiracy theory to be sure, and made up an incident out of whole cloth, claiming that he said a bad word on the Senate floor, when he simply wished Senator Leaky Leahy the best of luck even after being provoked by the man. “Good luck, yourself,” said the amiable Vice President with a broad smile on his rugged face. For the record, Vice President Cheney would never lie, drink, smoke or gamble. And he would absolutely never curse. He is a very moral man.

Cheney? Moral? Amiable? Truthful?

Moral?

Uh-huh. So, OK. Moving on...

And I'm infinitely more persipacious, not to mention astute, insightful, observant and adroit (Gawd, I love Synonym.com) than a person who would write this:

I support the Bible, and I don’t want my children learning about Heliocentrism in school. I think this doctrine encourages atheism, Darwinism, and anti-Americanism. I don’t want my tax dollars going to finance this kind of false science. It’s complete rot, and I hope that those of us who come to realize this can ultimately prevail against its propogation amongst OUR children with the money from OUR salaries.

And behind the link for the above quote, BTW, you will find a post from a brainiac named Sisyphus who is evidently the founder of B4B (as they call themselves) with the eponymous slogan from the T-shirt that drove my previous blog entry. You really should go read the whole post because if it were actually witty or funny, it could be a clever impersonation of some deranged right-wing loon, but it isn't funny or witty.

At all.

In fact, he is deadly serious and it is kind of sickening. These people are seriously fucked in the head. Their slogan should be Holocaust denying flat-earthers for Jesus (and Sam Brownback). I can only presume they and their fellow-travellers are representative of Brownback's following, which makes his departure from the presidential race a real relief, though a sadness over comedy gold un-mined does linger. It just makes me morose for the state of health-care in America that these people can't afford the medications they need to lead normal lives, nevermind the irony of a deep-seated hostility to the very government programs which could help them.

And the comments section is a real hoot. A couple of smart folks dove in and tried to argue with those idiots, but as the old saying goes "Never argue with an idiot. Most people won't be able to tell the difference." Let me sum all up comments by saying that they conclude that believing that the earth orbits the sun means you hate America. I'm not kidding. Comment number 28. Wow.

So, having touched my toe into the toxic sewer of right-wing blogistan, I'm pretty sure I don't want to go back there any time soon, for hic sunt dracones.

So, if you're actually reading this, Psycheout, you win. I'm not going back to your site because you've got me beat. I concede. I'm frightened to the core of my being. I quake in the presence of your mighty intellect and how deeply it could damage my Tax-Raising, Latte-Drinking, Sushi-Eating, Volvo-Driving, New York Times-Reading, Body-Piercing, Hollywood-Loving, Left-Wing mind.

In fact, I'm going to stop writing this post right now so I can go invite over my Wiccan friends to watch some gay porn with me while we snort cocaine off pictures of Dale Earnhardt with rolled up pages from the Book of Job (we like to save Genesis, Corinthians and especially Psalms for cleaning up after a really messy crap) while we all sit around, sipping cups of warm virgin blood, talking about how much we hate the troops and Amerika and anything that's good or moral. Like Jerry Falwell. Later, after they leave for France, I'll wile away a couple more hours fantasizing about a really nasty porno-style three-way between me, Hillary and Obama. Once satisfied with the depth of my own depravity, I'll finally be able to relax enough to concentrate on my nefarious plan for global conquest via a rigorous regimen of rejecting Christ as my personal savior, pissing on pictures of Ronald Reagan, and burning every American flag I can find - for which the Jews pay me really well, let me tell you what, because I'm able to tithe so fucking much money to Nation of Islam, Planned Parenthood and National Organization for Women while simultaneously maintaining both my ACLU and my Jane Fonda fan-club memberships. Then I'll call Barbra Streisand to tell her all about it.

I guess I should be more grateful to America for giving me such opportunities. You really have opened my eyes, Psycheout.

Salam Alechem, my bruh-thuh.

Iraq Planning

I don't know how he did it, but my friend Broadway Carl found some secret footage from five years ago of George W. Bush hard at work in the Oval Office planning the Iraq War.

It's pretty amazing:

This made me laugh

OK, so I've been working and not free to blog very much the last few days. The wife and I are going to see a show tonight (!) and that will cut into valuable blogging time as well.

So, instead of pithy commentary about the fallout from the whole Spitzer debacle or the food-fight between Clinton and Obama - I instead ask you to run don't walk to If Celebs Moved to Oklahoma.

The title is self-explanatory and this is an example of why: