2010-05-28

That's Just Rand

I just realized that as teh GOP nominee for teh KY Senate seat, we'll have Rand Paul to provide us with entertainment at least until November. And it's quite possible that he'll win it too, giving us six more years of Rand. D00d is so full of FAIL that I absolutely had to make a tag just for teh Son of RevoLution.

Anyways, here's Rand Paul calling for changing the law so that people born in America won't be Americans.

Well, aside from the fact that it's "clearly unconstitutional" (provided you acknowledge that the fourteenth amendment is part of the Constitution - aha got you there Rand-h8rs!) there's this wonderful quote:
We're the only country that I know that allows people to come in illegally, have a baby, and then that baby becomes a citizen. And I think that should stop also.

Rilly? Well, firstly since when have patriotic Tea Party patriots who love the constitution decided that what other countries do should have any impact on what's done in patriotic America, the Land of Patriots?

No - I'm just kidding. The real problem with Rand's fucking stoopid noise is that he's wnrog. SRSLY. Rand Paul claims that the US is the only country that allows offspring of undocumented aliens citizenship based solely on the location of their birth.

As a Canookian (and with apologies to teh folks at Teh Mothership - Sadly No, eh!
Or possibly ¡Tristemente, No!
Or more generally, Sadly, No!

2010-05-27

Obama's Katrina

I have a dilemma. The "Deepwater Horizon spill is Obama's Katrina" meme needs some smacking down. Sure there are things that the Administration could and should have done more on *cough*HCR*cough* but the oil spill doesn't seem like one of 'em. The dilemma is about approaches.

OT1H, intelligent and thoughtful commentary speaks to ones sense of reason and can be very effective. Kevin Drum takes this approach and makes some excellent points.

OT1!H, snark can be really effective.

I've already discovered that a satirical parody-type approach ain't gonna work - the right wing regualrly out-crazies the craziest shit I can imagine. I guess I'll sleep on your mom it and maybe in the morning I'll begin to see the light. Or just forget about it entirely.

So When Can I Pick Up PAB?

At that other place, while poking fun of how wnorg SE Cupp can be I made the following statement:
I’ve reconsidered. If it’ll get me a date with fellow Red Eye redhead Patti Ann Browne then I agree with anything SE Cupp says.

Little did I know, I already had. Compare my previous post with Cupp's previous NYDN column.

Why am I pointing this out? Doesn't this highlight my complete failure as a satirist - my inability to think of anything so ridiculously over-the-top that it would never be seriously suggested by anyone, let alone a conservative commentator four days previous?

It's because I am still obsessed with Patti Ann Browne.

2010-05-23

Sunday Audition: No Use Crying Over Spilt Oil

It's been over a month since the Deepwater Horizon burst in a fountain of unquenchable flame and started leaking thousands of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. While this incident may seem to indicate stronger controls over deep offshore oil wells are needed, clearly the opposite is true.

A full month of an uncontrolled spurting geyser of crude shooting right into the ocean. And aside from the unfortunate few that were on the platform at the time, no one has been injured. All the extremist alarms raised by environmental watchdogs and special interest groups have been shown to be totally over-exaggerated and completely out of scale.

Environmentalists warned of birds and sea life being coated in slimy sheens of toxic and life destroying oil and yet in this massive oil spill, where are the oil-covered animals? Sure a handful have been spotted, but with the scope of the spill that has sprung from BP's site - it hardly seems credible. More likely that the extremely rare affected animal is a plant by liberal animal rights and anti-oil groups. I envisage Greenpeace catching pelicans in the wild and dunking them into a barrel of crude for the purpose of increasing next quarters donations.

Consider how many billions of dollars are being sunk into controls on these deep oil rigs. And for what? Sure the lives of those brave workers might have been saved with stricter controls, but deaths from oil drilling are probably less than those killed by falling coconuts. Is this a good use of resources? Clearly not.

And the threat of environmental damage has been proven false by this very "disaster". It's a failure of a scope greater than any envisaged by the most deranged lefty blogger - and yet no real harm has been shown to have been done. Clearly environmental regulations on oil rigs are way too strict and should be loosened immediately, if not sooner.

The Deepwater Horizon incident is just proof of what the most sensible path for the future is. In the words of a great American, possibly the greatest American ever - Drill Baby, Drill!

2010-05-22

Explaining the Rand Paul Disaster

h/t Talking Pants Marshall.

Joshua Green, senior editor at that place that thinks ME-gan is worth publishing offers this explanation as to why Rand Paul's first moments in the national spotlight went all pear shaped.

1. Rand Paul isn't a crazy lunatic. Honest. Joshua Green has been covering him throughout the campaign and he seems totes normal. "The Tea Party is not about extremism" because Rand said so. The very idea that he's a crazy asshole is just lie-beral media bias and ebil lefty bloggerators.

2. Local media in Kentucky has been so gutted by teh noozpaper crisis that Rand wasn't properly vetted by the fourth estate until too late.

SRSLY. This is his "explanation". These are his two pertinent points. Well reading them brought to mind two impertinent points that I'd like to make:

1. WTF?!? As has been made obvious to anyone not wearing a tri-corner hat with the Confederate flag sewn in it - Rand Paul is exactly the angry unlikeable nut he's been portrayed as. Only now we're also seeing how sleazy he can get when trying to squirm out of the p00py mess he put himself in. I think this Dan Savage headline sums it up best.

2. IOW, U WERE RONG. Joshua Green, Mr. Sr. Editor, Mr. Young Writer On The Rise - U were ther on the spot and U WERE RNOG. FAIL 4 U, buddy. Look back at this flaming wreckage of a national debut and know that you had the ground-floor inside-track spot and blew it. The jerkwad that is Rand Paul, who couldn't make it through one interview without coming off as a racist prick was someone you thought was emminently likeable. Hell, reading your first pertinent point again, it seems that you still think that's true.

Ooops, I was rnog too, I have a third impertinent point.
...the local Kentucky media--in particular the newspapers, and especially the flagship Louisville Courier-Journal--has been decimated by job cuts, as has happened across the country...

BTW, you smarmy assclown - that thing you got totally wrong? About Rand Paul and his extremist views? Louisville C-J nailed it:
The trouble with Dr. Paul is that despite his independent thinking, much of what he stands for is repulsive to people in the mainstream. For instance, he holds an unacceptable view of civil rights, saying that while the federal government can enforce integration of government jobs and facilities, private business people should be able to decide whether they want to serve black people, or gays, or any other minority group.

If there's a media failing here - and there most definitely is - it's not on the part of the small local guys. It's you. Even now you are framing the thing in the best light possible for the racist guy who wants to enable racists¹. To wit:
Thus, when Rand Paul appeared on "Maddow" and the other shows, I expect he was prepared to offer the same sermon I heard on the trail. Problem is, he was encountering an aggressive, experienced press corps that appropriately had its own agenda and was eager to challenge Paul to elaborate on his views.

Maddow had her "own agenda"? Nice way to phrase it there buddy. I believe that "agenda" - of getting a candidate to "elaborate on his views" - well it sounds an awful lot like journalism. Maybe you should try it sometime.

¹ Editted for maximum benefit of the doubt. See even ebil lefsists can be unreasonably accomodating to that asshole.

UPDATE: Just me being petty and getting some more kicks in.
Speaking of Talking Pants Marshall, nailed it in one and then nailed it again. Not to mention that the folks over at TPM took a peek at Rand's history and found a whole mess of crazy.

UPDATE 2: PENIS. Also.

UPDATE 3: As a Jane Hamsher sympathizer, and therefore a "firebagger" - John Cole is my natural worst enemy. Still, props have to be given. AWESOME. Rand cancelled his first shot at a totes syncophantic knob slobbering, just the thing he needed to get over this week from Proof That There is an IPU. Either that or the fucktard is so awful that even David Gregory is seen as a threat.... bwahahahhaahahaahhahaa111111wheresmyshiftkeYOHTHEREITIS!!!!!

2010-05-20

Eat-Me-ology

Teabagger.

First, yes it was the Tea Party People themselves that chose the label. Even Jay Nordlinger, admits as much and he's not one to just throw away an opportunity to be outraged by liberal leftists. But that doesn't mean that folks in the Tea Party Movement can't take offense at the term. No movement is a monolith where the thoughts or expressions of one represent the entire group - despite what the right is attempting with their continual purges. In fact, the Tea Party People probably best exemplify this fact, as there seems to be no unifying element (aside from being older, whiter and more entitled than the board of trustees for an exclusive country club) amongst them. That's why they can't express what they actually want - or if they attempt to, it winds up looking like the MaineGOP Manifesto.

Okay, that out of the way - let's get going because there's a very important nuance that's beeng lost in the hooferaw about the word. The act of dunking your testicles into someone else's mouth is not what is meant by the word. Sure it may have meant that historically, ages ago, when there were few enough people willing to talk about sex that the practices of a very small minority could spawn new words.

Seriously folks, most people don't have mouths wide enough for this to be practicable - the dunking motion, obstensibly achieved by crouching up and down - this is awkward as heck. It is at best, a contrived made-up not-real sexual practice. Note: I am not saying that no one does it, in the wide and varied world that is human sexuality I would surprised if no one did it. My point is that it's non-widespread enough that it probably shouldn't have its own word. Thus teabagging is a fake sexual practice, kinda like skullfucking - it's something that doesn't actually get done.

But it is a hilarious concept - to thirteen year old boys who would probably faint from excitement if they had the opportunity to engage in oral sex. It's a joke designed to appeal to the adolescent mind - and that is how it became widespread.

Little background for the non-gamers in the audience: multiplayer gaming, especially online - is a cesspit of sociopathic offensive hate. We're talking about behaviour that make the Freepi seem almost civilized. And the pinnacle of offensive asshole-ish-ness (aside from Barrens Chat, but that's another story) is in the world of First Person Shooters. Now in the FPS genre, players typically have the ability to crouch (so as to be able to take advantage of the ubiquitous "chest-high wall"). Even in games with well developed "cover systems", a crouch ability is still included.

This is how teabagging came to be. Gamers would celebrate kills by running over to the corpses of their victims and repeated crouch over their faces - "teabagging" them. It's Urban Dictionary definition number 7. Here's a video of how it's done. Here's a video of how sophisticated the humour behind it is.

So in context, consider this photo from the Feb. 27, 2009 protest at David Weigel's old digs. The guy holding up the Tea bag sign? Tell me that's not a Halo afficiando.

So to clarify - teabagging isn't a sexual term, it's a term used by virgins to imply something sexual. It's really a juvenile way of proclaiming victory - a petty act to declare "I WON U LOST". In that sense, the term does really fit the Tea Party People and their bravado coupled with ignorance (hey there's something else the fragments of the movement share!).

Nonetheless, it's a term with a history of "Hyuk hyuk, it's funny because PENIS". Well that's my kind of humour and I'm uncomfortable sharing it with the tri-corner hat brigade. Plus it also implies that the Teabaggers are victorious anad that they are teabagging Washington or teh Soshulists or whatever their fevered imaginations view as teh ENEMY. They haven't won anything yet - even the Rand Paul nomination and the centrefold Senator elections don't really make much impact.

So, I'll be calling them the Tea Party People from here on out, or if they decide on a new name "Tea Patriots of Freedom" or somesuch, I'll use that. Or maybe I'll call them racist fuckwits, ignorant sociopaths, greedy hateful bastards or something much the same. But not "teabagger".

And I'll still roll my eyes whenever folks claim that teabagging really does mean participant in awkward and contrived oral sex practices.

2010-05-11

Non-Sunday Non-Audition: Wow, Does the WashPost Produce Some Shitty Op-Ed Thingies

Okay, Sunday Wednesday Audition was going to be about Elena Kagan, but the Tintin series at S,N! took the wind outta my sails. That plus I don't think I could do this one justice since Fred's already got a disingenuous asshole on the SCOTUS nominee beat.

Consider the following:

First, from teh AP:
Kagan came to the fore as a candidate who had worked closely with all three branches of government, a legal mind with both a sense of modesty and sense of humor. The source spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss factors that led to Kagan's impending nomination.
Incidentally AP, your anonymous source is what Marc Ambider describes as a White House Talking Points memo. Thanks AP, you show us bloggers that journaltastic jorundamalasm thing you do.

Andrea Stone tracks down high school classmate Michelle Hardy who said:
Elena was very quiet and very reserved, but when you got to know her, she had a fierce sense of humor.
Finally, via the uberliberal Wall Street Journal, a tale of Professor Kagan from a student who hated her class:
She chuckled. It turns out Kagan has quite a sense of humor (so long as you are on time).

That in mind, here’s Capehart at WashPost:
The conversation around the table was fun, raucous, ranged from the serious to the inane and was almost always filled with laughter. (Okay, I admit to being the really loud one.) But something has stayed with me since that night. Kagan, the solicitor general who had been in the running for the high court when President Obama chose now-Justice Sonia Sotomayor, was uncomfortably quiet -- for me. And once word leaked out last week that the unbelievably capable Kagan was Obama's pick, which was made official yesterday, that uncomfortable feeling came roaring back.

Great Jonathan, you got loaded and were the annoying and unsufferable jackass at a dinner party. Elena Kagan didn't laugh with you then. Therefore it's obvious that she'll be a horrible Supreme Court Justice.

Update: this post has had it's tags tweaked

2010-05-10

What Happened to Sunday Audition?

It's late. Mother's Day is a very busy day for me (not-so-veiled "I so did your mom" reference).

2010-05-03

Speaking of Hiking Through Provinicial Parks

Thanks to Substance for pointing out the [share] button.  And no Pinery ain't even close to North Ontar-i-o-i-o, but we did have some blackflies.


UPDATE: Is it in yet?

2010-05-02

No deeds to do, no promises to keep

Dappled and drowsy.  Just coming off a week-end road trip, so no Sunday Audition this week.  instead, here's a couple of pictures from Pinery Provincial Park: 

 Lake Huron.

A nest of tent caterpillars.

A good time was had by all.  And now, I'm off to check what news I missed.