Moron, Moron, Burning Bright

Deep thought: anyone who is "concerned" about Tiger Woods, or thinks he owes anyone other than his immediate family an explanation, much less an apology, is a flaming dipshit on wobbly wheels.

And hey, speaking of such critters, the big FudgeCPAC is going down, and it is never not entertaining at least. Noted sociopath and war criminal Richard Bruce Cheney, a man who has yet to be correct about much of anything of import, predicts Obama will be a one-term preznit. He is also predicting the Lions to win the next Super Bowl, so there's that.

What the two (Tiger and CPAC) have to do with one another is this: Fargo reject Pawlenty O'Toole took a break from neglecting the upkeep of his state's freeway bridges to burnish his moron credentials by comparing Tiger to Big Gubmint, deserving of a nine-iron to the temple by a distressed wife (that, um, would be the teabaggers, hot and impulsive like only a Swedish nanny can be).

Yet card-carrying loon Lonesome Rhodes -- who, if this is how he is in sobriety, must have been a fucking hoot as a drooling cokehead alky -- sez that Tiger is comparable to the Republicans, an addict who must first admit the problem in order to gain full benefit from appropriate treatment.

And of course Rhodes had all his props at hand, the chalkboard, the stilted socialist poetry slams, the "Clydie Clyde" (I was sure that was some sort of Manson reference, for some reason) muppet thing he apparently does. I had to reread the description to get the gist, it was literally incomprehensible to me. This toad is the fucking Carrot Top of political commentary, which is no doubt a grievous insult to Mr. Top, but prop comedy is a special burden to begin with.

But at least Carrot Top is not pretending to be some sort of arbiter of sociopolitical thought, yet apparently millions of maroons tune in to watch Beck play with sock puppets and draw conspiracy-guy diagrams on a fucking chalkboard, when he's not shilling for gold-hoarding scamboogery. Seriously, what a fucking asshole this clown is.

Anyway, the stupid Tiger analogies. It's one thing that none of them are capable of looking beyond the latest irrelevant "headlines" to compose completely inapt comparisons, but it's just gravy that they can't even be bothered to keep them straight amongst themselves. By the time they stagger out of their annual dipshit camp, the CPACkers will just decide that Tiger is Obama, and the walrus is (Ron) Paul. Shine on, you crazy diamonds.

They Ask Questions

Question of the day comes from one H.R. PufnstufClinton, who splits residencies between Chappaqua, New York, and the sixth concentric ring of hell, which I believe was the one with all the ice:

"Iran has threatened other countries, including the kingdom," she said. "Iran has funded terrorists that have launched attacks within other countries, including the kingdom [of Saudi Arabia]. Iran is the largest supporter of terrorism in the world today. . . . You have to ask yourself: Why are they doing this?"

Indeed. You have to ask yourself. So let's do exactly that. Iran is surrounded by three huge nuclear powers -- Russia to the north, and India and Pakistan to the east. And Iraq, occupied by a couple hundred thousand Americans, to its west. And leading American politicians constantly threatening, sanctioning, or threatening to sanction. Not to mention the surge of Jebus rifles (and Jebus Predator drones) in Afghanistan.

So they are quite literally surrounded by much larger, historically aggressive entities. Does it even need to be said how completely unacceptable, how unthinkable such a situation would be here?

So Hillary Clinton, who hails from a country which has not exactly been shy about fostering terrorism abroad to suit its own interests, takes the podium at a, um, "women's college" in a medieval despotism that violently oppresses its women for amusement, a country which also happens to be Iran's bitterest enemy in the Arab world -- a country which has also managed to bankroll its share of suicide bombers and such like. And she asks exactly what the dealio is with these crazy Iranians, anyway. Grapefruit-sized cojones on this broad.

I mean, Jesus H. Christ, we shit our pants over every kleptocrat and banana republic who dared step out of line for the past seventy years, and we're wondering why Iran acts paranoid? It's just a shame Americans have no capacity for irony or self-reflection. Too bad for Ahmadinnerjacket that his country is now a handy pawn for leverage with China and Russia, but hegemon is really a shared (if unequally) burden.

At least the obnoxious polemic, no better than the crude red-meat rhetoric Sarah Palin tosses to her gibbering throng, should be countered. I'd remind Ms. Seckaterry o' State that it wasn't mostly (or any, for that matter) Iranians that knocked down the fuckin' World Trade Center, for starters, but there's a decent chance she already knows that. In which case, to borrow her own catch-phrase, you really have to ask yourself: Why is she doing this?

Spasibo, Vremya Stoli (or, Next of Kim)

So, it's your wacky neighbor's birthday, and what do you get for the megalomanical midget goofball who has everything already? Shoe lifts, bouffant dye, the latest granny shades, cases of Hennessy, he's already got all that. You could kidnap some Japanese actresses for his secret harem, but he's got that too. Madmen can be hard to shop for, even in the glorious revolutionary worker paradise of Juche 99.

Pyongyang, February 16 (KCNA) -- General Secretary Kim Jong Il received a congratulatory message from Russian President Dmitri Medvedev on Tuesday on the occasion of his birthday.

The message said:

Respected Your Excellency Chairman,

Please accept my heartfelt congratulations to you on your birthday.

Then Medvedev offered Kim a deal on some fake Rolexes and placebo boner pills. "Kak dyela, dude! I am having many great pills for your day! Make your cock like baseball bat, bro! All girls are liking!" It's probably more effective with the Cyrillic alphabet, at least from what I've heard.

Mayer of Simpleton

Although his claim to be the possessor of a "hood pass" and his gratuitous dropping of the n-word is ridiculous, and his music seems to be written with the sole mission of getting sorority girls wet (not that that's a bad thing, mind you, just not terribly interesting musically), I have to give grudging props to pr0n addict John Mayer's confession, even if I'm not sure if I really believe it. He's trying just a little too hard, maybe.

Is anyone still reading Playboy these days? They have always had very good interviews, but these days, the Onion AV Club has great interviews as well, even if they don't have airbrushed lap-dancers on the next page, dammit. It just seems like the sweet spot Playboy once had between upwardly mobile dickheads and pseudo-intellectual puds has been rendered extinct by the easy availability of good writing and high-quality spank material, and for free at that.

Mayer also took the opportunity to confess his love of porn, telling the publication, "Pornography? It's a new synaptic pathway. You wake up in the morning, open a thumbnail page, and it leads to a Pandora's box of visuals. There have probably been days when I saw 300 vaginas before I got out of bed. When I watch porn, if it's not hot enough, I'll make up backstories in my mind. My biggest dream is to write pornography."

Well, this adds a dimension to Your Body is a Wonderland, I suppose, but "new synaptic pathway"? Visual stimulation is one of the oldest synaptic pathways, obviously. It's just that technology has made it easier by an order of magnitude every few years for the past decade or so. And again, this has pushed all stroke mags -- but especially high-end ones like Playboy -- to the brink of irrelevance, not to mention bankruptcy. They're pushing buggy whips in an era of hover-cars, there's just no getting around it.

I feel for the new generation, I really do. If I were 18 years old right now, one of two things would happen -- either I'd take advantage of the amazing production and distribution capabilities and get some music going, or I'd hole up with a month's supply of beef jerky, Mountain Dew, and paper towels, and they'd have to send in a search party after a while. (TMI, I know, but we were all that age once.) It's strangely comforting to know that, despite all the high-profile tail he gets, Mayer still has to rub one out with surprising frequency. If he gets married, he could be the Tiger Woods of cheesy music.

Entrepreneurship

From the "Why Didn't I think of That?" files comes this little gem:

Bart Centre, 61, a retired retail executive in New Hampshire, says many people are troubled by this question, and he wants to help. He started a service called Eternal Earth-Bound Pets that promises to rescue and care for animals left behind by the saved.

Promoted on the Web as "the next best thing to pet salvation in a Post Rapture World," the service has attracted more than 100 clients, who pay $110 for a 10-year contract ($15 for each additional pet.) If the Rapture happens in that time, the pets left behind will have homes—with atheists. Centre has set up a national network of godless humans to carry out the mission. "If you love your pets, I can't understand how you could not consider this," he says.

Of course, if this is really the price-point equilibrium and market demand for this, then it's not exactly the gold standard of scams. But it is funny, and as always, some of the commenters are just gravy. I love this one:

tvlgds

Feb 15, 2010 10:05 PM GMT
I think this will be losing venture. I firmly believe that our pets will go with us. I do not believe God would leave these animals to fend for themselves.

Um, yeeaaahhhh, dude, 'cause He really looks out for animals as it is. I mean, this is just flat-out retarded, as in, this person has a severe cognitive deficiency that impairs them from normal perceptions and activities. They probably have to wear a helmet and life-vest when surfing the intarwebz.

Plunging to New Depths

Should we all chip in a nickel or something, and buy a card to let this dipshit know that his fifteen minutes were up a year ago, that he's the political version of Heidi Montag?

"John McCain is no public servant," Wurzelbacher told the gathering, Detrow reports.

He then reportedly went on to announce that his enmity towards the 2008 GOP presidential candidate is so high that he no longer backs Sarah Palin -- because she is supporting the Arizona Republican’s re-election bid.

Not sure who's dumber here -- Sam the Plunger, if he thinks McCain and Palin really give half a shit what he says about anything, or the people for whom this clown's presence was motivation to attend. It's like getting an endorsement from a cartoon character.

The Golden Drool

It's even odds that Frank Rich susses Bible Spice's Palm Pilot gambit correctly, that she intended to get "caught", knowing that she'd be lampooned by all the right people. From day one the rap on Miss Thang was that she made ol' Fredo look bright by comparison, but like Fredo, Palin has benefited from the "stupider like a fox" syndrome -- the bar gets set so low, it becomes almost impossible to fall below it.

Worse yet, Palin is uniquely unencumbered by the usual expectations of making at least a semi-coherent argument in at least a pretense of good faith. Not only do her fans not expect such basic graces from her, they would probably disdain her if she did suddenly start saying things that happened to be true and/or correct. Ordinarily you would say this is the garden-variety "red meat" crowd, but she doesn't even give them that. It's just low-grade rhetorical gruel, a sloppy word salad of cognitive dissonance and predictable buzzwords.

Like any demagogue worth the appellation, Palin is adept at wrapping her platitudes in the usual mindless, meaningless pieties, phrases that would probably be more troubling if she actually meant them.

Her only concrete program for dealing with America’s pressing problems came in the question-and-answer session. “It would be wise of us to start seeking some divine intervention again in this country,” she said, “so that we can be safe and secure and prosperous again.”

To listen to them, you'd assume that all these fucking people do in the first place is pray. So if it hasn't been working, why is it supposed to work in the future? Not that it would even occur to Palin or any of her drones to ask, much less answer such a question, but certainly serves as a prime example of the sheer mindlessness of mass-consumption pseudo-Christianity.

Another fine illustration of this is Michael Gerson, Fredo's former wordsmith and permanent conservatard catamite. Gerson may consider himself an evangelical Christian, but it's possible that his deity may not think that word means what Gerson thinks it means:

"Guantanamo" has become a synonym for "prison." Actually, it is a 45-square-mile U.S. Navy base, complete with a McDonald's and a Subway. The Guantanamo Bay Children and Youth Program sounds like a violation of the Geneva Conventions. But there are families stationed here needing child care. The Navy conducts operations against drug running and human trafficking. The base is now a major transit point for supplies headed to Haiti.

Yes, and people have been tortured and force-fed and suicided there as well, without charge nor trial nor representation. Some of them were teenagers and illiterate shepherds sold for bounty. If some of them are in fact terrorists, let us prove it and dispense with legalistic niceties forthwith. Ending legitimate terrorists is not the problem; perpetually housing them in limbo is.

Gerson may enjoy conjuring up Nuremberg trial imagery, but he might want to consider that we executed enemy soldiers for some of the exact same tactics that we have been employing at Guantanamo and at black sites around the world. You would think that a devout Christian would be more well-versed in the nuances and pitfalls of symbology, but Palin, again bereft of ontological encumbrances such as consistency in religious principles, reflects the intellecual path for most of the publicly pious, including Gerson. Orwell's promise of the boot stamping on a human face forever would not be possible without enabling pigs such as Gerson, acting as if the presence of a sandwich franchise negates eight years of black ops and redacted autopsies.

Meanwhile, the cornpone fascists are well-entrenched in the indoctrination of the public textbook industry, a robust cash scheme if ever there was one. This is where the next generation of god- (and nation-)bothering poltroons gets (in)bred.

The other nonacademic expert, David Barton, is the nationally known leader of WallBuilders, which describes itself as dedicated to “presenting America’s forgotten history and heroes, with an emphasis on our moral, religious and constitutional heritage.” Barton has written and lectured on the First Amendment and against separation of church and state. He is a controversial figure who has argued that the U.S. income tax and the capital-gains tax should be abolished because they violate Scripture (for the Bible says, in Barton’s reading, “the more profit you make the more you are rewarded”) and who pushes a Christianity-first rhetoric. When the U.S. Senate invited a Hindu leader to open a 2007 session with a prayer, he objected, saying: “In Hindu [sic], you have not one God, but many, many, many, many, many gods. And certainly that was never in the minds of those who did the Constitution, did the Declaration when they talked about Creator.”

Their interpretations are as pathological as their inane crusade to force everyone to kowtow to their tedious obsessions. As they do with the bible, these douche-nozzles selectively read and interpret Jefferson and Washington so that they somehow happen to tell them what they wanted to hear in the first place. I mean, who really gives a shit exactly how devout the founding fathers were anyway? They also believed that blacks were three-fifths of a person and women were property. This myth of absolute infallibility would have perplexed them, and is merely a too-clever-by-half rhetorical cover for lazy, disingenuous people with way too much fucking time on their hands.

These goofballs will not be happy until everyone is forced to kneel in the direction of Oral Roberts University five times a day for prayer. It would never even occur to them to just leave people the hell alone to figure out their own path for themselves. That would be too easy.

The Audacity of Dope

Political Zen question: Which is more ridiculous -- writing crib notes in the palm of your hand, or scribbling them out?

Jesus H. Tapdancing Christ. Seriously? Our glorious librul media has plagued our poor eyes and ears for weeks over this joke of a "convention" that ended up with a grand total of about a thousand attendees? That's it? A thousand preening morons paying dearly to listen to Sasha Farce use her palm as a cheat sheet to recite the same schtick she's babbled for 18 months straight. And Palin, compared to opening acts Joseph Farah and Tom Tancredo, made the most sense.

So for a trumped-up event that ended up drawing fewer people than the average farmers' market out here in the sticks, we get to hear for the past month -- and probably several months to come -- what a sea change this is. Great job, media tards. Keep up the awesome work.

Tard and Feathered

There is something of a backlash going on lately, aimed squarely at the puling ingrates who have the nerve and/or gall to expect Saint Hopenchange to at least pretend to try to do what he said he was going to do, as opposed to doing what Goldman Fucking Sachs tells him to do. Stupid us, right? Just be grateful you didn't get saddled with a continuation of the inept and corrupt Cheney theocracy, and eat your damned gruel, chump. As always, you're welcome, America.

Look, believe it or not, we're all adults here, for the most part, anyway. We know this is a big boys' game, played by people whose sincerity is always in question. But Obama has been playing this game either as if he was utterly unprepared for it, or he was in on it all along. Letting Joe Lieberman push him around was bad enough, but handing his pet health-care project over to Max Baucus was the political equivalent of hiring Phillip Garrido as a babysitter. Bad enough Obama lets the Republicans cock-block his every word and deed, but he lets his own party screw him over at every opportunity. That's unacceptable, especially with a supermajority up until this week. Unacceptable hell, it's retarded. There, I said it.

And to the extent that Nacho Limpballs can "wade" into anything without radically affecting its displacement and level, he actually has a point, other than the one on his bulbous head. It's a backassward point, but par for the course for Limpballs.

The upshot here is that tough-guy bare-knuckle back-room arm-twister Rahm Emanuel, who has done exactly diddly-fucking-squat in maintaining any semblance of party discipline, calls his president's most fervid supporters "fucking retarded" -- and takes a jab at damage control by apologizing to Tim Shriver. Alrighty then, at least everyone knows exactly where they stand now.

To belabor the painfully obvious, every successful political organization is, at heart, an ongoing marketing campaign. As a campaigner, Obama successfully poached demographic niches and slivers by deft rhetorical positioning, demonstrating action, intent, passion. He commiserated with a nation that looked up from eight years of Bush's catastrophic monkey-fuckery, found itself in a major hole, and promised that he was the guy with the ladder.

So now citizens -- that is to say, customers, people who bought into the hype and still find themselves sucking wind -- are asking where that ladder is, because so far it just looks like another shovel with a slightly different handle. And for that, they are apparently ingrates and/or retards. Bottom line -- when your master economic plan is for people to lose their jobs and their vinyl-and-glue tract houses so that some thieving Wall Street cocksuckers can keep their vacation home and stock options, you need a better explanation than this ipse dixit bullshit we've been getting for a year now.

In our stupid, bought-and-paid-for Coke/Pepsi political dynamic, it might behoove New Coke to recall how that shakes out sometimes, that when half the customers you pulled over from Pepsi are already starting to go back, it might not be a great idea to call your best remaining customers retards. They just might take a moment to reflect and think, "You know, if I waste my vote on you again, maybe I am fucking retarded." And who could blame them? Rahm Emanuel shouldn't be fired for using a politically incorrect term -- he should be fired because he's fucking incompetent. Every one of these bozos in the Senate saw how Lieberman got away with every goddamned thing he pulled, so of course they're going to do the same. Rahm Emanuel is an enforcer like I'm LeBron James.

Rule number one for any business that intends to stay in business is that you at least make an honest attempt to do what you say you're going to do. Bush and Cheney did what they set out to do, like it or not, and they did it with less than 59 senators. These dipshits smack their faces on the doorframe, and blame everyone but their own klutziness. We'll see how that works out for them come November. I'm sure they'll come away from their inevitable ass-kicking more firmly resolved to flip the bird to the people who foolishly believed in them, and genuflect more resolutely to the animals who will never give them the time of day.

This, more than anything else, is why people just say "fuck it" and stop bothering to vote.