This Day In Stupid

It's an embarrassment of riches (or maybe the other way around), folks, but it really comes down to two worthy entries for the coveted title of "Okay, I Still Don't Get It -- Tell Me Why Again Is This A Story?":

1. Apparently former famous FEMA failure Mike "Dookie" Brown, now an enormously successful nobody out in radio palookaville, has decided that Obama responded too quickly to Hurricane Sandy. Sure, and while we're at it, why don't we take hair-care advice from Donald Trump? I thought this growler had been flushed half a decade ago. Do your duty, America -- flush twice.
   
2. I honestly don't even understand this one. Not even a little bit. Hopefully someone out there can explain it to me. Why are the friendly folks at Nice Polite Republicans taking a break from their usual Morris the Cat voiceovers to apologize to a four-year-old? Why is said four-year-old so overexposed to political campaign coverage, do her parents belong to some weird politicult (see what I did there?), or worse -- are they part of the Rmoney ground game? Is this bawling kid supposed to personify a nation's frustration at having its "choices" so tightly circumscribed, they're almost frustrated enough to put down the deep-fried Twinkies and do something about it? Could this whole thing be a contrivance to distract morons from what the actual choice, such as it is, is really between:  A) a wholly-owned subsidiary of an ineffably corrupt financial system; and B) a completely demented Republican party?
   
   I guess we're all just supposed to commiserate at the wretched burden of being forced at gunpoint to decide whether or not we want affordable health care, whether or not we believe women are breeding units to be used at Richard Mourdock's discretion, whether or not we want to bomb Iran, whether or not we want Wall Street to gobble up what's left of the crumbs we're still allowed, whether or not we think a soulless corporate gazillionaire job-harvester is the right person to bring back the jobs he sent to China, whether we want numberless galoots and snake-handlers calling in their chits when their man weasels his way in. It's just so unfair, when all we really want to do is lay in bed with a tub of Nutella and watch people open storage sheds. Boo-hoo.

Now then, from the other end of the spectrum, I always like to see jackasses get a come-to-Jebus moment and actually make some use of it. Such is the case of Chris Christie, who mere days after lampooning Obama's supposed lack of leadership skills, managed to swallow his pride (along with the rest of that baked ziti -- you knew we were going there) and be a good governor and advocate for his state. Christie deserves a lot of credit for that, enough to damn near make up for the other two sacks of nothing, Brown and that kid (actually her parents).

October Surprise

Not to be opportunistic in a time of extreme weather and no small amount of damage and tragedy, but....is Hurricane Sandy a sign from an eternally vengeful deity, a fountain of wrath signifying that we need to stop treating homosexuals and libertines like, well, human beings? Is it a demonstration that maybe there are things for which the big bad evil gubmint serves a clear, tangible purpose, that maybe we don't really want to have our disaster-recovery services administered by Halliburton or some such? Is it a harbinger of future extreme weather events, consequences of a planet abused beyond its capacity to recuperate and refresh itself quickly, something we'll just get used to, the way we've become accustomed to weekly incidents of armed lunatics snapping and taking out everyone within firing distance?

Perhaps it's all of those things, perhaps none, or some. But all three of those ideas contain factors that we can actually affect to some extent. Having control of even some of the decisions we all face is a great thing (especially if, like me, you tend to be a bit of a control freak about certain things).

But certainly we can all decide whether to endorse or to actively repudiate groups that peddle hate and nonsense under the guise of arcane religimous interpretations, instead of just ignoring the loudmouths until they infest the school boards with their bullshit. We can all soberly assess the things government does and doesn't do effectively, and what the private sector does and doesn't do effectively, and plan accordingly, rather than just assume that Big Capitalism always and only knows best. Bottom line here is that almost all 50 states are terminally debt-ridden and understaffed in response to Wall Street's shenanigans, and if there's one thing capitalism sucks balls at, it's appropriately addressing the needs of a captive market in an emergency. So yeah, if you enjoy profiteering in the wake of the next hurricane, tornado, flood, whatever, then go for it.

Obsession

So much for "It's the economy, stupid": (video at link is very NSFW):

Hundreds of outraged South Florida TV viewers have called or emailed network affiliates to complain about anti-abortion ads that have flooded the airwaves this week.

The ads, paid for by U.S. Congress hopeful and anti-abortion rabble-rouser Randall Terry, show scenes better suited for the grossest Halloween horror movies. They have aired in the middle of the night in most cases, but also at family-dinner time.

The images in four promos include what appear to be mangled human fetuses, tiny body parts and even a lifeless infant stuffed in a bloody plastic bucket.

Awesome. I suppose that when they get around to the requisite "gay marriage is shocking the kids and spooking the horses" jabber, they'll run a commercial with a gay-porn sex scene, something subtle like that. That's America's Wang for ya.

Make no mistake, assuming Obama squeaks through for a second term, he's got his work cut out for him. But scumbags like Terry show very clearly an important dimension in this ongoing "culture" war -- namely that the crazy-aunt wing of the party rides on Rmoney's coattails in this, and they will expect a lot in return. I hope the dingbats going Vulture/Voucher feel good about their choice, because it's their pooters that get wanded, their decisions that will get made for them by obsessive loons like Randall Terry.

Wasted Motion

Again, just an observation on who's throwing the election and whom to blame:  Jill Stein is polling at a statistically insignificant rate, even more so in swing states, whilst spoiled dingbats and butthurt crackers are apparently going for Rmoney en masse. I am willing to bet my next paycheck that, should Vulture/Voucher manage to squeeze this one out of their poopchutes, not one of the swing state losses will be able to be blamed on the DFHs, and all of them will be because of the party jumpers. Bet your last dollar on that, friends 'n' neighbors.

As I've pointed out too many times in the past with the N8r b8rs (now in their second decade!), the problem here is not so much who gets stuck with the blame, it's the inevitable practical ramifications of the scapegoating. American political parties these days move to the right when they lose the presidential election, that is the intent and design of the ratchet/pawl system we have. Scapegoating the DFHs simply gives automatic cover to ratcheting the Democrats, whether that takes the form of further capitulation to extreme-right jabber, or putting up "more electable" candidates in the snake-handler states.

Moreover, it absolves them from having to look at the real reason why they lost in the first place. With Gore in 2000, there were so many factors, only the most unself-aware partisan could have singled out Nader not just as the proximal cause, but as the only cause. With Obama, the cause for the supposed mass defection is said to be that Rmoney will be better on jobs, even though he has yet to say exactly how he'll create decent jobs here, even though he made his fortune creating jobs overseas.

So are DFHs also responsible for that much greater degree of mass cognitive dissonance, of collective stupidity? Of course not. But until we either make voting mandatory and on Saturday, like in Australia, and mandate a short, publicly-financed campaign to take all the pelf out of the perpetual-campaign system, they'll keep getting scapegoated. Failing that, we need to start finding ways, individually and collectively, to start divesting ourselves from this system that shackles us to lifetimes of wage slavery and debt peonage.

Ladies' Night

Not sure exactly how many of these insane pigfuckers have to fly the same party banner for some of the dingbats out there to realize that the Republican Party is not your friend. This has very little to do with whether individual women happen to be personally pro-life or pro-choice, and everything to do with how accepting they are of the idea that assholes like Mourdock or Akin should be making that choice for them regardless, and sticking them with the consequences. (And don't get me started on the pretzel logic Akin's angels deploy in the Guardian write-up; so pathetic it's not even worth parsing and clarifying, just the burbling of addled, self-hating morons.)

We are no longer postulating the shopworn conservatard bugaboo of the airhead trollop strutting down to the nearest strip mall for a quick D&C, followed by a trip to the food court and thence to a club for more meaningless slut sex. We are talking about people who are on record as saying that women's bodies are able to secrete mystical chemicals that prevent them from being impregnated by rape -- or worse, that if somehow they are impregnated by rape, it's God's will. Worse yet, these are people who are vying for the United States Senate, when they should be practicing safe sex by going out and tagging all the livestock that kick.

At this point, I'm really not sure which is more conclusive proof that God is a total dick -- that He would actually will that a woman be impregnated by a violent, awful, dehumanizing crime, or that He still hasn't dropped these bastards with bolts of lightning and flaming pools of carbolic acid. Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with these people, not just Mourdock and Akin, but the women who would actually vote for them? How do you get to a point where you hate and devalue yourself to that extent?

Freudian Slip

Oh, this is charming. Yet another interchangeable Foxface shoots from the hip with some baldfaced nonsense pulled so freshly out of his ass he had to brush the peanut and corn chunks off it first. The difference here is that he actually admitted that he had no evidence for what he was about to drop, which makes him a perfect surrogate for the Republican Party and all of its candidates and voters. Hell, they're not even pretending to try anymore.

Maybe someone should remind them of that time when 241 Marines were blown up by a suicide bomber in Lebanon, and Saint Reagan's swift and mighty response was to get the fuck out of there. But hoo boy, four people die in mob violence under Obammy's watch in some country most of 'em couldn't find on a map if their lives depended on it, and their media provocateur surrogates come unglued.

These are the jerkoffs fabricating your news analysis, America. How do you like it?

Five-Minute Music Reviews

Muse - The 2nd Law  Muse's trajectory has been one that any band would envy, with sales and rep growing practically by an order of magnitude with each subsequent release. With the success has come a bit of mainstreaming; the Queen allusions more and more overt, the conspiracy theory lyrics moving on to more universal concerns of love and revolution. The kids are alright, even if they are a bit more comfortable.

That's not a slam at all, by the way -- every band that makes it big has to handle the twin challenges of massive commercial success and continued artistic development, and Muse has certainly handled it better than most. The 2nd Law picks up where The Resistance left off, in many respects, brimming with social consciousness, danceable hooks, and epic choruses, it tries to have it every which way, and does so with a pretty solid slugging percentage. Matt Bellamy's falsetto vocals are as plaintive as ever, as are his bristling, angry leads, though the latter are fewer and farther between.

 

The production, as on The Resistance, is spectacular, immaculate throughout, but here and there one wishes just for a moment for the tortured squall of Citizen Erased, or the Cure-tinged electro-funk of Map of the Problematique, or even the space opera of Knights of Cydonia. But songs such as Supremacy, Panic Station, and Big Freeze have bite, the closing two-part title suite is innovative, and bassist Chris Wolstenholme provides some nice vocal contrast with his two songs, particularly Liquid State.

 

You can't really say that Muse have "sold out"; they are so unabashedly commercial it would be practically impossible for them to do so. But they do what they do with great ambition and panache, and continue to till some fertile ground.

 

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The Sword - Apocryphon  This one just dropped Monday, so I've only listened to it twice so far, not enough to break it down comprehensively. But it's enough to tell that the biggest little band from Austin is still kicking retro ass and taking names with their comic-book tales of doom, destruction, and adventure. If listening to classic Sabbath while reading old Robert Howard Conan books in a room with a giant Frank Frazetta poster and the whiff of stale bongwater sounds like your idea of good times, then The Sword are waaay up in your wheelhouse.

This is no mean feat, not at all, to take time-worn classic riffage, peg it to lyrics that are unapologetically cheesy, and make it really work. This is what playing it with conviction and passion are all about, kids -- these guys are clearly having fun with it, and it's infectious. Apocryphon is the band's fourth album, and as such, given the simplicity of the genre and the well-worn path it resides on, one might anticipate some cracks at some point, the need to change tack somehow. But aside from being apparently slightly less conceptually oriented than the last epic outing, Warp Riders, they are sticking to their guns, no doubt because they're pretty good guns.

 

The band was recently on an episode of Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations farewell tour, which should up their hipness quotient even further, perhaps depending on how much of an insufferable prick you fell Bourdain is. (Personally I enjoy him, his show, and his books a great deal; Bourdain is much more self-aware and candid than just about anyone in the public eye right now. He is very much a WYSIWYG personality, which is generally a good thing, Donald Trump notwithstanding.) So far, I would pick The Veil of Isis, The Hidden Masters, and Seven Sisters as standout tracks, but in general, like The Sword's past efforts, Apocryphon is a solid stack of all-killer-no-filler riffs. These guys are poised to make the big jump, the way Mastodon finally did with The Hunter.

 

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Devin Townsend Project - Epicloud  It is not an exaggeration to posit that former Strapping Young Lad mastermind Devin Townsend is this generation's Frank Zappa. A gifted, idiosyncratic guitarist who seems to live in the studio, Townsend is one of the most prolific, stylistically diverse producers out there right now. After putting out one of the best albums of the last decade with Synchestra in 2006, Townsend went into rehab -- and came out with 60 songs written and ready to record, which turned into the four-album Ki/Addicted!/Deconstruction/Ghost multi-opus, released over the next several years (the last two as a double set last year), each album completely different in musical style and focus.

So after all that, Townsend went back into the studio intending to record a sequel to his earlier Ziltoid the Omniscient space opera, and by his own reckoning, found himself writing more poppy, happy material. Not necessarily a bad thing, that -- that was the territory Addicted! traveled, and that one is a terrific, sorely underrated (if a bit short) collection. Epicloud is indeed very positive in outlook, obviously anomalous to most metal out there these days, which is at best nihilistic in most cases. But thanks to Townsend's rather angular sense of melody, peppered with his quirky humor (another similarity to FZ), and set in a lush choral wall-of-sound production, it works on a lot of levels. If the programming pinheads at Z-Rock could hear Townsend's stuff (or hell, The Sword, for that matter), maybe they wouldn't feel so compelled to dump the same fifteen-year-old Rob Zombie and Red Hot Chili Peppers tracks on their hapless listeners every fucking hour.

 

From the gospel-tinged choir bookending the album, to the ongoing collaboration with vocalist Anneke van Giersbergen on most of the songs, to the anthemic romp of Liberation and More!, to the sappy but heartfelt balladry of Where We Belong and Divine, there's a sweeping array of pop-metal stylings here, all of them more commercial than just about anything Townsend has done previously. But in a good way; again, between the glowing production and van Giersbergen's terrific vocals throughout, Townsend has earned the right to have a fat hit or two from this one.

 

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Monuments - Gnosis  For better or worse, bands like Monuments probably represent the near future of technical metal. Combining Dream Theater-level chops with gutbusting Meshuggah-style vocals (frequently alternating with cleaner vocals in the choruses, similar to what bands like Scar Symmetry do), there's definitely a lot going on here. Great musicianship, good production, solid grooves -- musically it's all good. It's the vocals that throw me on stuff like this, and that's really just a matter of personal taste, but the pulsating neck-vein screaming is exhausting to listen to after a while.

Still, there are some really tight musical moments all throughout, particularly on Admit Defeat and Regenerate. If you like this type of music, with a lot of elements of bands such as Periphery and (again) Meshuggah, this is really well done. But you probably won't crank it up at your next party.

 

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The Melvins - Freak Puke  I'm not as familiar with The Melvins' work as I should be, especially since there are plenty of bands I like who cite them as an influence. But it's never too late to get schooled, and as an album like Freak Puke is likely to get pegged as "experimental" or some such, it's not exactly a prime opportunity to bandwagon-jump a band that has never exactly been a household name in the first place.

 

From the opening cello(!) strains and brushed drums of Mr. Rip-Off, you know you're in for something odd and unpredictable. The lead track sounds like a sinister psychedelic '60s pastiche, between the arcane instrumentation and the atmospheric vocals.

 

And that's really the beauty of this album throughout -- no two songs sound alike (or, at times, even by the same band), and you just never know what's coming next. Stand-up bass and bowed chamber-music instruments figure in every song, right alongside fuzz-tone guitars and the spacey vocals. Unusual arrangements and interspersed sound effects just add to the chaotic proceedings. The closest thing to a conventional "song" is probably A Growing Disgust, or perhaps the cover of the Wings chestnut Let Me Roll It.

 

And again, it's precisely the unconventionality and weirdness of Baby Won't You Weird Me Out or Leon Versus the Revolution or the title track that make the whole thing so much fun to listen to. By the time you hit the meandering nine-and-a-half-minute capper Tommy Goes Berserk, you just want to hear what they're going to do next, which is about all you can of any album.

Trump: The Art of the Douche

Gosh, do you think Captain Combforward's big scoop is that his turd-in-a-punch-bowl teevee show is about to pull-start yet another wretched, interminable season? Experts' opinions vary! Some say that two plus two equals four, some say that it equals six. I say we can all get along, and agree to disagree that it's five, just for the sake of comity, if not reality.

Also, too, this toxic peckerhead's entertainment value has long outlived its shelf life, can we agree on that as well? Exactly how many times does The Greatest Country In The History Of Evah need to watch some variation on "Meat Loaf goes apeshit on Gary Busey"? Perhaps once we've lived the cycle of watching Honey Boo Boo auction her storage shed and spend her duck-call millions on a cee-ment pond, we'll achieve dipshit nirvana.

The ability of animals like Trump to not only survive but continue to thrive was certainly a factor in my deciding that there simply could not be a just and gracious god, when I was, like, ten years old. But really and come on, the fact that this gaping asshole still gets away with it, rubs your nose in it, sucka -- well, that proves not only that there is no god, but that there isn't even karma. I mean, sweet Jebus, can we not fire this jackass already?

Update [10/24/12 9:00 PDT]:  Ahahahahaha. These stupid publicity stunts of Drumpf's are like a nasty car wreck you pass by -- you really know you shouldn't slow down and look, but you just can't help it. And sure enough, it's always nastier than you thought, and lamer, and you end up walking away feeling worse about yourself and humanity. I actually hope Obama takes him up on it, just to watch Chump squirm and weasel out of his bluster.

Failing that, maybe we can all chip in a buck apiece, and bribe this dime-store asshole to go away already.

They Might Be Giants

Congrats to the local baseball heroes, the SF Giants, who became just the third team to come back from a 3-1 deficit in a league championship series to thump the Cardinals and pitcher Kyle Lohse, who grew up and went to high school up here near Chico. Should be a good matchup between the Giants and the well-rested Tigers, who dispatched noted assclown Donald Trump's pet Yankees.

So here's to what should be a good Series. The Giants have the upper hand on classic goofball personalities, with Posey, Panda, Pagan, Romo, and the rest of the weirdbeards. The Tigers are peaking at just the right time, and Verlander is the proverbial fireballer of the moment, with a 7-game playoff wininng streak going right now.

Either way, of the final four teams, this was the matchup that America wanted, whether they knew it or not. The last thing you needed was to watch the Steinbrenners bully, borrow, and derp their way to yet another store-bought champeenship. Buckle up and watch people actually have fun playing a kids' game, rather than some button-down pseudo-corporate dress-code bullshit.

Master Debaters Part 2: Binders Full of Women

So the Obama shows up last night to better expose Mittens for what he is --  a smug, pompous jackass who needs to kindly go away and hug his precious hectomillions already, leave us peons to what's left of our scraps for the next four years. Extra super bonus points for the faces of death Mrs. "You People" Rmoney and son Tagg "Tagg" projecting at the stage, apparently hoping for some effect on Obama. Not only that, Tagg was so darn angry, he was like totally gonna get up all in Obama's face and throw a punch at him, because he's a tough guychickenhawk just like dear ol' Dad.

Lest anyone out there on the intartubez might think this is schtick here, it isn't. If we talk about "character" mattering, then what sort of "character" does it take for someone to lead pro-Vietnam War counter-demonstrations at Stanford, while getting four deferments and then heading off for France? For a nation that refuses to forget the most marginal slight, it's something that this barely merits mention. It seems to me to be about the most chickenshit thing a man can do, to protest loudly and vociferously for poorer, less-connected kids to go fight and die, and turn tail yourself every bloody chance you get.

Anyhoo, the narrative is back on track, Obama will have just enough momentum to push him back over the top, but not enough to actually change anything, and in four years we'll be switching between the Andrew Cuomo-Todd Akin debates and Honey Boo Boo's Celebrity Rehab show, while holding on for dear life as Our Betters continue to skim 90% of what economic gains there are to be had.

Hair Today, Gall Tomorrow

Renaissance man and serial monogamist Donald Trump's twitter-twatting is the stuff of legend. Near as I can tell, this is not a parody. He coins amazing, memorable turns of phrase:

Boy howdy, if this century gets its own Algonquin Round Table going, the Trumpster's got a seat right next to Kanye West, ya heard? Jesus, I hope someone remembered to chronicle that timeless nugget o' wisdom.

But wait, there's more. He's not just the Samuel Johnson of the new millennium, you miserable peons. He's also a formidable baseball prognosticator:

Bang zoom, chumps! Forget that Verlander gave up three hits and one run (and that to start to ninth inning) in leading the Tigers to a 3-games-to-none leg up on the Yanks in the ALCS. The Donald has spoken.

It's Pronounced "Misery"

Considering a knuckle-dragging goon like Todd Akin actually has a decent shot at unseating Claire McCaskill, it seems a safe bet that there actually are voters in Missouri that will factor ludicrous quals such as a candidate's pronunciation into their choice. Guess that's simpler than, you know, reading up on the people and issues, and figuring out what is the most attuned with your own rational self-interest.

WYGIWYD

It's about time someone in the big leagues said it.

If you believe that Thursday night's vice-presidential debate was a "draw" because Joe Biden was "rude" and "disrespectful" while Paul Ryan was obviously being disingenuous and uninformed, or that you've decided to go with "disingenuous" and "uninformed" because its manners made it more "likable," then you deserve the inadequate health-care voucher that's coming your way in 2014, as well as the letter from the Social Security Administration that your benefits will be down to 85 cents a month because International Embezzlement LLC went belly-up and took your retirement with it. Tough luck, kids. Them's the risks of an Opportunity Society.

This is something I've harped on for months (probably years), but it really cannot be overstated. If you're a woman and you vote for Rmoney/Ryan, you bloody well deserve to have a conservative Mormon and a conservative Catholic tell you what your reproductive rights are (and more importantly, aren't). If you're gay and you vote for them, you deserve to have them and their knuckle-dragging surrogates tell you what a "real" family is, and treat you like a third-class citizen (or, you know, a chick).

If you care about scientific and technological advancement, and about America's primacy in the sci/tech fields, and you vote for self-styled teabagger morons, you deserve to have a school system that would rather teach your children that the earth was created in six days a few thousand years ago, than teach them to read and to be rigorous critical thinkers. If you're a working-class dog and you vote for a money-grubbing plutocrat who pulled his hectomillions out of the downsized hides of people who actually produced something worth buying, don't be surprised when your job gets sent to Shenzhen or Bangalore.

Conservative friends 'n' neighbors, all your high 'n' mighty valyews won't pay a day of your light bills, or make health care an iota more accessible, or put a dent in the upward siphoning of the economy to those who already have more than they could spend in five generations. If you like a landed aristocracy sucking your childrens' futures dryer than Phoenix will be in twenty years, keep on keepin' on.

Income for most workers has barely risen in the last 30 years, but the top 1 percent of earners have seen their income almost triple in the same amount of time.

Keep telling yourself that anything else is communism, and let us know how that works, how that's been working, for you.
 

Putting the "Mental" in Fundamentalism

At some point, we'll have to leave the Af-Pak area to these animals.

On Tuesday, masked Taliban gunmen answered Ms. Yousafzai’s courage with bullets, singling out the 14-year-old on a bus filled with terrified schoolchildren, then shooting her in the head and neck. Two other girls were also wounded in the attack. All three survived, but late on Tuesday doctors said that Ms. Yousafzai was in critical condition at a hospital in Peshawar, with a bullet possibly lodged close to her brain.

A Taliban spokesman, Ehsanullah Ehsan, confirmed by phone that Ms. Yousafzai had been the target, calling her crusade for education rights an “obscenity.”

      

“She has become a symbol of Western culture in the area; she was openly propagating it,” Mr. Ehsan said, adding that if she survived, the militants would certainly try to kill her again. “Let this be a lesson.”

Great. Yes, it would be twelve kinds of awesome sauce if someone could round up Ehsan and his buddies, and just end them once and for all. But by now, we should be able to see that it doesn't work that way, it'll never work that way, not with constant drone raids and collateral damage.

Just as there is no liberal counterpart to a twisted freak like Bill Tapley, so too is there no real western counterpart to the Taliban, to this scarily regressive, heavily bastardized perversion of Islam, that hates women and science, murders writers, threatens artists, molests boys, incites riots over comic drawings and fake films, wants nothing more than to bully and subjugate their societies back to the seventh century. Whatever idiots like Tapley, or "Pastor" Terry Jones, or even Fred Phelps are, they're not that, not by a longshot. Phelps is a king-size gaping asshole, but I'm pretty sure he never tried to assassinate an eighth-grade girl on a schoolbus.

But it's impossible at this point to imagine what we can actually do to alleviate the situation. I'm sure tough guy chickenhawk Sir Mitts-A-Lot wants to send other peoples' kids in to kick ass and take names, not only in Af-Pak, but Syria, Libya, and Iran to boot. No problem, right?

Again, let's just send as many planes in as we can to airlift out anyone who wants to leave, especially the women and children, leave the devout perverts to their own devices, see how well that goes for them. Hell, can't be much worse than it is now.

[Update 10/12/12:  Some glimmers of hope in this terrible story -- Malala Yousafzai has a fair chance of surviving the attack (to which, of course, the mighty warriors of the Taliban have vowed to go after her again, as well as her father), and there have been several days of public protests against these fiends. Again, it would be nice to believe that the Pakistani military could just go round these humps up, and plant them in a ditch forthwith. But of course it never works that way. The next best way is for the people themselves to rise up en masse against them, demonstrate that they've had enough of their violent medievalism.]

Shit For Brains, Part 2: The Poopening

I leave it to youse gentle readers out there to decide which is more appalling -- that a chuckleheaded clown like Paul Broun sits on the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee (along with noted ladyparts enthusiast Todd Akin), or that he is running unopposed for re-election.

Since the Georgia 10th was created a few years back by gerrymandering, it has been a safe 2-1 seat for the Republicans, even with a college town (Athens) in the district. But that's no excuse; you should never concede territory, especially to a well-known buffoon who's only held the seat for two terms. Hell, even Nancy Pelosi doesn't get to run unopposed.

If they can't muster the nerve to at least pretend to try to contest Broun's seat, the least the Dems can do is stick him on a committee where he can't do any real damage. Maybe if the U.S. can drop another ten or twenty notches in science education and aptitude, we might get serious about it. In the meantime, thanks a bunch, Real America, for keeping these short-bus goofballs off the unemployment rolls.

Shit For Brains

Senatuh Leghawn makes a funneh 'bout blah foke

Well gawrsh, I jest cain't unnerstan how fokes kin call suthunuhs a buncha inbred ingnint crackers:

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — Arkansas Republicans tried to distance themselves Saturday from a Republican state representative's assertion that slavery was a "blessing in disguise" and a Republican state House candidate who advocates deporting all Muslims.

....

Hubbard wrote in his 2009 self-published book, "Letters To The Editor: Confessions Of A Frustrated Conservative," that "the institution of slavery that the black race has long believed to be an abomination upon its people may actually have been a blessing in disguise." He also wrote that African-Americans were better off than they would have been had they not been captured and shipped to the United States.

Fuqua, who served in the Arkansas House from 1996 to 1998, wrote there is "no solution to the Muslim problem short of expelling all followers of the religion from the United States," in his 2012 book, titled "God's Law."

Seriously, what can you say about mouth-breathing dipshits such as these, in the year 2012? On the one hand, it's not like anyone bought their self-published retardery, but it's the principle of the matter. At least the Arkansas GOP rushed to distance themselves from this nonsense, but shit, how does this still happen, how does the stereotype perpetuate?

I really don't know what else to say, besides, fuck these assholes right in the neck.

Mock the Vote

So, uh, it seems that Ozzy Osbourne/Brenda Vaccaro impersonator and noted thespian Scott Stapp is disappointed in Barry O, so, you know, let that sway you however it will. No word yet on who Chad Kroeger's endorsing, but then, he's Canadian isn't he?

It's hard not to enjoy the dynamic in play here -- did Faux News have to flip a coin to decide between Stapp and, I dunno, Janine Turner? What sliver of Faux' Maalox-chugging demo will even have any idea who Stapp is in the first place? Just weird -- or indicative of Mittens' level of pull among H-list has-beens and never-weres.

сердечные друзья

So in playing with all these new dashboard tools on The Blogger, I see that after America, in a distant second place for readership is Russia, a country which I have some (one-eighth) kinship with, and an abiding (and inexplicable) affection for. Since I was a kid, I have been fascinated by the Russian language (I can still read it fluently, but don't have sufficient vocabulary to converse), history, and culture. I knew a couple of expatriate Russians when I lived in Mendocino County in the '90s, and found them to be loyal friends and excellent drinking buddies.

So maybe it's spam, but I'd like to assume it's real. Spasibo, dobro pozhalobat, druzya!

Blast from the Past

Seems like we're getting a lot of new traffic in here as of late, and while I'm learning the widgets and gadgets and such like as quickly as I can, it wouldn't hurt to revisit some classic posts for teh n00bz (welcome, btw). So in the spirit of footbal season, here's what I think stands well as the first real foundational, classic post of this blog:  Riffs On Football As Cultural Metaphor.

As always, read it with someone you love. (Caution:  Some linkrot may occur. It's a seven-year-old post. I'll fix up links when I get the chance.)