Cheap Blogging Crutch 07.14

Modern Toss' Periodic Table of British Swearing. Click to embiggen you 71 with 76 and a 79.

Maybe you were clued into this fact when you went outside last week and your brain melted, your shirt soaked through, and you begged unsuccessfully for God to kill you immediately, but it was fucking hot. The hottest January to June in recorded history. If you were one of those douches who complain the global warming is a myth or hoax or were one of those shitbags who was yelling how there couldn't be global warming because there was so much snow over the winter, know this: next time it hits 90 and I have to listen to one of you jerkoffs spout off about Al Gore, I'm lighting you on fire. Spread the word.

In The World Is Full of Deadbeat Scum News, remember all that money every country pledged to Haiti and then patted themselves on the back for, it's citizens clapping and cheering for the gesture and then never bothering to ever check back on to see how Haiti was doing? Turns out only 1.9% of that money has made it to Haiti. Not that it matters. That money was about making us feel better, not Haiti. And we do feel better. What's Haiti? Haven't even thought about it in months. Mission accomplished.

Are you one of those people who thinks that a gas station sandwich is too luxurious a gastronomic delicacy to partake in? Good news, that's why science has created Candwich: the Sandwich in a can. Maybe the idea of eating a BBQ chicken sandwich in a Mountain Dew can doesn't seem appealing, but did I mention there was a candy surprise? On the bright side, this product is the result of SEC fraud and a real estate swindle, and how many awful foodstuffs can say that?

If you had to guess where the nexus of dumb parents, dumb school districts, fear of technology, misunderstanding of technology, misunderstanding of drugs, and fear of youth gone wild was, Oklahoma would have to come up early in the discussion right? That's where a school district is under the grip of kids downloading and listening to "digital drugs" and "i-dosers", sounds/songs that are supposed to create a drug like euphoria. *sighs* This sounds like a town ripe for the taking from a shady monorail salesman. Whatever happened to huffing gas and listing to Dark Side of the Moon? I think everyone should just abide by my one rule: technology is a witch, burn it. It is responsible for the Candwich after all.

As some of you are aware, the threat of robot attack is constant. But today I bring you news of an even greater threat: psychic warrior octopi. Of course we are referring to Paul, a German octopus who correctly predicted the last eight World Cup matches. Some might say that this is just random luck and that the octopus was probably just picking flags based on which one has more yellow in it. To them I say: octopi are probably color blind. I think it's much more likely it can see around the curvature of spacetime and into the future.

We all love Mel Gibson and his humorous awful misogyny and equal opportunity racism. Even if it did likely cost us a movie where he walked around with a beaver hand puppet and then committed suicide. But for those who didn't like Mel's various affronts to all human decency, would perhaps cute kittens saying his most heinous 20 quotes change your mind? C'mon, forgive him. Look at the beaver movie picture. That goddamn thing has to be allowed come out.

Fuck you, consumers!

With the country solely focused on bullshit political theatre and ginning up it's Finland hate as a test run for hopefully a nationalist anti-Canada fervor on Sunday, some would say now is the best time to drop a disappointing bombshell about the upcoming massively disappointing financial legislation. So, take it away Barry!

The Obama administration is no longer insisting on the creation of a stand-alone consumer protection agency as a central element of the plan to remake regulation of the financial system.

In hopes of quick congressional approval of a reform bill, White House officials are opening the door to compromise with lawmakers concerned about creating a new bureaucracy, according to congressional and some administration sources.

President Obama's economic team is now open to housing the consumer regulator inside another agency, such as the Treasury Department, though they still prefer a stand-alone agency.
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The administration may also have to compromise on Obama's recent proposal for a rule to limit risky activities at banks by prohibiting them from engaging in many kinds of speculative investments.

What better way to have a agency that protects consumers than by housing it inside government organizations that unwaveringly cater to the interests of the financial sector and have made it a point of pride to ignore consumer interests? But, the Obama Administration still really, really wants a CFPA, they just aren't willing to spend one drop of sweat fighting for it and jettison it the first second some "lawmakers concerned about creating a new bureaucracy" (read: wholly owned subsidiaries of the financial industry) speaks up. If I recall correctly, that's the same strategy they had for the public option, which they totally still support. How'd that work out?

What's that you have to say about the CFPA, smart lady Elizabeth Warren?

"The CFPA is the heart of what makes regulatory reform work... We just can't pass a regulatory reform bill that acquiesces to the industry on every front... It's not ok to weaken the agency so much that, while everyone can vote yes and pretend to support consumers' right to a fair deal, nothing really changes."

Sorry, wasn't paying attention. Could you repeat that? Ahh, it probably wasn't important anyway.

Nice to see that they're also willing to compromise on Obama's plan to limit banks from acting as gambling casino type establishments. What did that plan last, a week?

I just think it's good to see that despite pulling down the world economy on top of itself in a orgy of bad decisions, then having to be kept from total eradication through government intervention with trillions of taxpayer dollars, and entirely jettisoning their credibility as experts or as people who aren't retarded, that the financial sector and banks can still lead our government around by the nose and get what it wants from our elected betters.

I'm sure listening to the idiots that caused this mess by weakening and cheapening every attempt made to regulate and improve the status quo while deciding to pussy out on actually protecting the people that just were simultaneously economically ruined by the financial sector and then had to bail them out is a smart way forward. I'm sure that nothing bad will ever come of it.

Years from now we'll look back, bedecked in our tattered rags, pausing for a moment in repose while blood is cleaned from the abandoned spillway where we've all gathered to watch the bloodsport that entertains us in the post-apocalyptic nightmare of a future we inhabit, and we'll say "Boy, I'm glad we listened to the people that shitted the economy." And then the alarms will sound and we'll all have to run, because the underground hobos will have risen from the sewers to make an attack on our grain silo. Thanks, Democrats!

One more go around

As the baby Jesus plans to bury most of the mid-Atlantic in another ice age (is it bad when the daily forecast icon is a laughing Satan wielding a dagger made of ice?), our elected betters have decided to make one last stab at health reform before our world is encased in another 20 feet of snow, permanently freezing our society for study by future alien archaeologists.

Is that plan actually passing a bill? No. God no. The plan is one more bullshit "bipartisanship" summit where the President hopes to take televised questions from the GOP and Democrats in order to negotiate a supposed way forward. .....Great. Can someone remind me again how that all worked out last time? Ah yes, numerous Republicans involved themselves in the process, slowed things down dramatically, got hundreds of amendments and concessions made, comprised half the group of six that essentially wrote the Senate bill, and then unanimously opposed it as they spent months completely lying about the content of the bill while spinning horror stories of death panels, socialism, government takeovers, and Bolshevik plots. I'm sure their plans and contributions will be equally constructive this time.

Eric Cantor’s office responds to Obama’s announcement of a bipartisan summit on health care with the most explicit and direct assertion I’ve seen yet that the only way Dems can win bipartisan cooperation is to fully embrace the GOP health care plan and nothing more:

After going it alone on health care reform for nearly a year, President Obama has decided he wants to bring Republicans into the conversation. Here’s the problem: unless the President and Speaker Pelosi are willing to scrap their government take over and hit the reset button, there’s not much to talk about.

Completely scrap health care and do what we want. Sounds great. Of course that's even if they bother to show up for all the "bipartisanship", as they're already complaining about being expected to negotiate in good faith.

I know Democrats think that if they just ask "pretty please" enough and reserve the right to add "sugar on top" at a later date that the GOP, contra to the last two decade's of worth of examples, will finally make an attempt to govern without naked political calculations in mind. Here's a helpful hint: Republicans don't want a health care reform bill, nothing you say will get them to contribute constructively as their goal is to completely kill what you are trying to do.

So, can you at least get that point through your thick Democrat skulls and just move forward, the House passing the Senate bill and then the Senate passing the conference committee changes through reconciliation, before we're all frozen to death? Not for the sake of this country. No, as I've said: most of us will be encased in ice by tomorrow. I'd just prefer it if the aliens that will be defrosting us in a thousand years won't be observing us at the pinnacle of our circle jerk government failing us yet again. It's probably probably too late to avoid that, but I'd like for us to try. Just so the aliens aren't totally embarrassed for us.

I am struggling to think of a 'freeze' related pun that hasn't been done to death at this point

Last week seemed promising on the economic front. Not in the sense that the economic numbers looked any better or anyone got a job in this country, but better. Mostly because the President seemed to jettison the ideas of Larry Summers and Tim Geithner and embrace Paul Volcker and the idea of actually getting tough on Wall Street. There finally seemed to be some interest in paying attention to unemployment and the peasants. Putting that "laser like jobs focus" on making sure we had nice plows and a sturdy mule for our new job opportunities toiling in the fields. Hell, It even looked like a Fed Chairman who was uninterested in getting unemployment figures to drop was going to ironically find himself jobless. Positive steps were being taken.

Then today came. President Obama announced his big economic idea for the State of the Union was to be an across the board spending freeze for all non defense spending. In other words: all the money spent that benefits us. We'll not dwell on the fact that Obama ridiculed this idea as not serious when John McCain said it. Instead we'll dwell on the fact that it's just cheap political theatrics and a terrible economic idea that will contribute to weakening the economy further. Because my beard isn't as great and the Nobel committee doesn't want to recognize my economic work, I'll let Paul Krugman explain.

A spending freeze? That’s the brilliant response of the Obama team to their first serious political setback? It’s appalling on every level.

It’s bad economics, depressing demand when the economy is still suffering from mass unemployment. Jonathan Zasloff writes that Obama seems to have decided to fire Tim Geithner and replace him with “the rotting corpse of Andrew Mellon”
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It’s bad long-run fiscal policy, shifting attention away from the essential need to reform health care and focusing on small change instead. And it’s a betrayal of everything Obama’s supporters thought they were working for.

Tell us how you really feel, Paul. I forgot to mention he also calls the idea "pure disaster". But hey, looking tough on the deficit, whether or not it shorts the GDP gap that government spending has to make up in order to get us out of this recession, is really really important. More important than making sure the economy is fixed.

Of course, a spending freeze isn't even that good a policy if you're looking to cut the deficit. A spending freeze on non-defense spending is almost useless. It's what someone does when they want to look like they're serious and pretend they're cutting the deficit. Looking serious combined with pretend action? Sounds familiar. At least they're combining it with something that will be politically popular and economically terrible.

So, on the bad side, it doesn't look like we're going to get a handle on that economy thing anytime soon. On the other hand, we are going to get a lot of cheap political pandering. If something makes the economy worse, is panned by most economists as a bad idea, but sounds good to Republican lawmakers, and gets the political media all in a Twitter over your decisive action on the deficit, who really loses? Sure, the American people will lose. But Barry needs some good political coverage. We need to take one for the team.

Money, money, money, money... mon-ey

When we all get together at out weekly These Bastards Tea Party meetings, what's the one thing we always say about politics? No, not "kill them all" or "More booze." I'm talking about how we all wish politicians and elections were influenced even more by corporate money. Well thankfully the Supreme Court heard our clarion call and read our feces strewn correspondence written with letters and words we cut out of Ladies Home Journal and came to the same conclusion.

Overruling two important precedents about the First Amendment rights of corporations, a bitterly divided Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that the government may not ban political spending by corporations in candidate elections.

The 5-to-4 decision was a vindication, the majority said, of the First Amendment’s most basic free speech principle — that the government has no business regulating political speech. The dissenters said that allowing corporate money to flood the political marketplace would corrupt democracy.

Whew, thank God. Politicians already listen way too much to the will of the people at the expense of large corporations. Now, there will finally be some balance and the little people will finally get to stop imposing their tyrannical reign on poor, poor put upon conglomerates. I mean who can't be thrilled to hear lobbyists respond to the ruling with articles full of stuff like this:

The Supreme Court has handed lobbyists a new weapon. A lobbyist can now tell any elected official: if you vote wrong, my company, labor union or interest group will spend unlimited sums explicitly advertising against your re-election.

“We have got a million we can spend advertising for you or against you — whichever one you want,’ ” a lobbyist can tell lawmakers, said Lawrence M. Noble...

Again, whew. Lobbyists just don't have enough access and wield enough power, finally they'll be able to do God's work more effectively.

Thankfully the Supreme Court is there to tell us that the people need to be made into a electoral underclass, roaming the depths undergrounds, eating what crumbs fall to us, and hissing at the light. Money equals speech and since corporations have more money than us, they deserve even more speech than us. Which is good, we were really drowning Big Oil, pharmaceutical giants, and financial companies out. I know we all thought we had too much influence over our elected betters. Well, the Supreme Court, in their infinite wisdom, agrees.

I can hardly wait for the first ad from a Wall Street company that was funded with bailout money. The 2010 midterms are going to be so great. Our suggestion? You know all that tremendous power and influence you wielded over the past few years? Well, remember it fondly. It was the high point in American Democracy. Why no, that isn't incredibly sad.

An announcement

It is with great sadness that I have to announce that effective immediately, Sean and I will be shutting down These Bastards. Now I know this comes as a tremendous blow to our billions upon billions of fans who have spent the past year plus organizing and building a society around the way we bitch about politics, mock religion, and do fake news, but it's time. "Why?" you might ask. Four words: whites only basketball league. Sean and I have to get ready for tryouts.

A new professional basketball league called the All-American Basketball Alliance (AABA) sent out a press release on Sunday saying that it intends to start its inaugural season in June, with teams in 12 U.S. cities. However, the AABA is different from other sports leagues because only players who are “natural born United States citizens with both parents of Caucasian race are eligible to play in the league.”
...
“There’s nothing hatred about what we’re doing,” he said. “I don’t hate anyone of color. But people of white, American-born citizens are in the minority now. Here’s a league for white players to play fundamental basketball, which they like.”
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“Would you want to go to the game and worry about a player flipping you off or attacking you in the stands or grabbing their crotch?” he said. “That’s the culture today, and in a free country we should have the right to move ourselves in a better direction.”

We do have one suggestion: call it the National Blacklessball Association. Otherwise we're proud to join the sporting equivalent of the teabaggers movement. In fact that's the team Sean and I will be trying out for; the Nashville Teabaggers. Other teams will include the Statesboro Defenders of White Cultural Heritage and the Birmingham Members of a Certain Secret Society... I Don't Believe I Gotta Mention Its Name, Heh-Heh.

So if you're like us and you hate taking a basketball beat down from Negroes making showboat passes, pretending the ball is a yo-yo, bringing out a step ladder onto the court, employing a bucket full of confetti, all the while whistling "Sweet Georgia Brown", then there's a place for you: 1930's Alabama. Also: one of 12 cities that are part of the AABA, starting in June.

Ahh, a league bereft of blacks and Argentinians... it's a dream come true. Frankly the opportunity to strike it rich in a regional all white basketball league is the only thing that could make Sean and I stop the unending money spigot that is a news commentary and political satire blog. But we've just got to practice our layups and set-shots. The white man has been oppressed for too long. Now whites will finally have something of our own.

Lawyering 101

Some of you may have been paying attention to the new Most Important Story Ever of the Week, which, in a shocking turn, is actually mildly relevant this time around. Yes, the whole Leno/Conan/NBC clusterfuck over whether we have to wait until 12:05 to watch something funny or if we'll be watching something funny at 11:35 on Fox. Well, at least 10-11 on NBC has been cleansed.

But in the battle Conan O'Brien wages to not let middle of the road milquetoast comedy return to our post 11 o'clock news lives, one interesting fact has arisen. It seems that in his fight to actually get the Tonight Show in the first place, Conan and his lawyers forgot to specify one tiny little detail of minor importance.

When Conan O'Brien took on hosting duties of The Tonight Show, he had a team of lawyers negotiating his terms. Unfortunately, they neglected to specify a time slot, meaning NBC could put Conan on at whatever time they wanted, as long as he was still hosting The Tonight Show.

According to Business Insider this means Conan can't switch to another network without "voiding his contract and passing on the tens of millions of dollars he would otherwise be owed."

Whoops. That sound you just heard was Conan pausing from his mid-morning cardio of smashing Jay Leno bobbleheads and that muffin basket NBC sent over with a cricket bat to contemplate how deep and how alive his lawyers should be buried after he finds them. I hope he hasn't already paid out the billable hours they charged to negotiate his contract.

I don't know, but that sounds like some Lawyer 101 type shit. "Rule 2C, Subsection G: Make sure the contract actually says what you think it says and that you get what you actually think you're getting." It seems to me that a large part of getting the Tonight Show at 11:35 is the whole 11:35 part. It's almost Yoo-esque in it's incompetence.

But as a haggard Andy Richter desperately knocks the shotgun out of Conan's mouth just before he can pull the trigger, we all realize what the one good thing about Leno being on at 11:35 is: that's the exact same time the Colbert Report is on. It'll be like nothing's on NBC from 11:35-12:05 and it's one less complicated DVR scheduling issue you'll have to work out. Thanks for making our lives easier, NBC.

As an addendum, here's Patton Oswalt commenting on the situation and why Jay Leno is like Nixon.

Oh no you don't

What would be the most unforgivable thing Barack Hussein Obama could do? It's not completely fuck up health care reform. It's not keeping a frightening number of Bush Administration legal policies. It's not escalating Afghanistan. And it's not being a socialist Kenyan Mooslem black nationalist who wants to detonate the Bill of Rights with his underpants bomb. No, it's this:

ABC insiders may soon want to tell President Obama to get "Lost."

The White House is finalizing plans for this year's State of the Union address and is said to be mulling two dates for the speech, according to a person familiar with the matter: Jan. 26 and Feb. 2.

So what's wrong with that? Well, Jan. 26 would mean an interruption of "American Idol" -- though Fox likely planned for that (or would simply tell the White House to take a hike, as it has before).

But Feb. 2? Other than the fact that it's a holiday (Groundhog Day/TV MoJoe's birthday), that's the date ABC months ago staked out for the premiere of the final season of "Lost."

BARRY, YOU SON OF A BITCH! DON'T MESS WITH MY EMOTIONS!

Isn't there something in the Constitution or the Magna Carta that says "Thous shalt be required to give the State of the Union on the first Tuesday of the second month of the year. That is, of course, unless there is the invention of a magical picture box that will debut the first part of the final installment of a popular dramatical play. Then it shall be moved to when some other dumb ass bullshit is on. So sayeth the founding fathers."

Is there really any question what to bump? American Idol. Or, if you don't want to enrage all the rural tractor riding bible thumpin' coal miners who watch it, you interrupt some other goddamn night where there isn't a good show on. Priorities Barry, priorities. We already know the state of the union: shitty and probably going to get shittier. Unless you're going to tell us what the smoke monster is in between praising the health care bill and outlining a jobs bill, don't waste our time.

I'm serious. Don't you do it, Barack. Lost baby, it's Lost.

Es-ca-late good times, come on!

Well, the news is in and much to everyone's surprise, America is escalating the war in Afghanistan. And because it was a hard decision and stuff and President Obama isn't, like, totally beholden to the military and junk, he's only sending 30,000 troops. Hell, only adding 30k? That's practically like bringing all the troops home. Anyway, he'll explain it all tonight in his speech from West Point. Here's the main thrust.

In bringing the total American force to nearly 100,000 troops by the end of May, the administration will move far faster than it had originally planned. Until recently, discussions focused on a deployment that would take a year, but Mr. Obama concluded that the situation required “more, sooner,” as one official said, explaining the some of the central conclusions Mr. Obama reached at the end of a nearly three-month review of American war strategy.
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The strategy aims to prevent Al Qaeda from returning to Afghanistan, whose territory it used to prepare for the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, and to keep Taliban insurgents from toppling the government there. The 30,000 new American troops will focus on securing a number of population centers in Afghanistan where the Taliban are strongest, including Kandahar in the south and Khost in the east, the officials said. The American forces, they said, will pair up with specific Afghan units in an effort to end eight years of frustrating attempts to build them into an independent fighting force.

The point, besides the President burnishing his "not a pussy" credentials, is for take less committed Taliban members and try to reintegrate them into society and give them paying jobs while at the same time holding major population centers in an attempt to give Afghans a chance to build up their infrastructure, economy, and government without bomby/shooty interference. At the very least it'll give the Taliban nicer shit to shoot at and bomb after this "don't call it a surge" surge ends. Ideally the Taliban will be weakened and the Afghans will have an easier enemy to deal with that they can fight on their own. You know, usually I'd laugh at that, but after hearing that joke so many times over so many wars and military actions on so many continents over so many decades, it stops being funny.

On the plus side, President Obama will be giving us a time table. Ultimately it'll be a time table for him telling us why we can never leave Afghanistan, but for the moment we can all pretend we'll be out of there sometime before our grandkids are old enough to fight there. So it's basically another round of "No, see, this time our plan is even better" sprinkled with a liberal dose of "No, we're totally going to be able to train Afghans into a fighting force that is sufficient enough to completely take over fighting an enemy that the most technologically superior army in the world has been baffled by", some "this blank check I'm handing them isn't a blank check", with a little "While it may look like I'm doing all the same stupid stuff that Bush did, I'm totally doing it in a smart way", finally finishing up with "It's all going to work out, baby. You can trust me."

I'm sure this is all a great idea and will work out fine. You really need a full decade to really understand the ins and outs of a war.

Middle ground

I'm not exactly for an escalation in Afghanistan. Shocker, I know. I'm especially not for it after having watched the Frontline special Obama's War (which you can view in its entirety here) which could only get those pushing for troop increases to explain how the strategy would take shape and not why we should use that strategy or whether or not it was even a good idea in the first place. In addition it couldn't find Afghans that thought it was a good idea or we were positively contributing to things over there, and then finished up by making the point that Pakistan, our supposed other ally there, was almost assuredly our enemy. That being said, can we not do shit like this?

As the Obama administration debates whether to shift its aims in Afghanistan, officials at the Pentagon and National Security Council have begun developing "middle path" strategies that would require fewer troops than their ground commander is seeking.
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Other steps would concentrate U.S. and allied troops in cities, pulling out of Afghanistan's widely dispersed rural areas. At the same time, the allied forces would push ahead with plans to intensify training of Afghan troops, officials said.

None of the strategies envision troop reductions, but officials said they would not require the 40,000-troop increase preferred by Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the U.S. and allied commander. A number of White House officials favor sending fewer than 20,000 additional troops.

Great. Since there only seems to be two plans, General McChrystal's and VP Joe Biden's, can we just pick one of them and do it? I'm no military expert, but I'm fairly sure McChrystal has at least some idea of what he's doing, and that furthermore, when he conceived of a plan he knew enough to ask for enough resources to do it to the best of his abilities. Same for an experienced foreign policy hand like Biden. So can we at least do what the two main experts and their groups of supporters want to do in the exact way they want to do it instead of finding some middle road strategy concocted by political brokers in a sad attempt to please everyone?

When does taking two opposite plans and doing what's halfway between them ever worked in a military situation? Didn't we learn that in Iraq? Don't half ass and piecemeal plans according to whims, notions, and hunches in an attempt to please everyone, just pick one way and commit to it fully. This isn't a sampler platter.

So long, fat man

Looks like it took Checketts and crew just over a week to figure out what pretty much everyone knew from the start: Rush Limbaugh is a giant fucking liability.

Conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh was dropped from a group bidding to buy the St. Louis Rams...

...Limbaugh was to be a limited partner in a group headed by St. Louis Blues chairman Dave Checketts. Checketts said in a statement Wednesday that Limbaugh's participation had become a complication in the group's efforts and the bid will move forward without him.

So much for watching an all-white professional football team get stomped to jelly.

Afghan shenanigans

Afghanistan has been in the news a lot recently. From the President surprisingly (sarcasm) ruling out a reduction in troops today after he spent an entire political campaign running on an Afghan troop increase, to the GOP telling Nancy Pelosi that they were going to put her "in her place" just because she pointed out that House Democrats might not be so eager to support an Afghan troop increase just because Gen. McChrystal wants one. Plus there's this little matter of the UN firing it's #2 man in Afghanistan, Peter Galbraith. Why? Just because he had a little problem with the whole matter of Hamid Karzai stealing the recent election there.

The United Nations fired its No. 2 official in Afghanistan on Wednesday after the diplomat, Peter W. Galbraith, wrote a scathing letter accusing the head of the mission here of concealing election fraud that benefited the campaign of the incumbent president, Hamid Karzai.

“For a long time after the elections, Kai denied that significant fraud had taken place, even going to the extreme of ordering U.N. staff not to discuss the matter,” Mr. Galbraith wrote in the letter, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times.

“And, at critical stages in the process,” he wrote, “he blocked me and other U.N.A.M.A. professional staff from taking effective action that might have limited the fraud or enabled the Afghan electoral institutions to address it more effectively.” U.N.A.M.A. refers to the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan

The UN then got even angrier because he decided to point that out in newspapers nationwide. I think what they want Galbraith, and the world, to understand is something we've discussed on this blog a few times: when an election is rigged to put or keep someone we like in power, then that's just an extension of the category we like to cal "democracy working". When elections are rigged to put or keep people we don't like into power, or even a legitimate election puts someone we don't like into power, that's what we call "a travesty of democracy", a "subversion of the people", and "something we need to invade over." This is the basic theory of democracy in relation to foreign policy and Galbraith should understand that as the UN's #2 man in Afghanistan. Excuse me, former #2 man.

So the leader is rigging elections, everyone is scrambling to cover it up, the Taliban is resurgent, we don't have enough troops, casualties are on the rise, and everyone stopped caring about this when everyone realized no noe in government cared about catching that "9/11 mastermind" guy. Yeah, this definitely sounds like a massive troop increase is the right and popular thing to do.

Cheap Blogging Crutch 08.13

'Walking Dead' strolls to AMC
Robert Kirkman's zombie comic The Walking Dead. Weekly series on AMC, network of Mad Men and Breaking Bad. Written and directed by Frank Darabont. Woo, and might I add, hoo. You're all lucky Blogspot can't audibly transmit the sound of a boner happening, otherwise you'd be hearing it now.

'SPIDER-MAN' A NO-SHOW
Sadly this nation's greatest chance to pay for the privilege of gawking at an absolute trainwreck, a $45 million Spider-Man musical written by U2, has fallen by the wayside as show runners realized the stupidity of their idea and the fact that this show would in no way be profitable. I will say this doesn't bode well for the $50 million dollar musical Sean and I wrote about the Thundercats.

Jim Cramer's Housing Bottom Call Revisited (VIDEO)
Miss that happy feeling you used to get when you got to see Jim Cramer on the TV getting his testicles stolen by John Stewart or generally just apologizing for being an awful financial guru? Don't worry, he's still out there making terrible predictions about the housing market. Go point and laugh, my children.

Death Panels
Joe Klein of Time Magazine takes on the asinine "death panel" nonsense the debate on health care has turned into. He does it by explaining what the provision that Sarah Palin and her inbred ilk are distorting actually says and by providing a personal example of the usefulness of such a program. It of course won't get covered as much as Senator Grassley smearing himself in his own excrement and yelling about how a man from the government buried his grandmother alive to save a nickel for his socialist masters.

Fox News gets okay to misinform public, court ruling
We all knew deep down in our hearts that this was true, but it's nice to finally have the courts officially rule on it. It is in fact perfectly legal to lie and use your airwaves as a promotional vehicle for those lies even as you are touting yourself as a news program or news network. Whew! Fox dodged a bullet there. Can you imagine what that place would be like if Hannity or Beck had to tell the truth? Ah well, consider this a favor from the courts to the Especially Gruesome Suicide Clean-up Division of the NYPD.

Broken In Brief: Spain thanks visitors for attending San Fermin festi...OH FUCK!! BULLS! RUN!

PAMPLONA—Today city and business leaders gathered in the city square to thank visitors for coming to the city to help them celebrate the world famous San Fermin festival. The ceremony was used to not only mark the end of the San Fermin celebrations but also as kickoff of a new promotional campaign to attract tourist dollars outside of the traditional one-week festival window. It began with the mayoress …wait, does anyone else feel that rumbling? I swear I feel rumbling and hear animal calls and the panicked cries of helpless humans.

“We would just like to commemorate the completion of this sacred event that has taken place here since 1591,” declared Mayoress Yolanda Barcina. “Furthermore I would just like to thank the hundreds of thousands of tourists who have traveled to our city. In such harsh economic times we are buoyed by the support our festival has recie…THE BULLS!!!! WE FORGOT TO LOCK THEM UP!!!! OH SHIT THEY'RE GOING TO SLAUGHTER US! RUN FOR YOU LIVES BEFORE YOU'RE TRAMPLED UNDER THEIR CLOVEN DEATH HOOVES!!”

The mayoress' comments, which the assembled masses felt were...OH FUCK! SHE WASN'T KIDDING!! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!! BULLS!!!

Oh God, I think we're safe behind this food vendor's cart. Don't expose any flesh or let the bulls know we're hiding here. Give me a second, I need to compose myself. The San Fermin festival has for years....JESUS, THERE'S MORE OF THEM!!! WHAT IN GOD'S NAME IS WRONG WITH THIS PLACE? WHO WOULD CELEBRATE THIS ON A YEARLY BASIS? WHY WOULD ANYONE HOLD SO MANY DANGEROUS ANIMALS WITHIN THE CITY LIMITS?

The festival, held in honor of St. Fermin has been…OH JESUS THAT BROWN ONE JUST GORED THAT MAN FROM THE AP RIGHT IN THE HEAD!! HE HAD A FAMILY! FUCK THEY’VE NOTICED US! RUN!! RUN!! LEAVE THIS PLACE!! WE MUST NEVER RETURN!!

Quote of the day

Congressional Quarterly's Carl Crawford on his general impressions of the GOP's performance in the first day of questioning Sonia Sotomayor:

They are coming across as a bunch of snarky and bitter old white men who cannot bear the thought of their kind losing power.

Yeah, that's pretty much on point.

Still it probably would have helped their case if the Republicans hadn't let the first guy to ask questions be Jeff Sessions, a man who the judicial committee refused to seat on the federal bench in 1986 because of his hostility to the idea of civil rights and his "gross insensitivity on racial issues". Oh well, we'll just chalk this one up as a "learning experience" and hope they do better if Obama mistakenly tries to nominate anther non-white to the Supreme Court.

Note to Iranians

With protest crackdowns continuing, Khamenei continuing to blame the British for everything, calls for the west to stop influencing those damned impressionable Iranian kids, and Jon Bon Jovi making everything better, I have to say I'm not behind all the tactics protesters are using. If you want to overthrow the power structure that is oppressing you and gain the help of members of the government to do it, it's best not to announce your plans ahead of time. Seems to me its the sort of thing that would be frowned upon when announced out loud.

The power struggle inside Iran appears to be moving from the streets into the heart of the regime itself this weekend amid reports that Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani is plotting to undermine the power of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Rafsanjani's manoeuvres against Khamenei come as tensions between the speaker of the parliament, Ali Larijani, and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also appeared to be coming to a head.
...
In the past few days, Larijani - who was fired by Ahmadinejad as chief negotiator on nuclear issues with the west - has announced his intention of setting up a parliamentary committee to examine the recent post-election violence in an "even-handed way". In response, Ahmadinejad supporters within the parliament have discussed the possibility of impeaching Larijani.

In a move with even greater potential significance, according to several reports Rafsanjani has been lobbying fellow members of the powerful 86-strong Assembly of Experts, which he chairs, to replace Khamenei as the supreme leader with a small committee of senior ayatollahs, of which Khamenei would be a member. If Rafsanjani were successful, the constitutional change would mean a profound shift in the balance of power within Iran's theocratic regime.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe walking the halls shouting "I'm looking to remove the Supreme Leader from power, would anyone want to publicly join my campaign to oust him and the "elected" President of Iran? Meet me in the lobby!" Seems to me while you may think you're speaking about taking the power back, it sounds more like you're saying "Hey Basij, please beat me and imprison me! You get to pick the order of those two choices!"

That said I think you're gonna win out. I mean look how badly Khamenei overreached. Now he's trying to overthrow Honduras. I think you'll be able to gain the upper hand when he has to go toe to toe in a border dispute with Hugo Chavez.

Why aren't these movies out yet?

The Yellow Star of Sophia and Eton

Britney Spears could be set to follow her successful Circus tour with a role in a new film, according to reports. The 27-year-old star is still touring the world with her Circus tour, and it is claimed a script for a film called The Yellow Star of Sophia and Eton has been handed to Britney to look at.

If she accepts the role, Britney will reportedly play the main role of Sophia LaMont, who creates a time machine and travels back to World War II where she meets a Jewish man called Eton at a concentration camp.

They then fall in love and travel back to the present day with the intention of getting married but they are both killed by Nazis.

Boogie Town

The film is described as a "West Side Story" for the hip hop generation. The story takes place in a futuristic New York City, in the year of 2015 where dancing battles are strictly prohibited. Micha (Marques Houston), a very skilled dancer, begins an underground dancing arena known as "Boogie Town", where dancing teams battle in "Winner Take All" matches. Micha and his crew known as "The Trojans" are long time rivals with "The Warriors" which is led by Jay (Mykal Anthony Bean), his former mentor and once longtime friend.

Both Micha and Jay have "ENERGY", a mysterious and supernatural power. But when Jay finds out that Natalie (Brenda Song), his younger sister, has been secretly dating Micha, the feud between "The Trojans" and "The Warriors" escalates onto the streets. So the only way to have the ultimate Dance-Off where the loser must leave town for good.

A Britney Spears concentration camp drama? A dystopian New York where dancing is outlawed and mutants have power fueled dance offs? Where can I get in line? These sound even more gloriously stupid than a racist robot filled Transformers sequel.

AdSense

An ad drawn up for Disney/Buena Vista International by M&C Saatchi titled "Life should be a little more Disney". The first two? Rather mundane vignettes about cleaning up. The third one above...yeah...kind of flies off the rails there. I don't understand why these never went up anywhere.

Someone want to slap Bernanke?

Bernanke Says U.S. Banks Must Test More to Identify Other Risks

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said efforts by U.S. banks to raise capital are “encouraging” and called on firms to identify other risks through internal stress tests.

The banks, especially those with “trading and investment banking businesses,” should keep monitoring “operational, liquidity and reputational risks,” which weren’t addressed by the exam concluded last week, Bernanke said in a speech yesterday at a Fed conference in Jekyll Island, Georgia.

Yeah Ben, I'm sure they'll get right on the self-testing. Just like they got on the self-regulation and self-correction during the Bush years. You know what's going to happen if you're relying on banks to self-test? Nothing. Nothing is going to happen. Why? Because financial institutions live to avoid regulation. The only financial innovation to happen in the last decade has been in discovering ways to circumvent rules, ignore rules, evade detection, and in new lobbying techniques to get current rules weakened.

You know we just handed out trillions of dollars. Maybe we should, I don't know, keep tabs on that ourselves? Just an idea I had. Maybe we should be the ones assessing the strength of banks and financial institutions so we can, I don't know, be ahead of the curve? Know what's going on? Find out whether or not this is going to happen again in 6 months? I know Benny, you just don't want to do your job. You thought reducing interest rates to zero would effectively give you nothing else to do. Now that black guy wants you to exercise a modicum of oversight on banks. You want them to do it themselves. It's summer. It's golf time. Does no one understand?

Maybe you should just pretend to do oversight. Pretend to stress test. Sure, failure of oversight and regulation helped grease the skids for one massive economic collapse, but it's never gone and caused two collapses back-to-back. History is on your side. Go get your clubs, the first tee awaits.

Why wasn't I informed this existed?

The FEMA backed 9/11 coloring book for kids is no more.

The Smoking Gun reports that FEMA has “removed a children’s coloring book from its web site following criticism over its inclusion of drawings of the September 11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. The coloring book, titled ‘A Scary Thing Happened,’ is geared towards helping kids ‘cope with disasters.’”

Now they'll have to learn about "the day that changed everything" and color usage in some other way. On the other hand, this'll probably save kids from overusing their grey crayons. Those towers were a bitch to color in and they were on every page.