Not the time, David

Yesterday we learned about the poor, poor BP executives, the hardships they're going through, and how Americans are callously withholding their sympathy for shitbags who cause oil spills.

Sure, having a BP CEO tell us we should lay off and stop hating them so much is one thing, but where is one of our elected betters to tell us that same thing and hamper any attempt to make BP liable for this? Surely there must be one asshole who is so completely bought and paid for by an oil company that he cannot help himself and starts pushing to help out BP. Anyone? Anyone? What's that, Louisiana Senator David Vitter? You say you don't want to be Senator anymore? Continue.

What happens when you're a small government, pro-business conservative and your state gets pummeled by one of the worst man made disasters ever – not five years after getting pummeled by one of the worst natural disasters (Hurricane Katrina)? If you're Louisiana Senator David Vitter, you double down on offshore drilling and push for a liability cap for BP.

Doubling down on drilling is not particularly surprising. Much of Louisiana's much-needed revenue comes from off-shore drilling leases. “By the same token, after every plane crash, you and I should both oppose plane travel,” Vitter quipped on Sunday to CNN's Candy Crowley. “I don't think that is rational.”
...
But it's Vitter's early support of a liability cap – he introduced legislation that he promoted in last weekend's weekly GOP radio address – he introduced legislation that he promoted in last weekend's weekly GOP radio address – that's landing the son of a Chevron petroleum engineer in trouble.

Nicely played. For the last month a busted offshore oil rig has been pouring seemingly every drop of oil in the earth into the Gulf and is in the process of ruining large parts of your state, which -if you remember- is Louisiana. So of course now is the proper time to start bitching about people who suddenly don't think offshore drilling is such a great idea, 1) because the safety procedures seems so lax, and 2) because there seems to be know way to stop the oil if one breaks. Don't forget to try to limit the amount the responsible party has to pay out in damages. I mean, why should BP be responsible for all the oil BP spills and all the costs relating to all the oil they spilled? That's madness.

It's a nice "Idiot provides opponents, opposing party, and constituents with gun, fish, an barrel during re-election campaign" story. Usually politicians aren't that stupid, especially when somehow they've been able to survive the whole "Moral crusader gets famously busted for buying hookers"/Bayou whoremaster thing. But I guess BP has given him rather a lot of money over the years and he feels he owes them. Vitter is, of course, getting pilloried by anyone with a microphone in Louisiana.

So here's TB election tip #132b: During this election season, maybe you don't want to go out of your way to publicly call for more offshore drilling and attempt to legally protect corporations from paying for all the damage they've caused. It may be unpopular with people who like coasts and water that's mostly comprised of, uh, water.

The coveted These Bastards endorsement

Today are the GOP and Democratic primaries for the Texas Governorship. If you happen to be from Texas, well, FUCK YOU!! Sorry, that just come rushing out of me, I don't know why. Actually, I do. You deserve it.

Irregardless, if you happen to be one of those Texas rarities we call a Democrat and you have not been driven out of the state like so much cattle, then we would like to demand you vote for someone. That man is Farouk.

I don't know if that's his last name or his first name. I don't know if he's an insane person, an average candidate, or Jesus incarnate. I don't know any belief he holds, policy he supports, or anything other than this one single fact: he authorized an autotuned rap/R&B song to remind people to get out and vote for him.

I don't need to hear a second thing.



FAROUK! FAROUK! FAROUK! is on fi-ah!

Serving the community: his numba one des-i-yah!

Please Texas, elect this man to something.

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.

Democracy in action

New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg, America's benevolent rich political overlord, is setting records. The kind of records that make you glad that only billionaires can afford to run for any elected office of substance in this country.

Bloomberg, a former Republican who ran this time as an Independent, spent more than $85 million of his personal fortune on the race – dwarfing the amount Thompson raised – the most cash dispensed for a self-financed campaign ever. This brings the total amount he's spent for three terms to a quarter of a billion dollars.

For those of you scoring at home, he outspent his closest opponent, Generic Democrat, by almost 20-1. And he still had to squeak out a win. That isn't even counting all the money he had to spend to get the city to repeal the term limit laws so that he could run again.

Add this to the $22.6 million from his Goldman-Sachs golden parachute ($125 million total for all his political campaigns put together) that repellent loser Jon Corzine spent making sure he lost to fat, repellent loser Chris Christie in the New Jersey governor's race. Don't worry, the ultra rich former McCain adviser who tried to run Hewlett-Packard into the ground, Carly Fiorina, is going to show the people of California that they need not be ruled by mere multi-millionaires like Barbara Boxer.

Ahh, doesn't it make you feel proud to be an American? Right now, even as we speak, children are looking at this and dreaming of a future where they to make hundreds of millions in various business fields and thus are deemed by our media elite as "serious" enough and "expert" enough to run for higher office, or are, at the very least, able to fund their own primary campaign against the other billionaires that are running for the chance to run for the seat. *sniff* Makes you glad to be alive right now, where being rich makes you qualified to make laws instead of just merely having them not apply to you. It's a grand time.

NYC Mayoral "race" art

As New Yorkers prepare to reaffirm their King vote for their preferred mayoral candidate tomorrow, I think it appropriate to point out certain similarities between the media campaigns of two very unfunny people....


As you were.

Cheap Blogging Crutch 06.30

How a Loophole Benefits GE in Bank Rescue
Want to know how GE is able to garner billions in business loans from the TARP program despite not being a bank? So would the government. Thanks to loopholes, namely that GE literally owns two banks in Utah, they get to borrow money at a low interest rate to fund the rest of their bullshit. And you were worried that our elected betters were going to write, enact, and oversee these programs in a shoddy manner.

Ahmadinejad Calls for Investigation Into 'Suspicious' Death of Neda Soltan
What are the odds that she was covertly murdered by either American or British forces seeking to destabilize the legitimately elected government of Iran? It's a shame OJ got framed or else he'd be able to help hunt for the real killers with Mahmoud on some Iranian golf course.

Cheney Worried That Iraq Withdrawal Will ‘Waste’ The Sacrifice By U.S. Troops
The Dick seems to think that anything less than staying in Iraq for eternity will mean that American soldiers lives were wasted or something. You know what I think might have helped contribute to the "wasting" of US soldier's "sacrifice"? All those years the Bush administration spent wasting US soldier's sacrifices. But then again, maybe someone will finally uncover those weapons of mass destruction and ties to al-Qaeda in a way that completely validates Cheney and Rumsfeld's strategies for the first couple of years of this war.

Romney: Republicans ‘Believe In Allowing People To Have Choice In Their Health Care’ — Except A Public Option
Mitt Romney came out and outlined what the GOP wants the American citizen to get in any proposed health care program that none of them will ever vote for. They definitely want you to have choice and they definitely want things to be cheaper, they just don't see the need to do that in anyway that means you actually get a choice or cheaper health care. Glad that's all cleared up.

"The Commission Has Been Road-Blocked": Republicans' War On The FEC
Did you know that the FEC is a fucked over pile of burning shit that refuses to prosecute election violations because Bush packed it with people who are ideologically opposed to the existence of the FEC? Now you do. Give it a read, it involves criminal actions to suppress and intimidate voters and donations going unpunished and a comical appearance by a person described as "Tom Delay's ethics lawyer."

Michael Jackson's Last Video: One Of The Sets Was A Cemetery
Are you ready for the hundreds of pieces where news organizations take one small thing about Michael Jackson's work and then blow it up to intimate that he was presaging his own demise? Here's one of the first. Christ, I hope no one shows them the Thriller video.

Iran's Post-Election Uprising: Hopes & Fears Revealed
A little tale on Iranian voting, the coup, and the crackdowns all done in the style of Persepolis, of which you should read or watch.

MGM Digital Media
Want the ability to watch several of MGM's most terrible and cheaply made movies on YouTube? Great news then, you can either watch an Inspector Clouseau movie that has Alan Arkin in it instead of Peter Sellers, an Amityville sequel, the Casino Royale that doesn't have Daniel Craig in it, or one of Robert Townsend's lesser works. I don't know what we would have done if you didn't put these up MGM.

In a world...

Where abstract, simplistic bullshit breeds with a misappropriation of militarism and crocodile tears...



And I quote, "When Life, Family (including traditional marriage) and Faith are preeminent, solutions to other lesser issues will come into focus."

You may start your discussion of those other, lesser issues in the comments thread.

So say the McCainiacs: voting is cheating

McCain Supporters Heckle Early Voters, Call Them 'Cheaters'

Photographer Joe Eddins and I headed over to the closest one and found a steady line of voters hoping to cast ballots early. Most seemed to be Obama supporters and several had come from the rally. Nearly all the voters were black.

Also at the polling site was a group of loud and angry protesters who shouted and mocked the voters as they walked in. Nearly all were white.

As you can see from these videos, no one held anything back. People were shouting about Obama's acknowledged cocaine use as a young man, abortion and one man used the word "terrorist." They also were complaining that Sundays are for church, not voting.

Well done McCain supporters. I know 'retro' is the hip thing nowadays, but it's just supposed to be about music, clothing, and design...not racial attitudes. You know, a group of predominantly white people heaping abuse on a group of predominantly black people for wanting to exercise fundamental constitutional rights is so....1964. At least put on a fedora, dress like Don Draper and pretend it's Halloween related sixties political theatrics. Don't be so overt is all I'm saying.

Although I am intrigued by this concept of early voting constituting cheating. Are they concerned that by casting your vote early you are thereby denying McCain a full month's worth of chances to grind down your will or mindfuck you into voting for him? Are you cheating by casting a vote for a Democrat in North Carolina? Ignoring God's will by voting against his chosen candidate on the Sabbath, engaging in the rare double-blasphemy? In any event, here's a list of the state by state rules in case you want to do some early voting cheating. My state only allows me to cheat on November 4th.

McCain just can't stop himself

From the Oxdown Gazette comes a little look into John McCain's Clean Election and Voter Fraud Committee. I think you can tell where this is going just from the name. This, of course, is the committee he formed because he's pissed off ACORN is legally required to turn in all applications it receives, even if they are fraudulent, and is seriously concerned with the fact that someone might turn up to vote as Mickey Mouse. He's really concerned about voter fraud, even though actual voter fraud is nearly non-existent....and this with a Karl Rove led effort to push this hard in the Justice Department (which had a large part to play in that whole attorney firing scandal)

Turns out five of it's members are involved in.....Republican voter supression efforts. Go to Oxdown for the full rundown.

• Tom Davis, who has a history of openly discussing and engaging in voter suppression techniques
• Cameron Quinn, who was a director of the Republican voter suppression front group, the American Center for Voting Rights.
• California Secretary of State Bill Jones, who has long fought for ways to make it more difficult for people to vote.
• Susan Molinari who cried wolf about voter fraud in 2004 and 2006, only to find her allegations proven false.
• Larry D. Thompson ho hired Bradley Schlozman to work in the Justice Department where he approved Tom Delay’s redistricting plan, GA’s modern “Jim Crow Law” and pursued politicized indictments against ACORN in MO.

Isn't that just like McCain, he throws a big stink about the kind of voter fraud that almost never occurs while hiring a collection of operatives who regularly engage in the kind of voter suppression that does have large effects of voting and disenfranchises legal voters. It's almost like he willfully makes the most hypocritical choices he can. He reminds me of Abe Simpson in the Curse of the Flying Hellfish episode

Burns: Oh, Simpson, can't you go five seconds without humiliating
yourself?
[Abe's pants go down with a "boing"]
Abe: How long was that?

Foggy bottom Kool-Aid

Denial is an ugly thing, Mr. Martin.

Barack Obama is behind you, reading this right now

From Salon: Barack Obama's super marketing machine

You know, of course, that Obama has your e-mail address. You may not have realized that he probably also has your phone number and knows where you're registered to vote -- including whether that's a house or an apartment building, and whether you rent or own. He's got a decent estimate of your household income and whether you opened a credit card recently. He knows how many kids you're likely to have and what you do for a living. He knows what magazines and catalogs you get and whether you're more apt to get your news from cable TV, the local newspaper or online. And he knows what time of day you tend to get around to plowing through your in box and responding to messages.

Turn's out Barack Obama's got a pretty sophisticated voter outreach and fund raising operation. In addition to all that, they catalog then critique your itunes library, rate your friends based on looks, watch you go to the bathroom, and measure pupil dilation when reading campaign literature to rank you on a 1-10 Ba-rock Star scale. 1 is a 'Hillary', 10 is that guy down the hall that changed his middle name to "Hussein".

This is of course different than the McCain model. McCain just sends out pictures of weeping eagles in front of the twin towers with a spot where you can fill in your bank account number. He also grovels to George Bush to go raise money for him and collects tip money bartending at Dick Cheney's monthly get togethers at his island lair. They have also been known to grab you by the ankles and shake you until all the change falls out of your pocket, but only at rallies.

Maybe this is why Obama rakes in $52 million from small donors while McCain has to break the law.

At least Schmidt doesn't plaster on the makeup like a trollop

"Sir, I'm sorry. Was it one sugar or two?"

"Juuuuust give me the fucking hooch, Stevie. I swear, every time the sun hits your forehead, I get a new tumor. Do us all a favor and plop your doughy ass in a chair. I've got an Evangelical base to court, two failing wars to hump, and some tax cuts to suddenly find permanently necessary. It's that whole 'economy' thing that all the people who aren't obscenely wealthy seem to be worried about. Now, sit back and let the Big Dog hunt, son."

McCain shakes up staff amid concern about 'unforced errors'