Cheap Blogging Crutch 06.30

Ron English on the Kellog's cereal drama. I know Apple Jacks usually gives you diarrhea, but it wasn't supposed to this time.

Matt Taibbi takes out his well worn indignation bat to beat Lara Logan, the establishment media, and the notion of today's media that it is their job to protect our political betters lest the peasants learn what they really think. It's over the Rolling Stone McChrystal piece. Taibbi nicely sums up everything that is wrong with most of our media, from their subservience to power to their galling contempt for people who aren't as cravenly sycophantic as they are. Glenn Greenwald also jumps in and throws a few elbows.

#374B in Things I Am Disappointed With the Obama Administration Over: An Ongoing Series. In this episode, the White House goes out of it's way to help banking sycophant Scott Brown insert loopholes into financial reform so that they could lighten the minuscule financial burden on large banks, remove it from hedge funds, and shift it onto small banks and the taxpayer. As one does. Funny, when it comes to something like a public option or, soon, cap-and-trade, the White House can never seem to muster the energy to make even the tiniest effort to push for it. But shift reform burdens from hedge funds to taxpayers? They'll work up a sweat for that. Bang up job.

The 4th of July is almost upon us and thus it is our duty as Americans to use cheaply made Chinese explosives to light up our skies, blow up frogs that couldn't get away fast enough, and remove fingers and/or hands. Except that due to the budget crisis that many communities are going through, firework celebrations are being cut. I hope you'll join us here at TB in celebrating the first annual Imagination Independence Day! It'll help us all work out the kinks so that Imagination Christmas will go off without a hitch.

With a hurricane bearing down on the Gulf oil spill, one asks God "Jesus fucking Christ, what else can you do to make this worse you bearded son of a bitch?" Would you be interested in a tsunami... caused by BP? That's right, the relief well that they're drilling that will totally fix everything for honests, may set of a "supersonic tsunami" by igniting all the trapped underground methane. Nice. After that, the BP Board will go door to door for face macing and groin kicks. It's the only way they know.

We've been a little hard on Barry recently, but we will commend him on one thing: before arresting a bunch of deep cover Russian spies, our President went out munching burgers with Russian President Medvedev as those commie spies were being rounded up. It takes a stone cold motherfucker to have burgers with the man whose spies you are about to have exposed and incarcerated in a massive international incident. More please.

Cheap Blogging Crutch - 5.18.10

Further glorious details here.

I was walking past one of Brooklyn's many mental institutions the other day. Several patients were standing outside chanting "Thirteen! Thirteen!" I walked over and peered through the chainlink fence to try and figure out what was going on. All of a sudden a mop handle shot through the fence and caught me right in the eye. The patients begin chanting "Fourteen! Fourteen!"

In today's THERE IS NO GOD news, Bristol Palin's people announced she will be paid up to $30,000 in speaking fees per engagement. Before you get your Irish up, allow me to make the argument that she is eminently qualified for this very public role. After all, she is the daughter of a materialistic, dishonest political train wreck and managed to compromise a presidential campaign by popping out a kid while she was still in high school. Not to mention the fact that... eh, do I really need a third?

Elvis Costello has joined Carlos Santana and Gil Scott-Heron in canceling scheduled performances in Israel. Costello cited Israel's "intimidation" and "humiliation" of Palestineans. After what went down with Professor Noam earlier this week, does anyone else smell a Costello-Chomsky collaboration in the works?

St. Joe Biden, Patron of Drunk Uncles at Holiday Parties, made light of his "big fucking deal" comment at a rally in Cedar Rapids today. Watch as Papa Joe goes from being "embarrassed as hell," to thanking the Almighty for killing his mother, to pondering why everyone finds the comment so amusing, to bragging about the pile of money the phrase has made Organizing for America. I don't even think he paused to blink while doing this.

On a more personal plug note, TheseBastards friends and occasional co-conspirators, Cry Fire, are finalists in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's "Pittsburgh Rocks" contest. While whether or not Pittsburgh does rock is a matter for debate, Cry Fire's lead guitarist and bassist personally guaranteed me that if I mentioned the contest in this forum, they would play their next gig pantsless. Go here and vote for Cry Fire.

Finally, I leave you with the Mr. Barry Popularity and Russian Putin hand puppet President Dmitry Medvedev, pondering whether or not they'd hit it. I'm sure you'll agree that, they would, in fact, hit it.

We will burn in nuclear fire

Today the United States and Russia signed a new nuclear arms reduction pact. It was a stirring ceremony where President Obama strode to the stage, took the irrepressibly tiny Dmitri Medvedev out of his right front pocket, set him on a toadstool, patted him on the head, and went and sat at his chair. Medvedev looked over to Vladimir Putin who flashed a thumbs up and released Medvedev's children from the secret location he was holding them, and the treaty was signed.

The treaty, if ratified, would require each country to deploy no more than 1,550 strategic warheads (down from 2,200), each would be limited to 800 total land, air and sea-based launchers (down from 1,600 permitted under the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty of 1991), and would re-implement a inspection regime and legal framework that had lapsed last December with the expiration of START. It's sensible, is a reduction in nuclear weapons, restores critical inspection measures, and gets us back on good diplomatic footing with Russia... so I'm sure this will come nowhere near getting the 67 votes needed to pass in the Senate.

Indeed, with this and the recent release of the Congressionally mandated Nuclear Posture Review, only one question remains: how has President Obama just insured our nuclear death with these reckless measures towards our precious, precious A-Bombs? Well as right wing pundits quickly informed us: by apparently ensuring that we would not retaliate if comrade Lenin rose from the grave and sent a first strike at the heartland.

Watch Fox News freak out:


Mmm, so reckless towards our safety and yet... so hot. The way her eyes bug out as she contemplates Obama sentencing us to an irradiated exploding death... she cares about our future.

Of course it's bullshit, as we still keep our first-strike strategy, actually reserves the right of retaliation, reserves the right of nuclear retaliation in non-nuclear attacks, and our bombs still give our generals a 10 on the atomic war boner scale.

But just so you're aware of the new panic: we're all going to die as Obama invites a nuclear strike and then fails to retaliate. Maybe he'll even launch our nukes at us, who knows? What's clear is that we have effectively surrendered to Russia. So practice huddling under your desk for protection and come up with a cool pose for when your shadow gets permanently etched onto some wall, because the liberals have killed us for certain this time. All on account of renewing a treaty and releasing a Congressionally mandated review. Who saw that coming?