Jesus hates the stimulus

This is the ad currently being run by the American Issues Project, you might remember them as the classy group that ran Obama/Ayers ads referencing 9/11. Now they've brought Jesus along for the ride, because we all know how much He hated deficit spending. But I think it's cute that in an ad using Jesus they still took the time to reference a fake CBO report, and lie about the fact that the actual spending in the bill is actually much less than the number of days since the birth of Jesus. I guess to Jesus, tax cuts are the same as spending. But why quibble over details, didn't Jesus preach that lying is OK, as long as the ends justify the means? They also don't seem to understand the concept of spending creating jobs and spending them on projects like fish hatcheries creates jobs as well as getting useful things done. But as our blue eyed, blonde haired Lord said: "one dost not have to know about something before one spouts off about it, lest it may hinder and effort to help those who art conservative."

Frankly I'm just mad they couldn't wedge a 9/11 reference in there. "Over $780 billion spent and not one dollar to honor those who perished on 9/11! President Obama and Congressional liberals, have you no shame?" Maybe ad #2.

Blagojevich impeached, taken off medication

So Rowdy Roddy Blagojevich is going to be impeached. The Illinois house voted to send him up to the senate for trial by a vote of 114-1-1. There he will almost certainly be thrown out of office. But that's not why we're here. We knew this was coming. Why we're here is because of the press conference Rod gave.

In it he wheeled out an actual man in a wheelchair, senior citizens, an infant, and a poor black teenager who had liver surgery and attempted to hide behind them. Evidently he couldn't find a wounded veteran waving a flag, a puppy, an astronaut, or a weeping nun. According to Rod, he is not being impeached because of all the hours of recorded conversations that have him demanding bribes and kickbacks, but because he was fighting for the poor and huddled masses assembled on the stage. A vindictive payback for caring about kids and freedom and liberty and apple pie with hamburgers and justice in it. He then closed by reciting Tennyson's Ulysses before challenging the press to a guitar duel on the Stranglehold level of Guitar Hero.

I don't even know what to say at this point. This man is setting and re-setting the bar. He is the Usain Bolt of cheap political theater and we're all just lagging behind. I'm going to miss you when you're in prison, Rod. Try and start up a bizarre prison gang or become a Muslim or something, just so you can pop back into the news every once in a while. We salute you.

"Obama... call me..."

When Drudge isn't busy laying the foundation for a bullshit McCain reboot/comeback narrative, he's giving me Harold Ford Jr. flashbacks. Take a look at the picture below, currently holding down the middle of the page at Drudge Report, and tell me you aren't reminded of the "Where all the white women at?" anti-Ford ad run by Tennessee Republicans during the 2006 race to fill Bill Frist's stinking Senate void.

Your weekend Palin embarassment

Twas a busy weekend for our greatest natural magnet for derision. First was her oh so predictable appearance at a Philadelphia Flyers game.


Oh my, they booed her. Like was patently obvious to everyone outside of the McCain campaign. Bring all your daughters and babies to shield you from the boos, Sarah, Philadelphia doesn't care. In fact, they might boo you harder, pelting little Trig with Duracells and dumping a beer onto Piper or Talledega or Truncheon or adorable little Pinstripe. Now you've allowed your child to be scarred by Philly's finest and you're still going to lose PA. For your next trick, try to start pressing the flesh in the remnants of the 700 section for Eagles games. You'll get to show off the street fighting skills that have held off Putin for nigh on a decade.

Second, was the release of the Troopergate report. Surprise surprise, she's guilty of abusing her power. "I find that Governor Sarah Palin Abused her power by violating Alaska Statute 39.52.110(a) of the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act ... Compliance with the code of ethics is not optional..." Palin, choosing to ignore that reality and substituting her own, claimed the opposite. That it completely vindicated her and even if it didn't, the report was partisan anyway, with it's unanimous conclusions and more Republicans than Democrats. But that's good, you can usually nip these damaging reports in the bud by patently asserting they come to the opposite conclusion than is stated in the opening line. Who reads the findings of investigations anymore?

There was also the matter of her not knowing her campaigns position on North Korea. Apparently John McCain wants to restart the Korean war and objects to NK's removal from the list of state sponsors of terror, despite the fact they couldn't sponsor a dirt eating contest. Palin, unsure of who's opinion to toady to, chose the Bush administration instead of the old codger she's failing with. She also repeated the phrase "live up to their end of the bargain" repeatedly, as if it was the only concrete thought she had on it. But then again she isn't an expert on Kim Jong Il. You need binoculars to see North Korea from Alaska.

Ahh Sarah, what are we going to do for entertainment after you disappear from the scene after the Republican party "disappears" you back to Alaska like a frantic Scott Peterson? Biden isn't this entertaining and I doubt Bush will start up a blog providing commentary on the Obama Presidency. Could you please host some sort of history or science show on the Discovery or History channel? Regular embarrassing appearances on Meet the Press? Buddy cop show with McCain? We need it.

Broken News: Carny hucksters embarrassed for political spokesmen

Big Dan McCann making today's stunning political announcement. Afterward reporters were treated to his sideshow: a mystifying, bona fide wonder of the age.

THE MIDWAY--In a joint statement issued today, the Brotherhood of Carnival Barkers and the Union of Flim-Flam Hucksters expressed a profound embarrassment with the political spokesmen of the McCain campaign. The statement in part read “While we certainly empathize with a group that has to so completely debase itself on a national stage, we nonetheless wish to register our complete embarrassment towards your entire profession.”

This criticism is an unprecedented step for what many observers saw as kindred industries. But with new lows being hit and standards of truth and honesty being thrown out the window by government and campaign spokespeople every day, snake oil salesmen, word illusionists, carnies, evangelical preachers, grifters, grafters, hustlers, swindlers, and con men were tired of having their professional reputation sullied by comparisons to communications directors of political campaigns.

“Look we know that sometimes shit is shit and you just got to grin and eat it, but come on now, this is ridiculous,” observed Big Dan McCann, a fifteen-year veteran Barker at Bazooko’s Circus in Las Vegas. “I’ve had to get people to walk in to see dog-faced boys, Siamese twins, malformed fetuses, pinheads, flipper babies, and bearded ladies, but even I have my limits. I mean there’s trying to get people to come in and see two geeks bite the heads off of live chickens and then there’s trying to defend Sarah Palin’s supposed wealth of foreign policy experience. Dignity is dignity. Two bits or not, no one’s gonna take a gander if they don't believe in the freak show."

"This is a beautiful art when performed correctly. You get people in by massagin' the truth, by buildin' up expectations and sellin' the experience to the point where if they don't come out praising the alien carcass, they look like rubes who got swindled. If you lie to them they won't go out and sell the lie for you, they'll just demand their money back. Didn't these people learn anything from the Grifters? Cusack was tits!”

Most of the shame has been directed at Steve Schmidt, McCain’s campaign strategist and adviser, who got his start in Atlantic City trying to goad tourists into taking a trip on the “Ye Olde Mill” ride at the destitute Funzilla Amusement Gardens and Salt Water Taffery. Union members see his spokesman work for the McCain campaign as a violation of his oath of integrity when he joined the UFFH in 1992.

“Schmitty’s done us wrong,” said mentor and UFFH VP of Humbug and Swindling Arty Kotch. “When he was growing up he could scam anything off of anyone. He could sell shaved ice and piss and have people telling people two towns over to head down to the Boardwalk to try the great lemonade. He was brilliant.”

“Now? Stephen Glass and Jayson Blair look down their noses at him. He tells you the sun is out; you stick your head out the window and wonder if that fiery orb isn’t some trick he’s pulling. He hands you chocolate ice cream and you suspect a form of ape excrement. You hear him lambaste the New York Times for printing simple incontrovertible fact and you just shake your head.”

Kotch then sighed and threw up his hands. “The piss-icee kid is dead, replaced by a shell of a man who couldn’t sell handjobs at a hard-on convention. Not even with his delicately moisturized mitts and his strong yet supple wrists.”

In fact, this year several members of the political establishment have been thrown out of the prestigious Münchhausen Society for “…conduct detrimental to the field of professional truth stretching and tall tale telling.”

Many in the huckster world are wondering just what the current strategy among political spokesmen is. P.T. Barnum’s famous maxim was that a sucker was born every minute. But by industry calculations, the rate is more likely around every three and a half minutes, which at its highest levels leaves the US with only 135,000 suckers born each year.

At best, the BCB estimates the American Sucker Index to be around 23%, accounting for most, if not all, of President Bush’s dwindling support. Furthermore not all are voting eligible and with many working jobs on Wall Street and at investment banking firms they have already tuned out of the political race to concentrate on the more pressing matters of standing in soup lines and fighting hobos for cardboard underneath bridges. It is a small subset of the American populace that is largely immovable from within the current political climate which has industry analysts wondering why every campaign and government organization pitches their message specifically to this group.

“Honest to God stool pigeons are born that way, we all know that,” said Bertram Hinkle, industry analyst and licensed ‘smooth operator’. “The only way you turn the populace into a blubbering mass of gullible stooges, naively waitin’ for commands to be obeyed, is with some large, scary, transformative event. Mortgages ain’t gon’ do it, sugar britches. So all this flailing about liberal media and sexin’ kindergartners and putting Maybelline on a fine summer ham ain’t gonna put the heebie-jeebbies into the masses. Ya’ll just debasing yourself with a kind of perverse performance art of flop sweat and failure. It got us scratching our heads in mystification, I say I say.”

While the McCain campaign and the National Association of Political Spokesmen refused to comment for the story, an hour before press time we received a letter with no postage or any other markings on it. Inside were the words, written in blood, "In the tank."

On McCain: Oh media, how I despise thee

via TPM. This is the new bit of wisdom going around from our media betters. John McCain isn't responsible for his own campaign. Because media members think that John would be kinda embarrassed by all the lies, attacks and misleading statements his own campaign puts out, it's OK that his campaign does it. Even the lies and attacks McCain repeats in stump speeches aren't his fault because they're being pushed on him by nefarious staffers.

See, John McCain accidentally hired all of Karl Rove's hatchet men. He told them to run an honest campaign, but they revolted kidnapping John's family. Now McCain has to deliver fraudulent attacks, and run dishonest ads he knows are damaging to his image.......TO SAVE HIS FAMILY! *sobbing* It's the only way! Don't hold him responsible for his own campaign. THEY'VE GOT HIS FAMILY!! *uncontrollable weeping* HE'S AN HONEST MAN!!

Thank God we have Andrea Mitchell to sort out things like this for us. Otherwise we'd be left to believe that the shoddy, gutter campaigning that McCain engages in is actually the campaign he wants to run. We know that can't be true because...uh..maverick....something something.

Cutting corners and electrocuting soldiers

If you had to guess whether or not facing down insurgents and al Qaeda or taking a shower and hanging around the base was more dangerous, you'd probably pick the terrorists. You might be wrong.

Shoddy wiring on US military bases has been responsible for hundreds of fires (averaging out to almost 1.5 fires a day during the most recently measured period) and dozens of deaths from fire and electrical shocks. The Army has classified this problem as the 'most urgent noncombat safety hazard for soldiers in Iraq.'

What government contractor is responsible for these mistakes of incompetence that is killing soldiers? Former Halliburton subsidiary and no-bid contractor KBR. KBR is the same company that brought you unsafe drinking water for troops, failing to protect female employees who were sexually assaulted and raped, and they overbilled the Government for their inadequate services.

The electrical problems are also electrician 101, things that any idiot who spent one day on a job site would know, things like: don't expose wiring and ground the distribution panels. But then they didn't hire skilled electricians to do the work, the hired unskilled Iraqis and pocketed the profit. KBR was warned by some of their employees about this, but their concerns were either ignored or not understood becuase the officials lacked the training.

The Pentagon also knew of these problems and did little to address them until Green Beret, Staff Sgt. Ryan D. Maseth was electrocuted in January. But even now they aren't addressing how widespread the problem is, just the specific circumstances that specifically led to Maseth's death. Unsurprisingly we also learn that there weren't enough government inspectors to do the job either.

Quite simply this is war profiteering. When you so drastically cut the level of competence and skilled labor so you can squeeze as many nickels out of the project as you can, so much so that your awful work is killing soldiers, you are committing a crime.

And when degenerate flag humping cretins like Joe Lieberman, control oversight panels that could do something about this and refuse even to hold hearings, they can also rot. But maybe Joe is too busy stumping for McCain to worry about the troops. Why should John and Joe worry if soldiers are killed in showers, they're too busy trying to get them killed in Iran.

That the policies of Bush, Cheney and the Pentagon led to this and are standing in the way of getting something done are of little surprise. When you emphasize free money for the taking and speed over competence and oversight, this is all you can expect. But, at this point, this is just another thing that's etched into their already awful legacy.

9/11 billboard guy exactly as you imagined

Remember the 9/11 billboard guy? You should, it was two days ago. If you thought he was just an idiot, trying to exploit a terrorist attack for his own gain, well.....you were giving him too much credit.

Seems he got all his Global War on Terra learnin' from passing in and out of consciousness during Hannity's radio show, that grossly inaccurate ABC Path to 9/11 TV movie, and apparently what he pieced together from the comment threads at Free Republic. He also dresses like a discount pimp.

Classy 9-11 billboard

From WFTV, Florida ACTION News!! A man who likes to waste money put up this billboard in Orange County, Florida to promote his song and his message to not vote for Democrats. When it was pointed out to him that Republicans were in control of both the House, Senate, and Presidency on 9/11 he reportedly stuck his fingers in his ears and bellowed out a Toby Keith song at top volume. Later when asked why he couldn't have gone with a more exploitative picture for his money grubbing adventure in pure class, he stated that after spending 15 minutes on Google images he couldn't find an image that got all 3,000 bodies in the same shot.

He then announced a joint venture with the 9/11 Silver 20 people to actually dig up bodies of 9/11 victims to have on hand for the Republican National Convention. It would be $9.11 for a picture with a body and $100 to actually violate it physically instead of morally and ethically while holding an American flag. He plans to be loathed by all decent people before being driven to a remote island where he will die in shame.