Cheap Blogging Crutch 09.04

How Did Economists Get It So Wrong?
The ECON7-KRUGBOT MK-3000 takes time out of his busy day to explain to the country how the people in his profession could get the economic forecast and resulting financial apocalypse so wrong. Along the way he's kind enough to point out the other two economists who were, along with him, skeptical of these whole underlying theme of "housing prices will go up forever" that gripped the market. Well worth your time if you'd like to know what exactly went wrong.

White House Scaling Down Health Reform Ahead Of Address
ThinkProgress' Wonk Room takes a look and recent rumors that the President and the Senate are looking to cut back the costs of health care reform to $700 billion over 10 years. They're kind enough to point out that real reform that covers all Americans costs around $1.5 trillion over 10 years. Anything less and you're offering lower subsidies and giving people weaker less protective insurance. So keep that in mind when you hear they're trying to cut the cost of something that will be spread out over a decade or more: they aren't helping you.

Obsessed bin Laden wanted to kill Whitney Houston's husband
Listen I think we've all dreamed, at one time or another, of killing Bobby Brown. Hell, maybe Flavor Flav, Dane Cook, or the entire cast of the Hills as well. But surely we wouldn't want to risk our highly secretive multi-national terrorist operation to gain the affections of Whitney Houston, would we? Ah, but such are the claims of OBL's new biographer, who in addition to the Houston obsession notes that Osama's favorite shows are the Wonder Years and MacGuyver. Makes sense.

Ridge’s Groveling Tour: I Never Meant To Accuse The Bush Administration Of Politicizing Homeland Security
You know what's great? When a man makes a claim that's obvious to all and then supports it with his own personal experiences from inside the situation as evidence.....and then after he gets yelled at by his own party tries to walk it all back claiming that he never said what everyone heard him say and that he was misquoted in the book he wrote. We understand Tom, it's not that you lied, it's that you said too much of the truth. Keep on trying to distance yourself from your own book while you're out there promoting it.

Urinal protocol vulnerability
Finally, someone has mapped out proper urinal availability protocol with diagrams, cartoon, and a math equation. Finally there are answers for where one should unsheathe his junk if there is a two urinal gap and no possibility for an "every other" urinal lineup. Finally we know how to decrease levels of awkwardness. Thank you XKCD, I will make sure to give you an honorary "post-urination penis shake" the next time I put your theories into practice.

Quote of the day

Michael "Don't mention my real last name is Wiener" Savage, using his talk show to attack British women...because the UK had the nerve to treat him as the crazy, ranting, racist maniac that he is:

"You see their girls, the flower of England, laying in the gutter with their legs spread open drunk at night. That's the England of today"

Well....I see. Just...as...a...curiosity, Priceline is offering flights to London leaving tomorrow at around $1474. While I plan my...."academic research trip", you go listen to the rest of his rant. It's pretty great, Savage compares himself to Churchill and valiantly swears he's fighting a similar fight as Winston was when he was warning the world about Hitler. I don't understand why England wouldn't want him in their country.

Suggestions and advice

Wheelchair-Bound Woman Shouted Down At New Jersey Health Care Town Hall

A new low for these meetings may have been set when the crowd shouted down a wheelchair-bound woman with "two incurable auto-immune diseases" who had the gall to ask a question.

Steele Dismisses Woman Whose Mother Died Of Cancer

Duzak stood up and interrupted Steele, arguing that “everyone in this country should have access to good health care” and cited the case of her own mother who died of cancer six months ago because she couldn’t afford her prescription chemotherapy medications. The audience applauded her.

Steele responded by chastising Duzak and accusing her of pulling antics to get on TV. “So people go out to town halls, they go to the community, and they’re like this. (SHAKES ARMS) It makes for great TV. You’ll probably make it tonight. Enjoy it.”

GOP congresswoman tells uninsured constituent to ‘be a grown up’ and get insurance

At a recent town hall meeting, a 27-year old uninsured waitress named Elizabeth Smith asked Rep. Lynn Jenkins (R-KS) why as a working mother she can’t “get an affordable option” for health care. According to the AP, Smith’s 2-1/2-year-old son “hasn’t been to a doctor in 21 months, except for emergency room visits for ear infections, because she can’t afford either insurance or a doctor’s visit.” When Smith asked her question, Jenkins criticized creating “a government-run program” and said that she advocated tax credits so people like Smith could “go be a grown-up and go buy the insurance“

You know I'm no great fan of the GOP and the Teabaggers, but let me just offer one word of advice: if you wish for people to see you as anything other than big business stooges working against the interests of the American people and spreading lunatic fringe conspiracy theories in an effort to support your corporate masters, it's probably best to actually pretend to have some minor level of concern for the sick people and poor people who actually have real concerns about health care costs and accessibility. I know you really don't care, but pretend...for the children.

Though what do I know, maybe mocking cancer patients and wheelchair bound women is a brilliant strategy. I do know disrespecting the poor and working class has worked wonders. Still do it for my sake. If you aren't out there laughing at cancer patients it makes me seem less like I'm arguing again cartoonish caricatures of 1920's black mustached, caped, 'tying a woman to the train tracks' villains and more like I'm actually arguing against people with legitimate ideas. I know it isn't true, but let me have that illusion. So I can pretend this is still a functioning, rational country.

Broken News: Loud mouthed blowhard wins argument, the internet

NEW YORK—Today Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau, widely credited with the invention of the World Wide Web, gathered together with members of CERN, MIT, and DARPA to formally announce that not only were they ruling that blogger Ted King had thoroughly won an inter-blog argument, but that he had won it so definitively that they were awarding him the entirety of the internet as a prize.

“Today we are proud to announce that Mr. King, more widely known as HardK0R3 on his blog the L33T Pit, has so thoroughly impressed us with his forensic word pugilism that we have decided to award him the World Wide Web as a token of gratitude for all that he has done with our creation,” Mr. Berners-Lee said, his words practically drowning in sarcasm. “I think it was the point at which you called everyone who disagreed with you ‘fags’ who were ‘totally gay’ that we all welled up with pride over the implementation of our creation. Therefore, take the internet. Take the whole bloody, goddamned thing. It’s useless now.”

While Mr. King wasn’t immediately available to accept the prize, he must have undoubtedly been ecstatic over having won the internet courtesy of his much Dugg Summer movie treatise, “The new Star Trek totally owns it hardcore over that old gay shit and also anyone who liked Funny People is a total homo.”

While no one stepped up to officially speak for Mr. King, site commenters were there to point out that those gay British boy touchers were all lucky that HardK0R3 didn’t fly over to foggy Londontown and shit to take their precious internet from them by force. Also noting that science was gay, they were having sex with the mothers of all the people who disagreed with them, and that it was about fucking time that someone recognized how badass and shit the L33T Pit was.

As to why the scientific elite was turning over possession of the World Wide Web to a group of people most would charitably describe as clinically retarded, those making the final decision were incredulous that anyone would question their wisdom.

“Uh, hello,” said Mr. Cailliau, disdain covering his face. “I think you saw why in the little response the *shudder* L33t Pit gave. This kind of shit is not what we intended the internet to be used for. It’s full of self absorbed idiots, mongoloid teenagers, cat pictures, and pornography that disgusts even the Germans and Japanese. Germans, for Christ’s sake! That’s it; we’re washing our hands of it. You all have broken it. Fuck off!”

As for future plans, those close to the scientific elite are tight-lipped, fearing that the great unwashed masses will find a way to taint their new project.

Preliminary reports suggest that after CERN hands over the keys to the internet to Mr. King, they will wait until it is rammed completely into the ground and rendered a smoldering pile of fucked-to-death orangutan shit. Then, while humanity gawks at the wreckage they have created, Mr. Berners-Lee and CERN plan to unveil an all new internet that improves upon the failures of the old one.

“Well for one thing, there’s going to be a goddamned IQ test before you’re allowed to communicate with others on it,” said Dr. Francois Repard, who is working on the design team for the new internet.

“Secondly, those wishing to launch new web pages will have to submit a proposal outlining its aims and its benefit to the public at large. Thirdly, if you post up one picture of a cat with a misspelled phrase superimposed on it, we’ll throw you in The Hague and fuck you with knives. We have no intention whatsoever of making the same mistakes over again.”

But those plans are a ways off, as statisticians surmise that the first internet will not collapse under the ‘inmates running the asylum’ weight of its own bullshit for a few months. Until then scientists are content to sit back, laugh, and revel in the destruction that the world has brought upon itself.

“Serves them right,” Mr. Berners-Lee scoffed. “Mucking up my beautiful creation. I used to feel pride when I thought about the internet. Now....only shame. LOLcats, BAH! The new Star Trek was better than the old one? That’s the gayest shit I’ve ever heard.”

Confrontation

Man's Finger Bitten Off in Scuffle at Health Care Rally

About 100 protesters sponsored by MoveOn.org were having a rally supporting health care reform.

A group of anti-health care reform protesters formed across the street.

A witness from the scene says a man was walking through the anti-reform group to get to the pro-reform side when he got into an altercation with the 65-year-old, who opposes health care reform.

The 65-year-old was apparently aggressive and hit the other man, who then retaliated by biting off his attacker's pinky, according to Karoli from DrumsnWhistles, who attended the rally.

You see America, this is why we can't have nice things! Things like intelligent political debate, informative town halls, or useful public demonstrations.

But that's not the end, oh no. The reform opponent who accosted a reform supporter and got his finger bit off was able to have his finger reattached and was released from the hospital that same day. Why? Because he had government run socialized medicine Medicare. I wonder if he paused to note the irony before he went to call up all his friends to tell them about how he got his finger bit off by a hippie, just because he had the temerity to assault him while yelling about socialism. I doubt it.

Pictures of the day

From the Big Picture blog: California being turned into a fiery inferno. I hope it didn't burn any of the stuff Schwarzenegger put out for the governmental yard sale he had to organize to fix the budget.

Cheap Blogging Crutch 09.03

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Art of the Day

The subversive genius of Mark Jenkins

Goats

This is based on the book The Men Who Stare at Goats by Jon Ronson.

The Men Who Stare at Goats is his bizarre quest into "the most whacked-out corners of George W. Bush's War on Terror," as he puts it. Ronson is inspired when a man who claims to be a former U.S. military psychic spy tells the journalist he has been reactivated following the 9-11 attack. Ronson decides to investigate. His research leads him to the U.S. Army's strange forays into extra-sensory perception and telepathy, which apparently included efforts to kill barnyard animals with nothing more than thought. Ronson meets one ex-Army employee who claims to have killed a goat and his pet hamster by staring at them for prolonged periods of time. Like Ronson's original source, this man also says he has been reactivated for deployment to the Middle East.
...
This exploration of the U.S. military's flirtation with the supernatural is at once funny and tragic. ...As Ronson reveals, a secret wing of the U.S. military called First Earth Battalion was created in 1979 with the purpose of creating "Warrior Monks," soldiers capable of walking through walls, becoming invisible, reading minds and even killing a goat simply by staring at it. Some of the characters involved seem well-meaning enough, such as the hapless General Stubblebine, who is "confounded by his continual failure to walk through his wall." But Ronson (Them: Adventures with Extremists) soon learns that the Battalion's bizarre ideas inspired some alarming torture techniques being used in the present-day War on Terror.

Oh yeah, looks like I'm going to have to carve out some time to read this book and watch this movie.

The health care battle

There is a battle waging within the walls of the White House over the shape of the health care bill. Even as we speak this titanic struggle is going on over what it is exactly President Obama will come out in support of during his big health care speech addressing Congress next week. What is the struggle? It's between those who want to hack out large sections from proposed bills and those who want to hack really large sections out of the proposed bills. It's really a struggle that wells one up with pride.

This is health-care reform's endgame, or close to it. Next Wednesday, Barack Obama will give a prime-time address before both houses of Congress. But that's not all he's giving Congress. The administration is going to put a plan down on paper. The question is what it will say.

Conversations with a number of White House officials make it clear that, at this point, even they don't know. The argument was raging as recently as last night, and appears to have hardened into two main camps. Both camps agree that the cost of the bill has to come down. The question is how much, and what can be sacrificed.

The first camp could be called "universal-lite." They're focused on preserving the basic shape of the bill....Creating a robust structure is the most important thing.
...
The second camp is not universal at all. This camp believes the bill needs to be scaled back sharply in order to ensure passage....What that sacrifices in terms of structure it gains in terms of political appeal.

Yes because out of all the things we've learned about health care it's that coming in with a plan of "after we pass whatever, we'll be able to go in later fairly easily and make things better" is a great idea that will totally work. I mean after all we are talking about a place where the proven best ideas can't even dare to be considered, instead we have to hope that compromises of compromises can get passed. Which, as we're seeing, they can't. But I'm sure after this big fight, everyone will want to go back and tweak things to make them better. I bet there won't be any massive political fighting at all. Health care reform is always easy, that's why it's best to split it into large chunks that you hope can get accomplished over a period of years.

It's good though that the White House at least has a plan, even if that plan is "gut whatever came out of the House and HELP committees". And really who can blame their political acumen on this front. I mean they are the ones that decided to just turn over the legislation to Congress with only a loose set of guidelines, they're the ones with the bright idea to let Max Baucus go off into his corner to negotiate with Grassley and Enzi, they're the ones that decided it would be best to go campaign and hold prime time press conferences without even so much as a concrete idea or plan that they could discuss, and they're the ones that have decided not to get publicly involved until the absolute last minute. So really, why wouldn't you trust their plan "negotiate against ourselves and compromise....yet again"? Everything they've come up with so far has been brilliant, I'm sure the battle between White House factions over how much to cut will result in something brilliant as well.

Culinary wizardry

Butter balls: it's not just a nickname the longshoremen gave Sean

Do you see what Texas gets up to when we leave it alone for a few seconds to deal with a flaming California?

Deep fried butter is among eight creative treats available at the Texas State Fair. “100 percent pure butter is whipped 'til light and fluffy, then specially sweetened with a choice of several flavors.” It is then surrounded by a “special dough” and quick-fried.

That's it Texas, you're so close. You've almost figured out a way to kill yourselves with food. I would have thought putting a gun in your mouth would be quicker, but you guys like it slow and painful. It's funny, you eat like a people who are going to need expensive end of life care, but you vote to oppose better health coverage and palliative care. Ah well, at least you decided to make your irony taste buttery instead of bitter.

2012: Now you know how it all will end

You want to know why the Mayans thought the world would end in 2012? Because they foresaw a future in which people would be dumb enough to not only think stuff like this, but also publish it in a widely read and respected newspaper:

At first, it seemed like a joke. Wall Street Journal columnist James Taranto opined on Monday that -- if the 2012 election were to turn to national security -- "it's hard to think of a better candidate... than Richard B. Cheney."
...
"The Republican Party needs to move forward and build on its past, not return to it," Alex Castellanos, a frequent CNN analyst and GOP messaging guru, told the Huffington Post via email. "But if the agenda turns to security, Obama is mired in a no-win mess in Afghanistan, and the Obama administration hasn't created a single job in four years after indebting the nation for generations, maybe Dick Cheney could run on a theme of 'Change'."

That's it. Cue the meteors from the skies, Skynet setting off the nukes and releasing the terminators, Hell overflowing with the damned, the dolphins leaving the earth,and whatever other horrors the Mayans foresaw. The only question is whether Cheney's third term would be the event that kicks the apocalypse off or merely the seventh and final trumpet blast. Here's hoping we'll find out soon if Dick wants the planet to flirt with apocalypse. I have my fingers crossed for a yes.

Picture of the day

From the good folks at English Russia comes this look at how the dastardly Russkies have decided to use their re-purposed nuclear missile silos. Instead of launching atomic death, they're now used as launch points for commercial satellites. Now if only they could keep track of the nukes that used to be in those silos....

Broken In Brief: Chechnya ushers in new era of pieces, horribly bloody pieces

NAZRAN--A year ago, this capitol of the Republic of Ingushetia was enjoying what passes for a peaceful time in the Northern Caucasus mountains. With only 150 people killed by small skirmishes and suicide bombings, Nazran was in danger of becoming the crown jewel of a rebuilt, or slightly less rubble-like, Chechnya.

However, this summer has seen a proud return to form, with 436 dead and untold thousands wounded between June and August, according to police records most suggest are not nearly generous enough. But still, many fear that without increased effort on the part of both the Russian military and Chechen insurgents, the region will begin to stabilize.

"What else do we have to do?" wailed militia leader Yuri Baev. "A year ago, everyone was worried about the lack of road craters and shrapnel embedded in the walls and occupants of homes. This year, we put extra nails in every pipe bomb, switched to hollow point ammunition, poisoned every dove we came across, even started shooting the dogs. The dogs! Will nothing please you people?"

Baev then yelled exasperatedly "What's a man gotta do to get some fucking depleted uranium shells around here? I personally witnessed an emaciated woman walking around yesterday who had only a mild look of utter desperation on his face. A mild look? We're failing to crush hearts and minds here."

For its part, Russia has promised to dust off malfunctioning Cold War-era artillery and begin handing it out to young children. This, according to Ramzan A. Kadyrov, Russia's hand-picked President of Chechnya, "Should have the body count up to acceptable levels by the October. November at the latest. We will not let this flirtation with peace and stability stand!"

Cheap Blogging Crutch 09.02

The "Intolerance" Party? GOP Strategists Worry Ideologues Are Bad For The Party's Future
Some within the GOP are waking up to the idea that maybe, just maybe, having Limbaugh, Hannity, and Beck as the main faces of your party is...well let's be charitable and say...not good. They want to grab the party back from the ideologues. One thing, no...two things. First, don't you actually have to have ideas to be an ideologue? Secondly, if 58% of your party has problems believing that Barry was born in the US, can you really save the the party from the overwhelming majority of itself?

Health Care Reform: Sick and Wrong
If you're like me, a cheap fucker who can't be bothered to pay actual money for printed material, Rolling Stones has put up this handy little series of video clips whereupon Matt Taibbi explains the reasoning and arguments behind his new "Democrats are rotten fuckers" health care article, currently in the "Why the Beatles Broke Up" issue. This should hold you over until they put the full article up for free and you can spend your precious money on something worthwhile, like cheap gin.

Tort Reform Unlikely to Cut Health Care Costs
Among the smaller arguments made by Republicans arguing against health care reform, is that they'd like to talk about serious reforms but the Democrats have taken the most important issue off the table (tort reform of medical malpractice lawsuits) because they're run by trial lawyers. It's not an argument you hear often because, let's face it, is has none of the zip of "They're gonna kill granny." But now someone has bothered to look at the issue and has come to the conclusion that...it wouldn't reduce costs at all. Oh well, back to the grandma killing well.

Stephen Fry: In search of the planet's most endangered species
The great Stephen Fry has just finished his newest project: searching out and documenting some of the world's rarest and endangered species. A mission he carries out in honor of his friend, the late author Douglas Adams. He has a book coming out about the journey called Last Chance to See, and the first installment on the journey is up on the Guardian website on the search to find the Giant Jumping Rat of Madagascar and New Zealand's Man-Eating Parrot, which, sadly, isn't 6 feet tall.

iPhone App Finds Disease Outbreaks Near You
Oh iPhone, is there anything you can't do? Now, with the help of your fellow citizens, you can be alerted to when any assholes start plaguing your area with their pig-related AIDS, zombie infections, and Entitilitus. When someone sees evidence of a plague outbreak red pin points appear on a Google map along with links to the news story, nearby medical supply depots that sell flu masks in bulk are identified, and links to guns stores where you can buy shotguns powerful enough to take the head off of one of the shambling undead are highlighted.

What is happening?

Uh-oh, might there be evidence that glass half full, parade rainers like ourselves will soon have to contend with actual optimism about the economy? Might we have to deal with purely good news with no hints of an economic shitstorm? Will we have to shelve all our hobo and bindle related material? Goddamnit, are things actually starting to improve?

Government efforts to funnel hundreds of billions of dollars into the U.S. economy appear to be helping the U.S. climb out of the worst recession in decades.
...
The U.S. economy is beginning to show signs of improvement, with many economists asserting the worst is past and data pointing to stronger-than-expected growth. On Tuesday, data showed manufacturing grew in August for the first time in more than a year. "There's a method to the madness. We're getting out of this," said Brian Bethune, chief U.S. financial economist at IHS Global Insight.

Blaaarg, the good news...it burns us! What next? Oh Jesus Christ, the manufacturing index grew for the first time in 18 months! Horrid sunshine, oppress some other being with your vile illumination. Surely there must me some terrible lining. Most of the stimulus hasn't even been spent yet...adding percentage points to growth...increased consumer consumption, investment, and spending...0% growth without stimulus...magic blowjob fairies return...11 industry groups showing growth...
FUCK!!!!!!!!
It seems the only thing they're wondering about is how much of the growth will continue if the stimulus stops and which action the government took is most responsible for improving things. Someone, anyone, relentlessly fearmonger to me without any regard to the facts.

Eric Cantor: Since we know now that the Stimulus has not met the criteria by which it was passed and the White House promoted it, which was to stave off job losses and to stop unemployment from reaching above 8.5%, since we know it’s been a failure, why not do the responsible thing, which is to take the $400 billion that has not been committed yet - or not been spent, but been committed to the stimulus - and just pay off the debt and deficit so we can get our fiscal house back in order?

Whew! God bless Eric Cantor. I mean sure, what he says runs contrary to what even the Wall Street Journal is forced to recognize and that when he does appearances back in his district he takes credit for the stimulus and the jobs it created in Virginia, but I'll be damned if he doesn't stew a good pot full of economic gloom. Thanks buddy, I needed that.

Like the pot calling the kettle batshit insane

Time to play one of our favorite games: Count the Crazy. Our returning contestant and undisputed heavyweight champion of lunacy is the House Representative from Minnesota's 6th district, Michele Bachmann.

Speaking to free market propagandists think tank, The Independence Institute, Bachmann said of health care reform:

“This cannot pass. What we have to do today is make a covenant, to slit our wrists, be blood brothers on this thing. This will not pass. We will do whatever it takes to make sure this doesn’t pass.”

Now, we all knew she was a loon. But an Emo loon? Trouble is, should she wish to make a public demonstration of this oath, she would enjoy the fully subsidized, comprehensive healthcare given to all members of Congress. Michele, you are like an onion. With mercury poisoning. So many layers. But wait, there's more!

“Something is way crazy out there,” Bachmann said in her remarks, billed as a “personal legislative briefing”...

She has become self-aware! Oh, and the clincher:

“This is slavery,” Bachmann said after claiming many Americans pay half their income to taxes. “It’s nothing more than slavery.”

What a gifted orator, saving the best for last. Only a Grade-A ingrate would wildly exaggerate the tax rate and then liken it to forced labor where human beings are considered property. This, ladies and gentlemen, is why Michele Bachmann remains the champ.

Suggestions and advice

Far be it from me to help and advise the the coal and oil industries along with their fellow climate change opposition, but I'm not sure you should be making statements like this:

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, trying to ward off potentially sweeping federal emissions regulations, is pushing the Environmental Protection Agency to hold a rare public hearing on the scientific evidence for man-made climate change.

Chamber officials say it would be "the Scopes monkey trial of the 21st century" -- complete with witnesses, cross-examinations and a judge who would rule, essentially, on whether humans are warming the planet to dangerous effect.

"It would be evolution versus creationism," said William Kovacs, the chamber's senior vice president for environment, technology and regulatory affairs. "It would be the science of climate change on trial."

Oh, you mean the trial where a teacher was charged for a crime by the religious forces in his state because he had the nerve to teach factual scientific theory instead of the Bible? That Scopes Monkey Trial? The one that's sort of viewed as a blight on education and science in this country? Recent evolution trials haven't gone over too well for the God side either. I'm not sure that's the kind of thing you want to emulate. Maybe they all agree, because rest assured, the Chamber of Commerce was backing away from the statement the second they realized what had been said.

My “Scopes monkey” analogy was inappropriate and detracted from my ability to effectively convey the Chamber’s position on this important issue.

No, that isn't quite right Mr. Kovacs. This isn't a case where you said something that's dishonest that you need to back away from it, this is a case where you said something so truthful you need to back away from it. The Scopes Monkey Trial is the perfect analogy you want to make. You wish to challenge overwhelming and nearly unified scientific consensus on the basis that it isn't what your bosses and the corporations you represent want to hear.

I believe the phrases you're looking for are "Global warming is just a theory", "the scientific consensus isn't fully formed", "sure there's global warming but it isn't man made and we can't do anything about it", "...uh sunspots something something", "it was cold out today, how can the planet be warming if it was cold out", or "Al Gore is fat." Come now, surely you know better than to clearly state what you believe and revel in scientific ignorance."New Scopes Monkey Trial". Rookie mistake.

Headline of the day

Zambian Monkeys Evicted For Peeing On President Banda

Oh yes, there's video. Of course there's video. The people of Zambia will be feasting on monkey stew tonight.

In which I become a crotchety old man

Tra la la la la laaa, what a fine day it is. Ouch, what's that sharp stabbing pain in my adolescence?



Gah! Dead childhood musical heroes creepily animated and brought back to life for the purpose of a guitar video game. Courtney, do you really need the money this badly? Is nothing sacred? What else from my youth must be pillaged and shoddily repackaged? Anger! Consternation! *bitter epithets against today's youth*

Well, at least they properly rendered the top of his head.

Broken News: Grandmother eager to be put down by Death Panel

ROCHESTER, NY--Lifelong resident Florence Edelburg, 84, has declared her intention to be first in-line when militant Marxist/Islamofascist sleeper cell agent, Barack Hussein Obama, convenes his Death Panels later this year.

"Honestly, I've had a good run. I was married for over 50 years to my late husband, John. I have six wonderful children, 14 beautiful grandchildren and--oh, who the hell am I kidding? If I have to spend one more Thanksgiving staring at my idiot kids and their ingrate cracker spawn, I'm going to put a fucking gun in my mouth."

The widow continued, "I long for the cold embrace of the Grim Reaper. Thank God the Democrats are back in office so I don't have to learn how to tie a noose."

Edelburg, who has seen her health decline in recent years, owing largely to decades of caring for such a large family and helping run her husband's sod farm outside of Adams Basin, has made a holiday habit of threatening to take her own life. Much of this tendency seems to stem from overwhelming disappointment in her progeny, as well as how her life generally turned out.

"Shit, back in '45, I had gams for miles. Wasn't a veteran fresh back from the war who didn't make pecker-first charge at me. If only they'd discovered birth control a decade earlier. I could be living off of Bob Hope's dime, not babysitting these cross-eyed nitwit grandchildren. I can't stand the thought of spending one more minute with my 'loved ones', watching them marry Protestants and ignore my time-worn wisdom, learned from a hard life spent actually working for a Goddamned living. Why didn't they put me in that Florida nursing home I heard so much about?"

Edelburg, a Catholic, first heard of Obama's Death Panels at mass, which she attends each morning "For the free hooch and crackers."

Father Thomas McGrady, of Our Lady of the Bleeding Eyes, has made the Death Panels the focus of his sermons ever since Glenn Beck told him in an e-mail that Jesus despised the competition of public and private health care sectors.

Said Father McGrady, "Scripture tells us to respect all life. Even if that life is an undignified one spent largely soiling oneself and being increasingly ignored by insensitive family members who care only about what effect escalating medical bills will have on their inheritance. I feel it is my duty and the duty of the Church to oppose these efforts at palliative treatment and stop the movement toward the cheaper and more accessible health care I know the Lord Our God hated so dearly."

Edelberg has been heartened by the fact that, according to a flier she received at mass, the post-death process will include "Crushing the bones of the elderly in a wine press and liquefying the corpses so that they can be fed intravenously to the Federal Government's army of secular cyborg babies," noting that being liquefied and used to nourish future generations will "at least allow someone to appreciate one goddamn thing I've done in my cursed fucking life."

As for the interim, Edelburg plans to settle her estate by pitting her six children against one another for a sizable inheritance.

"Lord knows it's the only way I can get some entertainment while I wait for the government to end my sad, depressing, shitshow of an existence. The smart money, pun intended, is on Patrick, my fourth child. He's got some sort of gorilla/retard strength and took to masturbating on small animals at a very young age. Also, he seems impervious to physical pain after all the lashings I gave him during his adolescence."

Florence hopes that, barring further legislative incompetence, the Death Panels will be up and running within the next six months. Otherwise, she fears not only having to endure another Thanksgiving, but an additional Christmas, New Year's, and a dreaded 85th birthday party with her horrid embarrassment of a family.

"I'll do anything to avoid that," she pleaded. "I'm a woman of faith. If the government is going to make me wait that long, I'll just start praying full-time for a stroke, cancer, a random car careering off the street and through the living room, a wayward sparrow flying into my temple, anything..."

Citing the desires of many elderly Americans like Mrs. Edelburg, the White House has vowed it will press forward in its efforts to get the Death Panels up and running by year's end. The White House says it has made a solemn vow to terminate the lives of people like Mrs. Edelman "with extreme prejudice" and remains committed to seeing that goal through to the bitter, bitter end.

Video of the day

Toy Soldiers on Vimeo.

Footage of a French military parade made to look like stop motion miniature animation using a technique called tilt-shift photography.

Cheap Blogging Crutch 09.01

Baucus: Health Care Reform Will Happen This Year With Or Without GOP
Max Baucus wants you to know that we're all still on track for a "bipartisan" "compromise" on health care in his Finance Committee's "Gang of Six" negotiations. Sure, two of the three Republicans he's negotiating with, Grassley and Enzi, have overtly stated that they aren't interested in actually passing anything of use, are out there touting how destructive they've been to the process and how much they've helped delay reform, but Max is still convinced. They better watch out though, you cross Max Baucus sixty or seventy times and he'll start giving serious consideration to possibly not letting you have your way with him.

The Five Biggest Lies in the Health Care Debate
Newsweek is back with an addendum to their previous Seven Falsehoods About Health Care article. Isn't it nice to be blessed with so many falsehoods? We're moving beyond mere death panels (though death panels still are a feature) and into specific false claims like dirty Mexicanos gettin' free health care, you will be randomly assigned health care benefits irrespective to what you want or need, and no chemo for old people. That's all well and good, but what about the plan for the death panels to authorize Mexicans to kill grandma with radiation in return for free health care? How come no one's talking about that?

White House drug deal won't save money
What. A. Shocker. Who could have foreseen that cutting a deal with pharmaceutical companies wouldn't be great for them and shitty for us. Namely in that it weakens incentives for people to buy generic drugs and makes sure that the government subsidizes the more expensive brand names. But hey, at least we did get all those great ads

Right-Wing Extremists Protest Health Care Reform: “We Hate the United States!”
Oh Texas secessionists, you are so precious. What was supposed to be just a simple protest about the icy hand of socialism strangling grandma at her bridge game, morphed into cries of governmental tyranny, demands for secession, and proclamations of flag/America hate. It must suck for guys like Glenn Beck and Hannity. Here you are trying to do all this hard work coming up with crazy conspiracy theories to poison the health care debate and then that hard work gets tainted by even crazier people with even crazier ideas. Is there no justice?

Han Solo Was No Vo Nguyen Giap
Wished there were more serious conversations about counterinsurgency policy in Iraq and Afghanistan as compared to the strategy of the Rebel Alliance and Empire in Star Wars? The Center For A New American Security is there for you with discussions about the destruction of Alderaan vis-a-vis an effective counterinsurgency policy. Hopefully they'll eventually get into the co-opting of the Ewoks as a homegrown insurgency, but for now this is a good start.

Talk Like Warren Ellis
ATTENTION SCUM: I WILL FUCKING CUT YOU. Ever wished you could Tweet like Warren Ellis, but lacked the disdain for humanity, expressive vocabulary, consumptive cough, or proper vulgar descriptives? No worries, the internet is here for you, providing an nigh on inexhaustible Warren Ellis styled Twitter greeting generator. Finally the intarwubs has produced something useful...something important. With that said, good day, internet porn intestines. I hate you with the fire of ten suns.

Before I forget...

You need to see this:

* South Africa's come a long way thanks to Nelson Mandela, and now so can your car.
* Lead the struggle against stink with the essence of Cookies.

I wouldn't have thought that Nelson Mandela smelled like cookies, I would have thought he smelled of something that more represented his quality of perseverance. Maybe they could have used smell to represent those who oppressed him....say a Dutch Apple Pie scent. But then again, I'm not an air freshener scientist.

Still, it is a fitting tribute. What was it Mandela said?

Never, never and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another...the oppression of foul car odor.

I think he'd be proud, looking down from hea...oh shit he's still alive. I wonder if he licensed this?

Oh media, you irrepressible scamp

There's a lot of talk about the effectiveness and the methods of the media going around, particularly in respect to the way the media is covering the health care fight. It started a bit when Walter Cronkite died and there were numerous snarky comments about how the newspeople covering his death and trying to honor his contributions don't seem to be able to perform the basic functions of their job in the way that Cronkite did. But the discussion has started up again as we see more and more polls showing that large sections of the public believe various lies about death panels and new polls showing that despite all the coverage of health care, people still don't understand what is being discussed.

Ahh, but then the media doesn't actually cover the substance of health care debate, it covers the politics. As Paul Krugman points out in the Times: all the media does is partake in horse race reporting. Why? Short answer: they aren't smart enough to cover the policy parts. Long answer: they aren't smart enough, it's easier to do politics, they're lazy, making factual assertions is scary. But then again this isn't surprising, the media has long reduced coverage of everything to horse race politicking and actual knowledge has to be sought out through the labyrinthine tubes of the intarwebs. This is the profession where a professor can be heralded as a genius for opining in print that the solution to the types of problems is that maybe, just maybe, newspapers should fact check a little harder, and maybe, just maybe, that they shouldn't print the lies in the first place. Use "news judgment."

But maybe the media just isn't good at getting the facts right and should stick to opinions about who won what political battle and how the success of a bill lies not in its content but in who conceded the most and who can claim victory. I mean just look at what happened when the Times tried to speak factually about Cronkite:

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

An appraisal on Saturday about Walter Cronkite’s career included a number of errors. In some copies, it misstated the date that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was killed and referred incorrectly to Mr. Cronkite’s coverage of D-Day. Dr. King was killed on April 4, 1968, not April 30. Mr. Cronkite covered the D-Day landing from a warplane; he did not storm the beaches. In addition, Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon on July 20, 1969, not July 26. “The CBS Evening News” overtook “The Huntley-Brinkley Report” on NBC in the ratings during the 1967-68 television season, not after Chet Huntley retired in 1970. A communications satellite used to relay correspondents’ reports from around the world was Telstar, not Telestar. Howard K. Smith was not one of the CBS correspondents Mr. Cronkite would turn to for reports from the field after he became anchor of “The CBS Evening News” in 1962; he left CBS before Mr. Cronkite was the anchor. Because of an editing error, the appraisal also misstated the name of the news agency for which Mr. Cronkite was Moscow bureau chief after World War II. At that time it was United Press, not United Press International. An appraisal on July 18 about Walter Cronkite’s career misstated the name of the ABC evening news broadcast. While the program was called “World News Tonight” when Charles Gibson became anchor in May 2006, it is now “World News With Charles Gibson,” not “World News Tonight With Charles Gibson.”

Yeah.......stick to the horse race stuff. Just...just...yeah.