The old bitch barely looks 234

Happy National Eat a Flag Burger and Throw An M-80 Day. You aren't doing your part as a patriotic American unless you're wearing a t-shirt with at least three eagles, ten flags, and one reference to either war, 9/11, or freedom and the fact that the price of said freedom isn't free.

In celebration of this day I give you patriotic dogs, a documentary of our actual founding fathers and the Continental Congress, and our new anthem.

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.

Picture of the day

This year heralds one of the most important anniversaries in human history. No, not you Argentina. Go fuck yourself and your bicentennial. I'm talking about the 30th anniversary of the release of the Empire Strikes Back. As such, Lucasfilm is engaging in a large orgy of self-congratulatory back patting in recognition of this event.

They're even releasing rare, never before seen behind the scenes photos of the film. Like these. There are many more, but we've decided to include the ones entitled Character People Obsess Over Based Entirely on His Design, Old Man Abuses Voice Actor, Spoiler Alert, and Learning How These Films Were Made Reveals A Lot of Surprisingly Cheap Methods and Largely Ruins the Magic.

Yub nub!

House Approves Landmark Bill to Extend Health Care to Millions



Or, alternately...



Your mileage may vary.

And now a weary nation turns it's eyes to the Senate and asks itself "How are they gonna fuck this up?"

Picture of the day

As the world is still a depressing, depressing place, it is our duty to bring you happiness through primitive means. By which we mean... FIRE!!!!! Thankfully the Big Picture blog is here to inform us of the status of two fire festivals that are ongoing, the Scottish based Viking fire festival of Up Helly Aa and the Spanish based fire and horse centered Feast of Saint Anthony the Great.

We eat the pig and together we burn! Burn!

Just a reminder...

So help you God if you say "Two thousand and ten". I now return to your day of clutching your head and regretting everything about last night.

P.S. It's 2010... WHERE THE FUCK IS MY FLYING CAR?!? WHERE THE FUCK ARE MY HOVERBOOTS?!?

11k

Good news everyone, the job losses last month were so low that they were able to print all their names in the paper. So we would like to offer our condolences to Freddie Wallace of Dubuke, Harriet Sanderson of Portland, and Dick Jauron of Buffalo.

Just kidding, 11,000 people lost their jobs, which puts us into another one of those 'bad news is good news' type situations where a decrease in losses is a positive. But it is nice to see our economy move from shedding jobs at a "10 NFL stadiums full of people" clip to a "1 minor league hockey arena" area. Also, in a development that shows me how I don't understand how the unemployment numbers work, that 11k job loss actually resulted in the unemployment rate dropping to 10%. We're inching towards the employment levels of a 1st world country again!

In the strongest jobs report since the recession began, the government reported Friday that the nation’s employers had all but stopped shedding jobs in November, taking some of the pressure off of President Obama to come up with a jobs creation program.
...
The government also significantly revised September and October numbers. September was adjusted to show a loss of 139,000 jobs instead of 219,000, and October 111,000 instead of 190,000.
...
“We’re moving toward stability in the labor market and the end of the tremendous firing that has plagued America,” said Allen L. Sinai, the founder of Decision Economics, a research firm. “But it’s going to be bleak for years. While it is going to be better than what we’ve seen, it’s still going to be terrible.”

Allan Sinai everyone! That was an exquisite hope crushing. Still, I'm going to have to disagree with the article's observation that merely moving our employment numbers to "civil war torn eastern European/former Soviet satellite" levels probably isn't going to cause Barry to wipe the sweat off his brow and start plowing through that book off crossword puzzles he's been putting off. But, the news is slightly improving, with even the "I got my hours cut/I'm too discouraged to even look for work" epic misery numbers dropping from 17.5% to 17.2%.

So the possibility lies that in the next few months this economy might actually produce a job. It'll probably be a job as a human shield for Goldman-Sachs executives as they try to get to their luxury sedan without being hit by garbage or as a member of the Gruesome Suicide Clean-up Squad in one of our many economically depressed Midwestern cities, but it'll still be a job. So stay positive, in a month or so you could be that guy who takes a cabbage to the sternum to protect a well heeled Goldman executive from the indignity of contact with peasants and their peasant food. You'll be able to take that cabbage home to eat and you'll probably get to meet Matt Taibbi. Things are looking up for you.

Pictures of the day

With the Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall happening yesterday, what better way it there to celebrate than by knocking over fake walls? I can't think of one. Via the Times Online comes a look at the many various fake walls that were knocked over to mark the 20th anniversary.

Domino wall!

Foamcore cinderblocks!

Paper!

Probably foamcore again, but it looks pretty realistic!

Aww even the Palestinians got in on the celebration action, setting up their own fake wa......oh...right. My bad.

Actual history

Today marks the 20th Anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. As such, there are many celebrations, weird puppet shows, and retrospectives celebrating this day when Ronald Reagan told the commies to "tear down the wall" and they we're all like "Yessir, Mr. Freedom, please don't hurt us", had the wall taken down about 15 minutes later, and no one from Europe or Russia or anywhere else had anything to do with it; just Ronnie. Or so I've heard.

But the celebrations have brought many world leaders to Berlin to help commemorate the anniversary. In fact Nicholas Sarkozy has already taken the time to make erroneous claims about his own involvement in the fall of the wall in an attempt to make himself look good. But instead of releasing trite statements about "freedom" and "the world uniting" after the re-unification and wanton wall destruction, some leaders have decided to take a different track on the anniversary. Like Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who is kind of depressed and mad that the wall fell

Dmitry Medvedev is in less celebratory mood than most. He says Russia has often felt on the back foot since the Wall fell, despite assurances at the time that NATO would not expand eastward, as it since has.

“We were hoping the disappearance of the Warsaw Pact would be accompanied by a different degree of Russia’s integration into common European space,” he told Germany’s Spiegel magazine.

“What have we received as a result? NATO is still a bloc whose rockets are targeting the Russian territory."

...yeah...FREEDOM! Why are people so obsessed with celebrating the positives for Germany? Why can't they be more focused on the negatives for Russia? Some people and their priorities.

But for all the joy and remembrance and freedom, I do think we are forgetting something important. Maybe the most important thing that happened during that whole period. Of course I'm referring to David Hasslehoff's legendary performance on the Berlin Wall, where he wore a light up jacket and almost got hit by rockets. How important was it? According to David: it possibly was the reason Germany unified. He's still bitter Reagan is getting all his credit and there isn't a picture of him in the wall museum. So on this, the 20th anniversary, we leave you with the only historical moment worth remembering: HASSLEHOFF!

Picture of the Day

The citizens of Berlin gather to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall in the most obvious way possible: by watching giant wooden puppets of a girl and a man in a diving bell wander the streets looking for each other. Pictures are, of course, from the Big Picture blog. Click to embiggen.

Bad news is good news again!

Open up the tin of beans you were saving, drink the bottled water you stole and hoarded, and put down that bindle: bad news about the economy is good news again! What's the great news this time? GDP shrunk 0.7%! Happy days are here again! Everything is fixed! Cha-ching! High fives all around!

The American economy performed better than expected this spring, contracting at its slowest pace in a year, the government reported on Wednesday. The report offered more evidence that the recession probably ended this summer, and that the economy would now grow through the end of the year.

The Commerce Department reported that the gross domestic product — a billboard number that tallies the country’s economic output — shrank by an annual rate of 0.7 percent from April through June, a revision from earlier estimates of a 1 percent contraction.

The numbers for the second quarter appeared to get a lift from the government’s $787 billion stimulus package. Federal, state and local governments spent more, and business spending on equipment and software was better than first reported. Military spending rose, and American exports posted a narrower drop than imports, a balance that lifts the government’s G.D.P. figures. Economists were heartened by the final revisions after an earlier adjustment found no change in the pace of contraction in the second quarter.

Socialism bitches~! It turned our thousand mile per hour nosedive into a canyon floor into a more graceful 3/4 twisting pike off a high rise, it's has heartened economists, and it has set us up for a theoretical third quarter rebound. Theoretical rebounds baby! Just spend that money already, theoretical money is just as good as the real thing. The economy is back! On paper.

Still if the rotten negative fuckers, who are trying to totally ruin our celebration, must harp on one thing, it's the small matter of the economy still doing that whole "not producing any jobs" thing. To them I say: we just went through a massive economic boom period which didn't actually improve the lives or wages of Americans, doesn't it make sense to go through the recovery period of the recession that followed that phony boom without creating jobs for anyone? Think logically.

So, you know, while you're fighting other unemployed Americans for that roadkill possum on the highway, forming the hobo hierarchy that will rule your tent city, and explaining to the children who have been born post-financial apocalypse all the Mad Max references you and your fellow homeless citizens are making, remember to celebrate about how the US economy is back. Celebrate with confetti and streamers and shit.

Picture of the Day

It's almost October and we all know what that means: China's birthday! What did you get China? I got it a fat hunk of American debt, which it seems to like. But with China's birthday comes a massive celebration and an example of one thing that China does extremely well: pollute cyber-attack America menace Taiwan own everything stage expertly choreographed celebrations that are simultaneously awe inspiring and yet still fill you with dread. The Big Picture blog documents the preparations. Click to embiggen.

Notice: We don't exist for two days

Let it be known that These Bastards must suspend operations until Monday, August 18. There are nuptials to witness and bridesmaids to torment. We'll see you all in a couple of days.