Stay classy, Rand

Rand Paul, son of Ron Paul, is the GOP's candidate in Kentucky for their open Senate seat. Let's see, he's the son of Ron Paul, is named after Ayn Rand, claims to be a libertarian, and was elected by a combination of Paulites and fervent teabaggers. Gee, there's just so much to like there. I bet he's not an asshole at all.

INTERVIEWER: Would you have voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964?

PAUL: I like the Civil Rights Act in the sense that it ended discrimination in all public domains, and I’m all in favor of that.

INTERVIEWER: But?

PAUL: You had to ask me the “but.” I don’t like the idea of telling private business owners—I abhor racism. I think it’s a bad business decision to exclude anybody from your restaurant—but, at the same time, I do believe in private ownership.

Ah yes, he's so committed to freedom and the flag that he realizes that large parts of the 1964 Civil Rights Act need to be removed. But he's not racist. He hates racism. He just wants to strip huge chunks out of civil rights legislation so that people can be more free to discriminate on racial grounds.As he goes on to explain, sometimes in a free society we have to tolerate "boorish people". "Boorish people" being sixties era Southern racists. Wonderful people they all were.

Hey, no worries though. He's theoretically against racism and discrimination. Just tacitly against laws that do anything about them.

Hey, at least he didn't come off as a smug prick during a separate interview with Rachael Maddow where he expressed the exact same thoughts. Oh wait... At least there he had the class to reduce the struggle people went through fighting for civil rights as "not a very practical discussion" and a mere "philosophical debate". At least he realized his mistake today... talking to Rachael Maddow in the first place.

Stay classy, Rand. You and your "libertarian" tea baggers. We'll get those segregated lunch counters back, buddy. We'll get them back. Fuck those cripples too.

Maths + science

Both Sean and I here are big supporters of education, science, math, and various other things that can loosely be defined as "uppity book shit". Why? Because we've been bought off by Big Book and Big Knowledge. We're huge whores, what can we say?

So we often try to highlight the large Texas sections Texas of this Texas country Texas where people Texans are trying Texas to undermine science and facts, and monkey with our basic educational system. That said, we also know when well intentioned educators are doing things wrong as well. After all, there's a right way to educate and a wrong way to educate. Let's see if you can point out where this next fellow went wrong. Show your work.

The Secret Service investigated an Alabama high school teacher for using the example of shooting President Obama while teaching a geometry lesson.
...
A student in the class described the lesson: "He was talking about angles and said, 'If you're in this building, you would need to take this angle to shoot the president.'"

The district superintendent told the News that the unnamed teacher will not be disciplined.

Where do you think the teacher went wrong? Clearly he wasn't accounting for wind resistance, any teleprompters in the way, or podium height. At least he had the decency to cross Medgar Evers' name off this old lesson plan and fill in a new darkie. Gotta make the lessons current, otherwise the kids will never pay attention.

Lest you think we'll just paint Alabama and the South with the same finger wagging brush, we'll have you know that both Sean and I consider this to be progress. In the entirety of this man's lesson he did not once refer to mathematics as "that durned numerical witchcraft", attempt to cast Pythagoras as a heretic, or petition the state to bring back the cubit as a unit of measurement. He even taught the assassination lesson in an unsegregated class. I think you'll agree that this is remarkable progress for not only Alabama, but Southern education as a whole.

So if you're in the Jefferson County area and want to drop in on Corner High School, you might just learn something. Like, say, the chemistry teacher teaching the proper gasoline to frozen orange juice concentrate measurements for homemade napalm in case that pesky local IRS building keeps infuriating you or the English Department's curriculum guidelines for their Turner Diaries unit. If you stick around, you might just get to enjoy the Phys Ed Department's George Wallace themed Field Day wheelchair races.

Progress

As one of the landmark Supreme Court decisions in US history, Brown v. the Board of Education was one of the landmark steps in the civil rights movement. Honest. It's in the history books and everything. Seems someone forgot to tell the state of Mississippi that though. So the Justice Department had to send them a little memo about segregation. In 2010.

“More than 55 years after Brown v. Board of Education, it is unacceptable for school districts to act in a way that encourages or tolerates the resegregation of public schools,” said Thomas E. Perez, Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.
...
According to the motion, the district’s practice of permitting hundreds of students — the vast majority whom are white — to attend schools outside their assigned residential attendance zone without restriction prompted a disproportionate number of white students to attend a single school in the district, leaving a number of other schools disproportionately black.

Indeed, evidence in the case suggested that the community regarded certain schools in the district as “white schools” or “black schools.” The United States also asserted that officials in certain district schools grouped, or “clustered,” white students together in particular classrooms, resulting in large numbers of all-black classes at every grade level in those schools.

Yeah, the Justice Department of the US had to remind the Walthall County school district in Mississippi about the fact that they weren't allowed to segregate students any more. I wonder how they're going to take the revelations about the water fountain and lunch counter thing. Or the black President. Bonus points for segregating kids in a county where it's almost a 50/50 split between whites and blacks. That's a a high racist degree of difficulty.

Still, this is all understandable. 1954 was a long time ago; who can remember what landmark civil rights decision came when and applied to what, or if they were even still applicable?

There's a phrase about Mississippi: last in everything and proud of it. I guess they just had to be the last to come in compliance with desegregation. Maybe they just didn't read about it. Doesn't strike me as a big newspaper culture and they might be getting their textbooks from Texas. In any event, the next time someone asks Mississippi, they can answer "Yes, we are somewhat in compliance with historically significant civil rights legislation and Supreme Court court rulings." That's progress.

Cheap Blogging Crutch 11.03

Palinoia
Matt Taibbi gets out his long knives for Sarah Palin in story he wrote over the summer but never published, during her whole resignation embarrassment. I don't know why he didn't publish it. It has great discussions on gems like the "campaign trail version of Mommie Dearest" she put the McCain camp through, the through line of "nutty-ass paranoid behavior" that permeates everything she does, as well as her political supporters to seem to rally behind her because it "validates [their] insane sense of fucked-overness". Worth a read, if only to remind yourself that she's never going to go away and there's still a large chunk of people who want to hand her power.

How Goldman secretly bet on the U.S. housing crash
McClatchy news joins the "bludgeon everyone at Goldman-Sachs with a truncheon" bandwagon with Matt Taibbi as they start up an rather exhaustive series on how our economic betters at G/S have looted government, bet against the country, manipulated markets, and screwed everyone everywhere over for copious amounts of cash. Click on the sidebar for a full rundown. It misses Taibbi's outraged fury, but more than delivers in jaw dropping detail. McClatchy runs a pretty good news operation, shame he couldn't run a baseball team. Ah well Kev, this, and your reporting on Iraq and the war on terror more than make up for running the Buccos into the ground. All is forgiven. Ah, who am I kidding, I'm still fucking pissed off about the Pirates. Fuck you, McClatchy!

Racial disparity: All active ethics probes focus on black lawmakers
Whoops! I'm sure that's just a coincidence. Nice to see that no matter how high up you get in this country, the justice system still works the same way. I'm sure that it's just that there aren't any white crooks that have been elected. As Rod Blagojevich, Eliot Spitzer, Mark Sanford, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Larry Craig, Tom Delay, Jim Traficant, and George Bush have taught us: it's the black politicians you have to watch out for.

Second Circuit Affirms Dismissal of Arar
Something you probably won't hear too much about today and tomorrow as our press decides whether Republicans winning in historically Republican states and districts means that Obama should resign immediately or take two weeks off and then resign: the fact that a US court said it's OK for the US to illegally detain, render to a foreign country, and brutally torture an obviously innocent man without evidence as long as a.) government swears their complete violation of the law was totally for national security purposes, b.) prosecuting the crimes would force a court to scrutinize the effectiveness and legality of government programs and the high level officials that made them and c.) the victim cannot complete the bizarre and completely impossible legal hurdles the court places in front of him. This is the country we live in, America. Be proud.

Omnibusted
On the anniversary of their admittance to the union, The Edge of the American West looks at how the Dakotas and other mountain territories became states. In case you were wondering how states with more sheep than people get two senators with which to fuck over states that actually have people in them, the simple answer is corruption, fear of polygamist Mormons, racism towards brown people, and a desire by Republicans to pack the Senate with more Republicans. So just in case anyone tries to tell you otherwise, the Senate was never a place of congenial good, there was never a "better time" in its history, it was always an awful, stupid and corrupt place. Happy birthday Dakotas!

That's a nice cover you have there

Surprisingly the answer is yes, your baby is a huge fucking brown shirted frothing racist. In fact, your baby probably was holding up a crazy racist/conspiracy laden placard at this weekend's 9/12 Glenn Beck United States of Tea-merica protests. For shame. You and your racist infant sicken me.

Stay classy, health care protesters

You know how you can tell a story is going to end well? When the phrases "inspired by Glen Beck" and "some protesters carried racist caricatures of President Obama" are involved. Yes, the "spontaneous grassroots movement" known as the health care opposition, spurred on by Fox News, Glen Beck, and Republican party mailers, stormed a town hall and started getting violent.

Police officers were called to calm down an unruly crowd outside a health care reform town hall meeting in downtown Tampa, Florida on Thursday evening, according to local news reports.

Angry protesters screamed, yelled and banged on windows as officers hurried to guard the entrances to the facility, where U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor was trying to discuss the various health care reform proposals being debated in Congress. One photojournalist said that a fistfight broke out inside the building, reports WTSP.

You gotta love people who scream "Tyranny!" as they're trying to drown out a free discussion of ideas with their hooting, hollering, "Forty million illegals" chants, and low level rioting. At least they were offering up pearls of wisdom like "They can't even run a meeting, and they want to run health care?''. Well I don't know, can a public option be disrupted by a couple hundred jerkoffs with racist placards? I think the fact that it can't is one of the ticks in the 'pro' column.

Another moment of unintended hilarity was when they decided to yell at Rep. Castor to "Read the bill!", something assuredly none of them had done. I mean this is a group of people who believe the bill will require near mandatory euthanasia of the elderly, will allow the government to get its damn hands on Medicare, and that a public option equals a complete government takeover of health care. Hey, they're even lying about who they are and what they represent. But I guess lies, paranoia, and the desire to stamp out and disrupt any attempt at rational debate are the hallmarks of an intellectual movement based on actual thought and actual anger over something. It's definately not phony bullshit. I look forward to another couple dozen of these sometimes violent, mob rule, town hall takeovers that are completely spontaneous and don't seem to follow an exactly similar pattern of behavior every single time.

Cheap Blogging Crutch 06.18

North Korea May Fire A Missile Toward Hawaii
Everyone's favorite diminutive waterslide enthusiast, Kim Jong-Il, is considering a move so childish you expect it to be delivered with a bonnet and pacifier. He wants to launch a Taepodong missile in the direction of Hawaii, but not at Hawaii, on the 4th of July. For no real reason. Kimmy, just shit in a box and send it to a Senator, it's slightly more mature.

An Insider Turned Agitator Is the Face of Iran’s Opposition
In case you wanted to know who the man leading the Iranian election protests is, the New York Times decided to do a profile on him. Last week Mir Hossein Mousavi was a more moderate version of Ahmadinejad, now he makes Gandhi look like a pederast. Chart the transformation from larva to pupae to green butterfly.

Stealing the Election All Over Again
In case you lost your mind and decided to take those Guardian Council proclamations of a "partial recount" seriously, it turns out they are a sham. I know, shocking. I will note that I think this is the first time in history that an initial count and a recount involved no actual counting. They just can't stop making history over there.

PETA wishes Obama hadn't swatted that fly
Reason 167,842 why PETA is annoying and makes me want to self harm. Obama swatted a fly on camera and in response PETA sent out a press release condemning it, did an interview condemning it, and sent a Katcha Bug Humane Bug Catcher to the WHite House so it could treat bugs humanely. Because the president killed a fly. A fly. Not a polar bear, not a kitten, not a tiger cub, not a dodo that popped out from a mouse hole in the White House wainscoting, a fly. Because flies are in such short supply. If you'll excuse me I am now going to step on ants extra hard, replete with an ankle twist and mocking laugh.

How online racist jokes hurt S.C. GOP
Seems like the South Carolina GOP is learning the hard way that completely racist cracks about the President that are disseminated publicly over the internet are damaging to their electoral prospects. I'm surprised it took them so long to figure it out. All it would have taken for me to understand is a glimpse of a calendar that pointed out the year as 2009, not 1952, and how posting something up on the intarwubs would make it viewable to more eyes than say, a snide comment to a colleague in a cloakroom. Perhaps someone would be so kind as to explain that to the rest of the caucus, perhaps by writing it on something heavy and hitting them with it.

Quote of the day

John de Nugent on trying to distance his sector of the white supremacist movement from that of James von Brunn, the man who shot up the Holocaust Museum yesterday.

De Nugent called von Brunn a genius but described the shooting as the act of “a loner and a hothead.”

“The responsible white separatist community condemns this,” he said. “It makes us look bad.”

I'm not one to quibble with the accuracy of that statement as, yes, shooting up a Holocaust Museum, or really any museum or just any place in general, makes white supremacists look bad. But what exactly are the things that make white supremacists look good? I'm going to need that pointed out for me. Maybe they're running some sort of after school reading program for disadvantaged white kids or maybe some sort of free day care where they entertain children with hand puppet renditions of the Turner Diaries. But otherwise I'm pretty sure that nothing the white power/neo-nazi/fascist movement does makes them look particularly good.

One thing though, after this shooting, the Tiller murder, and the Unitarian Church shooting, the shotting of Pittsburgh policemen, not to mention the Oklahoma City bombings, Montana Freemen, and Waco incidents of the 90's, isn't time to start taking that DHS report on right-wing terrorism a little more seriously? I'd certainly be better than denouncing it as nonsense and as liberal fascism against decent Americans, like what happened when word broke of the report. Just a thought.

Newt's "My bad"

Newtie is remorseful. He's decided that spending a full week yelling "RACIST!!!!" not only makes the throat red and inflamed, but is also intensely damaging to things like relations with the Latin community, elections, opinions of your sanity, and the reputation you're trying to cultivate as a conservative intellectual. He just wants to return to a safer place where we can all just demonize her for being a liberal. So now he wants to close the racism door on the racism barn after all those racist horses escaped.

My initial reaction was strong and direct -- perhaps too strong and too direct. The sentiment struck me as racist and I said so. Since then, some who want to have an open and honest consideration of Judge Sotomayor's fitness to serve on the nation's highest court have been critical of my word choice.

With these critics who want to have an honest conversation, I agree. The word "racist" should not have been applied to Judge Sotomayor as a person, even if her words themselves are unacceptable.

Yeah, I guess when your comments find you echoing the words of Tom Tancredo and allowing David Duke to re-enter the stage and throw his two cents into the political debate probably caused Newt to reassess some things. Like how far he's sunk and whether he's too old to get married for a fourth time. But only after he stopped crying and took the gun out of his mouth.

So you guys gonna take back all the hysterical/emotional/temperamental stupid woman attacks, or are we all still cool with those?

Battle of intellectual equals

Seems Rush Limbaugh really pissed of some people by comparing Sonia Sotomayor to David Duke. Like, for instance, David Duke. He really didn't appreciate the comparison. Why? Because unlike Mr. Dr. Duke, Sotomayor is a total racist.

“Limbaugh, a recent addict to illegal drugs, has no business making personal attacks against me for my past,” Duke said. “I have consistently supported true equal rights, stating again and again that I support the best-qualified person regardless of race in hiring and promotions.”

Ouch, cheap shotted by a KKK Grand Wizard. Nice sentiment though, Dave. Strike that, it would have been nice had you not then immediately parroted Tom Tancredo's lies about Sotomayor and La Raza before claiming that affirmative action is racist. Or that whole part where you claimed Sotomayor was part of a Jewish conspiracy to "control any person who is influential or who may at some point in the future become influential.”

Yeah, kind off flew off the rails there at the end.

Quotes of the weekend

Not content to just let right wing critiques of Sonia Sotomayor completely scrape the bottom of the barrel, Rush Limbaugh and G. Gordon Liddy decided to lift up that barrel and look for another barrel underneath it, so that they might scrape that one too.

El Rushbo:

LIMBAUGH: Not only does she lack the often discussed appropriate judicial temperament, it's worse than that. She brings a form of bigotry and racism to the court. I don't care, we're not supposed to say it, we're supposed to pretend it didn't happen, we're supposed to look at other things but it's the elephant in the room. The real question here that needs to be asked and nobody on our side from a columnist to a TV commentator to anybody in our party has the guts to ask, how can a president nominate such a candidate? And how can a party get behind such a candidate? That's what would be asked if somebody were foolish enough to nominate David Duke or pick somebody even less offensive.

The felon who wanted to have his political enemies murdered:

LIDDY: I understand that they found out today that Miss Sotomayor is a member of La Raza, which means in illegal alien, “the race.” And that should not surprise anyone because she’s already on record with a number of racist comments.
...
LIDDY: Let’s hope that the key conferences aren’t when she’s menstruating or something, or just before she’s going to menstruate. That would really be bad. Lord knows what we would get then.

It's hard to know why this party is out of power when it has such stunning intellectual lights as these two. Sotomayor=David Duke/menstruation will destroy the legal foundation of this country. If the debate is already this degraded three days after her nomination, imagine where we'll be when her conformation hearings start up. I can hardly wait.

Quote of the Day: Someone tell him to breathe

Tom Tancredo, out there proving that you can't a tarnish your reputation if your reputation is as someone who race baits Mexicans.

TANCREDO: If you belong to an organization called La Raza, in this case, which is, from my point of view anyway, nothing more than a Latino — it’s a counterpart — a Latino KKK without the hoods or the nooses. If you belong to something like that in a way that’s going to convince me and a lot of other people that it’s got nothing to do with race. Even though the logo of La Raza is “All for the race. Nothing for the rest.” What does that tell you?

I'm not that surprised he mistook the real La Raza slogan “Strengthening America by promoting the advancement of Latino families” with “All for the race. Nothing for the rest.” and confused the country's largest Latino civil rights advocacy group with a bunch of hooded white supremacist terrorists who murdered and harassed hundreds of thousands of people. Don't we all often make those mistakes?

He does raise an interesting philosophical question would a rose by any other name smell just as sweetly?" can you really be the KKK without the hoods and nooses? I'd like to thank Tommy for bringing up this important esoteric point about the nature of racism. Oh, he wasn't doing that? He was just being a racist? Sorry, my mistake.

That makes one

Instead of trying to present themselves as a sane party who was going to fight this SOCTUS nomination battle over judicial philosophy or even wait until Sotomayor's hearing to throw a hissy fit, most of the GOP decided to spend yesterday stripping themselves naked, setting themselves on fire, and running through the town square, nude and ablaze, screaming "RACIST!!!!!!" But there was a man who took a look at what was going on and decided he was going to kindly step aside and not associate himself with all the other people that decided to speak for his party yesterday. That man? The Balladeer, Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah.

Former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) attacked Judge Sonia Sotomayor on his Twitter feed today as a “Latina woman racist” who should withdraw her nomination. On CNN this afternoon, Wolf Blitzer asked Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), who sits on the Judiciary Committee, if he agreed with Gingrich. “No, I don’t agree with that,” replied Hatch

Ok, that makes one. Anyone want to lay odds on there being a second?

Quotes of the day: On racism

Pat Buchanan on why the fact that no white men were finalists for Obama's SCOTUS choice and the fact that a damned Mexican stole another job from a white American makes this THE MOST RACIST THING EVER!

BUCHANAN: Look, are you going to let me talk, Lawrence? You got down to four women, not a single white male — all women
...
BUCHANAN: Yes. No, it did not occur to me. You mean there are no white males qualified? That would be an act of bigotry to make a statement like that.
...
BUCHANAN: I don’t say it’s an outrage, I say it’s affirmative action. They were picked because she’s a woman and a Hispanic and you know it as well as I do.

Newtie twisted a comment she made completely out of context and decided she's a total racist and Tweeted as such. The RNC agreed and reTweeted it.

newtgingrich: White man racist nominee would be forced to withdraw. Latina woman racist should also withdraw.

Tom Tancredo concurs go back to Mexico racist!

TANCREDO: I’m telling you she appears to be a racist. She said things that are racist in any other context. That’s exactly how we would portray it and there’s no one who would get on the Supreme Court saying a thing like that except for a Hispanic woman and you’re going to say it doesn’t matter!

El Rushbo is of the same mind

"So, here you have a racist. You might want to soften that and you might wanna say a reverse racist. And the libs of course say that minorities cannot be racists because they don't have the power to implement their racism. Well, those days are gone because reverse racists certainly do have the power to implement their power. Obama is the greatest living example of a reverse racist and now he's appointed one."

So remember everyone, you may think that excelling at the top schools, a distinguished career, impeccable credentials, and a lifetime of service make you qualified for a position of importance, but it doesn't. Unless you're a white guy, you're just there because of racism or sexism and are almost certainly a complete and total sexist/racist yourself. Just wanted to clear that up.

Department of sensible racism ideas

If there's one thing that we can all agree on hating, it's that stupid little idea that just because you were born here that makes you a citizen. I mean what asshole wrote that? James Madison? Abe Lincoln? Senator Jacob M. Howard of Michigan? Citizenship is earned, either through the military means of the movie 300 that I half remember or through the military means of Starship Troopers that I half remember. Service means citizenship or something, I think there was also some large wolf based fighting. Whatever. At least one smart man agrees with my DVD catalog: U.S. Rep. Nathan Deal. His solution? Fuck the Mexicans.

U.S. Rep. Nathan Deal, a Republican candidate for governor of Georgia, has proposed changing the long-standing federal policy that automatically grants citizenship to any baby born on U.S. soil, a move opposed by immigrant rights advocates.

Supporters of Deal's proposal say "birthright citizenship" encourages illegal immigration and makes enforcement of immigration laws more difficult. Opponents say the proposed law wouldn't solve the illegal immigration problem and goes against this country's traditions of welcoming immigrants.
...
"This is a sensible, overdue measure that closes a clause that was never meant to be a loophole," said Bob Dane, spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which seeks tighter immigration restrictions.

Under Deal's proposal, babies born in the U.S. would automatically have citizenship only if at least one of their parents is a U.S. citizen or national, a legal permanent resident of the U.S., or actively serving in the U.S. military.

Meant to close a loophole that was never supposed to exist?

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Seems pretty cut and dried to me. But then I'm no Constitutional scholar. Deal also has a plan to change the inscription of the Statue of Liberty from "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free" to "Hey you, pregnant foreigner! Don't even fuckin' think about going into labor here! Hold it in!" I just think that's it's nice to know that in this day and age someone has the guts to demonize the Constitution, infants and people wishing to become American citizens through a law solely intended to target one race. The people of Georgia are so lucky to have this man running for Governor.

Cheap Blogging Crutch 2.27

Anti-Scientology...Infomercials?
This is a story of one man. One man and his failed career as a comic, his third rate Kentucky Fried Movie wannabe, a Church of Scientology bankroll, financial ruin and attacks from the CoS, redemption in the form of an absorbent towel, and a ShamWow funded war against Scientology. Vince the ShamWow guy, our personal hero of the day.

Obama Budget Includes Funding Boost for NASA
AstroBase Go! Combined with the stimulus package NASA is getting an extra $2.4 billion to destroy satellites and not build me a moon chateau. On the other hand it makes plans to move away from the shuttle, finish the International Space Station, further non-exploding monitoring of climate change, build a robot that will dent and graffiti Chinese and Russian satellites and spacecraft, and a plan to bury Neil Armstrong's bones on the moon by 2020.

Growing hate groups blame Obama, economy
Ever wondered what marginalized, fringe, racist hate groups are feeling about the economy and President Obama? No, right? Because you can already guess what they're going to say? Yeah, I thought so. Still, for the five of you who would be surprised, CNN went and asked anyway. Turns out they're sympathetic to Obama and the problems he inherited, they just hope that he'll increasing spending on programs for students and people living in rural poor areas, seeing as achievement levels are mostly a result of the poverty level whether in the inner city or the sticks. No, just kidding. They hate his black ass and blame him for everything. Plus there's some analysis on how the economy is going to probably swell their ranks and increase the amount of shit they build into crosses and swastikas and set on fire.

Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?
Hey, remember that guy who killed 3,000 Americans and then got off scot free? Obama something something? Well it turns out some people are still concerned that he's still breathing and planning attacks with al Qaeda. The people at Foreign Policy magazine have gone to the trouble of bringing us MIT scientist Thomas Gillespie's biogeographic data information and his mathematical model for where bin Laden should be. Unsurprisingly it's on the Afghan/Pakistan border, Kurram province to be specific. The town of Parachinar to be exact. N. 33.901944° E.70.093746° to be precise. Though his map does say there is a 10% change bin Laden is in Japan or France. Anyone up for a look?

Slow golf clap for PETA

Not content just to try and use nudity and sex to sell lettuce, PETA has once again decided to venture into territory commonly reserved for the insane and the self-absorbed. Which is good for them, they already own a lot of that territory and have built their headquarters there. Moving beyond mere sexism, they decided to mine the fertile ground of racism and dog shows. Because it's such an obvious comparison.

“Is this really the KKK?” somebody asked the woman in the white robe and the pointy hat.
...
“Welcome AKC Members,” read a banner hanging from the table — with AKC crossed out and KKK written above it. Two PETA protesters dressed as Ku Klux Klan members, while other volunteers handed out brochures that read: “The KKK and the AKC: BFF?”

“Obviously it’s an uncomfortable comparison,” PETA spokesman Michael McGraw said.

But the AKC is trying to create a “master race,” he added. “It’s a very apt comparison.”

No Mike, no it really isn't. I guess you received such positive attention when you compared factory farming to the holocaust, and animal cruelty to slavery and lynchings you decided to go back to that well.

This is why people don't like or listen to you. It's hard to go "Everyone, we need to change the practice of factory farming. It's dangerous, cruel, and unhealthy." when you chime in "It's worse than the holocaust!" because then we have to turn around immediately and go "Whoa, cool out. It is in no way like the holocaust. People, I'm not with this person. Don't light me with your torches or hit me with your rocks." It's why people who think you have a decent cause to fight for are also completely disgusted with your tactics, message, demonstrations, and the seemingly off the charts levels of cognitive dissonance that permeates your organization. Animal cruelty is a strong enough message as it is, just show the reality of it. There's no need to pretend it's morally and ethically equivalent to slavery. Here's a suggestion, next time you come up with a new campaign, say "Dog collars are like the Armenian Genocide", take a moment, breathe, and then go outside and run it by ten normal people. If their reaction is one of horror or an attempt to immolate you, reconsider. Save us the trouble of recoiling in horror.

Scarborough Country renamed Classytown

Matthew was rightly salivating earlier over the prospect of some truly epic "What the-- what the FUCK?" moments from conservative talking heads in the coming years. Apparently Joe Scarborough reads These Bastards because this morning, in response to Mika Brzezinski's comment that it was so cold her car door froze shut, Joe mused:

"Oh, American car. That's the problem," Scarborough declared: "The American car -- you know what? It's probably some Japanese engineer that made the key hold -- just sabotaged us. Kinda like blowing up things at Pearl Harbor."

Yes, Joe. It is exactly like that. Hide your virgins, roundeye.

Video below the fold.