Afternoon video

The Daily Show shows us that while our news media just doesn't have the time in a 24 hour news cycle to fact check leaders, know anything of substance, invite worthwhile guests on to inform the public, or really justify their constant droning stream of "information", they do have time for one thing: fact checking moderately funny sketches from SNL.

It's such a shame that the wrong part of our news media is dying. Craigslist, why couldn't you have smote 24 hour news?

Cheap Blogging Crutch 07.30

Pope: My 'Guardian Angel' Let Me Down
I know he's the Pope and thus prone to believe in this fanciful bullshit, but did he really just blame an angel for failing to keep him upright? And then suggested that God wanted him to fall and ordered an angel to let it happen? I wonder why it is I fail to take religion seriously.

The Baucus Bill's Bad Math
Nate Silver turn his super robot abacus brain onto leaked plans of the health care bill that Max Baucus is negotiating. It seems that it can't possibly do what he says it will and contains a terrible mish-mash of attributes for a health care bill to have. Man, I'm so glad everyone decided it was a great idea to let Max fuckin' Baucus lead the way on health care reform.

Blue Dog Compromise Removes Billions In Savings From Public Plan
Who would have thought? I can't believe that the Blue Dogs actually ended up contradicting their stated goals in order to hack a few bucks out of a health care bill and pretend like they were doing something. It's almost as if they have no idea what they're doing or talking about. Good thing House Democrats decided to cede power to them.

The New Antiquarians
"New vintage". Overly precious kitschy shit on the walls. The hipster TGI Friday's aesthetic. Is it time to consider killing Wes Anderson and hemming in this retro 19th century taxidermist Futura fonted Victorian pastiche trend before it spreads or gets any new ideas? I'm as eager to see the Fantastic Mr. Fox as the next guy, but he needs to be stopped.

Beer choice at Obama meeting touches off new debate
Now that the President is mediating the most important peace accord since Sadat and Begin met, we can finally talk about what's important: booze. Lager? Wheat ales? Budweiser? A magical blend from the Sam Adams founder which melds all the flavors of the world plus magic rainbows? This is important, the whole next week of Glen Beck Hannity, and Rush's shows hinge on whether Barack orders a foreign beer or one they can deem "only pussy liberals drink".

Stormy Daniels Arrested for Domestic Violence
Not only did the porn star challenging David "whores are a conservative christian value" Vitter have a campaign adviser get car bombed, but now she's under arrest for beating her husband. Louisiana needs to have a Senate election every year. We're only in the beginning stages of the primaries and it's threatening to be the most interesting race ever. We're a bestiality arrest and a cultist kidnapping away from having to dip the campaign in bronze to preserve it for future generations.

Happy Fucking Birthday to Us

As of this time tomorrow, TheseBastards will have cheated death for an entire calendar year. While much of this can be easily chalked up to our stubbornness perseverance, lack of anything better to do selfless work ethic and backlog of dick jokes commitment to speaking truth to power, we would be remiss if we didn't thank you, our seven readers.

Verily, your semi-daily visits, no doubt undertaken while clock watching through the end of the workday, are really what kept us going in those dark times. Without you, we'd just be two guys sitting around shit-talking on gchat. But because of you, our loyal, cherished following, we are two guys with a blog sitting around shit-talking on gchat. Thank you. We are even magnanimous enough to forgive you for not making us as famous as we rightly should be. After all, we are nothing if not benevolent and forgiving God-Kings.

We like to think we've accomplished a great deal since firing up this crude, narcissistic exercise. We have indicted virtually every social and political subculture that so much as looked at us funny, pistol-whipped our corporate and media betters for their many sins, slain dragons, rescued fair maidens, taken liberties with said maidens, covered a historic presidential election, foretold various apocalypses, danced on a multitude of graves, wantonly gloated over a couple of Pittsburgh championships, and left one ex-girlfriend profoundly pissed off.

Not a bad tally, really, and one we intend to top in the coming year, provided the world continues to suffer from this nagging case of The Dumb.

Oh, and if we can come up with enough fresh guttertalk.

As always, yours in Christ,

Matthew and Sean

Phrases I never want to hear again

After this election mercifully comes to an end, and dear God why can't it be now, there are certain things I never want spoken of again in politics. They have become trite, overused, and meaningless. Anyone who uses them after November should be cemented into a pine coffin and buried 10 feet deep or catapulted into the side of a mountain. Use of these words will be punishable offenses in our new American, post-apocalyptic wasteland. Henceforth, the list:

game changer
maverick
my friends
straight talk
fundamental difference
change we can/cannot believe in
Main Street
metric
hockey mom
country first
stinking corpse
team of mavericks
existential threat
drill baby drill
reaching across the aisle
reach around
hope
in the tank
taking the gloves off/putting the gloves on/jerking off into a glove you warmed in the oven

Dear God keep op-ed columnists away from the Dark Knight

Sorry, just because the Joker did something bad doesn't mean torture is OK now.

Should Batman kill the Joker?

But if we say that Batman should kill the Joker, doesn't that imply that we should torture terrorism suspects if there's a chance of getting information that could save innocent lives? Of course, terrorism is all too present in the real world, and Batman only exists in the comics and movies. So maybe we're just too detached from the Dark Knight and the problems of Gotham City, so we can say "go ahead, kill him." But, if anything, that detachment implies that there's more at stake in the real world - so why aren't we tougher on actual terrorists than we are on the make-believe Joker?

Dear God, why do you hate me? Over the past few weeks we've had to suffer through interminable articles from columnists and wonks who got told the new hip thing was the Dark Knight and then decided to graft their half assed geopolitical analysis onto it. Batman has alternately been Bush, McCain, Cheney, Obama, the United States, and US foreign policy. Joker is usually bin Laden, Iraq or terrorism in general, and the surrounding characters and story are grafted into this third rate melange of old men who want to seem relevant.

The Dark Knight is a fictional movie. The goddamn Batman is a fictional character. The actions and story are a fabrication. The movie was written in absolutes and black and whites to simplify narrative issues. It is not to be gainfully grafted on to your juvenile, tosspot ideas about torture, surveillance or the war on terror. There are real complexities in these issues, focus on them for five minutes instead of your fantasies about the goddamn Bushman slapping around bin Joker in the hoosegow to save the US. "But but but...the Batman did..." is not adding anything.

It is not a relevant foreign policy discussion, furthermore the people who do this seem to largely miss the point of the Dark Knight or even glorify some of the tactics and ideals that are clearly presented as right and wrong within the movie. This is almost as bad as the '24' meatheads who think we should be allowed to torture anyone we capture because Jack Bauer did it on TV to stop a nuke from going off in an hour......and it worked! Stop confusing simplistic fiction with reality.

Wait, now that i think about it, how can I be against the death penalty when people like Freddy Kruger and Anton Chigurh exist in movies? Don't I want them punished?