I think I'll enjoy the architectural beauty of Dubai from afar, thank you very much

I'm not sure I quite understand the aims and goals of Dubai and the United Arab Emirates. It seems to me that they have two quite contradictory goals. One, create some of the most ridiculous buildings, structures, and resorts known to man in an attempt to lure business and high end tourism dollars. Two, subject anyone who goes there to the most arcane, regressive, and unfair judicial system anyone could possibly conceive of. I'm no rich Arab oil sheik or developer, but those two goals don't seem to mesh together.

Let me explain.

A United Arab Emirates sheikh was acquitted Sunday of charges connected to the videotaped beating and torture of an Afghan grain dealer.

Sheikh Issa bin Zayed al-Nahyan, a member of the emirates' ruling family, was charged with rape, endangering life and causing bodily harm in connection with the nearly three-hour long tape shot in 2004 in the desert outside Abu Dhabi, one of the United Arab Emirates in the Persian Gulf region.

See, they're just like us! Sure, one might say that he's probably guilty just because there's a three hour tape of the man pouring sand in a victim's mouth before beating him with a nailed board, burning his genitals with a cigarette lighter, shocking him with a cattle prod, leading him to believe he would be shot, pouring salt into his wounds, and repeatedly driving an SUV over him. But others would say, that you should shut up. I mean not only was he taking prescription medication that caused all of this, probably Rapinex or Abusitol, but they say that tape doesn't show everything the tape explicitly shows in graphic detail. Who can really argue with that?

Then there's stuff like this.

A father-of-three who was found with a microscopic speck of cannabis stuck to the bottom of one of his shoes has been sentenced to four years in a Dubai prison.
...
A search by customs officials uncovered a speck of cannabis weighing just 0.003g - so small it would be invisible to the naked eye and weighing less than a grain of sugar - on the tread of one of his shoes.

Frankly the man should have known better: there was that case where a man was imprisoned for having three poppy seeds. Then there's that whole thing where you're at fault if you get raped there. It works that way for both women and men. Equality!

So there are positives and negatives. Sure, you get to partake in five star hotels and the lavish life of the ultra rich... on the other hand you'll probably be raped and tortured in the desert, get thrown in jail for letting it happen to you, and then get an extra four years tacked on to your sentence of "1st degree getting raped and tortured" because they found out you had lemon poppyseed cake at breakfast. But, on the other hand, those buildings are really crazy and they have a massive hotel shaped like a giant wind sail! Agassi played Federer on its helipad! So I guess you'll have to make that decision for yourself. I think I'll just Google architectural reviews of their follies and "Dubai financial collapse" from afar.

Oh, I forgot to mention the slave labor and... we'll just call it "all the other stuff". Don't ever go there.

Your look at the blinding stupidity of the Super Bowl of Freedom

Image via Matthew Yglesias. Stay classy, tea baggers!

The horror.....the horror.

Jon Voight invoked Rev. Jeremiah Wright in his speech, saying “the lies and deception are blatant... Maybe it was the 20 years of sub-conscious programming by Rev Wright to damn America."
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"Palin/Bachmann 2012," came a shout from the crowd
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Another hero of the movement, Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), has been autographing tea bags for the crowd and is wearing a jacket covered in pins and stickers reading “Yes! Freedom!”
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Many are holding signs that echo their distrust of Obama and their belief that he is pursuing socialist policies.

One sign read: "Obama takes his orders from the Rothchilds," a reference to theories of Jewish world dominance centered around the prominent Jewish family of Rothschilds.

• Eric Cantor: "Be assured not one Republican will vote for this bill," Cantor said, to big cheers and shouts of "Kill the bill."
• Paul Broun: Fellow patriots, go tell your Congressman, you're not going to eat this rotten stinking fish that is -- Pelosi health care! We are going to put a stop sign in front of her steamroller of socialism! Go to it, patriots!
• Virginia Foxx and Pete Hoekstra: Democrats "wanna take your freedoms away," Hoekstra said. Later, Foxx called the bill a "freedom-killer." "This Congress is on a collision course with the principles of freedom and liberty that our Founding Fathers bled and died for," she said.
• John Boehner: "This bill is the greatest threat to freedom that I've seen in the 19 years I've been in Washington."

Can I even add anything to this...the SUPER BOWL OF FREEDOM? Holocaust photos, Jewish banking conspiracies, teabag signings by an idiot who thinks that health reform is a bigger threat than terrorism, Ultraamericanfreedolibertypatriots like Todd Aiken unable to remember the Pledge of Allegiance, people seriously wishing that Michelle Bachmann and Sarah Palin would challenge Obama/Biden in 2012 (I want it to happen too, but for the sake of comedy and schadenfreude), endless cries from actual elected leaders that an attempt to make health care more available and cheaper to people is the greatest threat in the history of freedom, and a litany of fear-mongering over imagined proposals and plans that are nowhere near this weak, third rate health care reform bill that, incidentally, was endorsed by the AARP and AMA.

Gaze into the madness, America. If your hair starts to turn white and insanity overwhelms you, then you stared too long. Good thing the GOP is going to go after their last remaining moderates in a desperate bid to appeal to these people, I was worried for a second that large scale Democratic incompetence was going to have some repercussions in 2010. Now the only alternative to socialism is a lunatic wearing a teabag wreath shouting about Kenyan infiltration. Thanks GOP, you looked at the big slice of crazy pie that Bachmann was eating and asked her to cut you a big slice. You're incapable of learning and I appreciate it.

Broken In Brief: Area man flirts with insanity as he attempts to explain mother's computer problem to her

HARTFORD—Today, after a brief period of around five minutes when the entire world did not make sense to him and his thoughts were consumed by paranoia and murder fantasies, area man Ron Durham was able to regain his senses after a disastrous attempt to explain to his mother how he fixed the problem she was having on her computer.

The brief flirtation with insanity began early in the day when his mother called him up with complaints that her computer, which Mr. Durham had mistakenly bought for her in an attempt to move her into the 21st century, was “acting funny” and added to it a list of nonsensical claims that included the gem “the packets aren’t sizing.”

As Durham arrived to look at the computer, his sanity was initially tested by his mother’s complete inability to explain what was happening in terms that a normal human would comprehend. After a fifteen minute period wading through this crazy woman’s cluttered desktop of solitaire games, pictures of grandchildren, and wrongly installed programs, he finally found the problem and fixed it quite easily.

Tragically he made the mistake of informing his mother of the actual problem and solution, explaining that it was “a simple matter of updating drivers.” As he slowly realized what he had just done, Durham was unable to run out of the house in time to avoid the rapid fire rash of bizarrely nonsensical computer/automotive questions.

As his mind caved in on itself, devouring his will to live under the weight of a carburetor/Windows tandem word bludgeoning, he finally understood the only two solutions to end this madness: murder or escape.

"Magic,” he blurted out. “I was wrong. It was magic that caused it. Magic also fixed it. It was magic all along...inside each of us." As his mother paused, perhaps to contemplate the witness of said magic or perhaps in affront to what she had to know was an egregious lie, Durham used the momentary pause to gather his senses, say goodbye, run from the house, and take stock of how precious life is.

The future

I feel you need to see something. It is possibly the purest distillation of everything crazy the fringe right wing has concocted about Barack Hussein Obama in the few short months he's been elected. It might be the greatest thing ever. Even better yet, it's an online game. Gaze upon the majesty of the United States of Earth.


And that's just the banner at the top of the page! There's a whole treasure trove underneath it.

The United States is a creation of "racists and warmongers," Obama says to a stunned America, and is to be replaced by the North American People's Union. In the course of this very broadcast, Obama, with two simple pen strokes, signs the "treaties" into law. One dissolves the United States and its Constitution, and the other disarms what is left of the gun-owning United States citizenry, as part and parcel of a United Nations Treaty to ban all firearms, which had already been signed into law by over 40 nations. The Marxist Coup Had begun!
...
Private ownership of firearms has been outlawed, and Obama promises a new era of equality and peace. Unfortunately for Obama, Americans will not act like the sheep he has taken them for. Revolution begins.

That's right and all that follows reads like the fevered dream of a Glenn Beck viewer who has Red Dawn on a constant loop on his TV. Someone who has read the Turner Diaries over...and over and over and over again until hand & penis chafing resulting from constantly masturbating to it forces him to stop.

Because simply providing a few warped paragraphs on our all but certain future would hardly sustain the game, there are also breaking news updates of the things that are going on....in the future. Some of the headlines: Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck Found Dead in Camp, Former V.P. Joe Biden Captured Outside Arlington, Michelle Malkin and Andrew Breitbart Prevail, Hillary Clinton narrowly Evades Militia Near Fredericksburg, Sarah Palin The Patriot Leads Revolt Against Hamas. That's right the story line encompasses a world where Hamas aligns itself with Obama, engages in door to door beheadings of disloyal Americans, and are finally beaten back by the combined strength of armies led by Palin, Malkin, and Breitbart. Not to mention a scenario where Joe Biden is captured after a Sean Hannity led Texas Militia kills Joe's Islamic Warrior Guard. Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh killed in FEMA camps. A Mexico/Canada/America super country.

I literally cannot do the full scope of this site justice. Go check it out. It is not possible to parody this site. It is so serious and so insane that it parodies itself completely and thoroughly. You will never find anything that sums up the Beck/Teabagger mindset better.

Stay classy

I'm glad that the religious types have chosen sides in this health care battle. Because if we know one thing it's that Jesus would not have wanted health care to be cheap or accessible. What was it he said? Something along the lines of "Fuck the poor. If My Father wanted them to be able to afford health care, He would have blessed them with riches." It's somewhere in the back of the bible. Jesus says it at a 1000 denarii a plate dinner for Pontius Pilate.

Among those hoping for the defeat of all things Obama is Arizona preacher Steven Anderson who is pissed off at Barry because he heard a rumor that the health care bill that hasn't passed might also allow women dominion over their own uterus, and he's also pissed about gays, and abortion, and gays, and abortion again. He really doesn't like Barry.

“I’m not gonna pray for his good. I’m going to pray that he dies and goes to hell.”

Just in case you were confused, he wants to make it absolutely clear that, no, you didn't mishear him.

I hope that God strikes Obama with brain cancer so he can die like Ted Kennedy. You know, and I hope it happens today.

I hope he's praying to get his front door kicked in by the Secret Service, I think God is up for granting that wish.

Socialism broke Glen Beck's mind

When liberal brown shirts confronted aardvark aficionado Glen Beck with the socialist expanses of Barack Obama's new Third Reich, he did what any normal flag eating American would do: screech like a maniac, scream, and try to shatter the glass around him with the pissy anguish of a thousand dead founding fathers. Warning: you are about to be exposed to the demented thought process of a human turd.



This man is popular. This man makes millions. This man can't form a coherent thought. Try to tell me God exists when he allows things like the ascendancy of Glen Beck as a serious intellectual pundit happen. Though really, who's crazier: Glen Beck or someone who knowingly calls up Glen Beck's show and tries to reason with him?

He came back for some reason

Well it's Monday, and after a quick trip to the G8 and a brisk walk through the parts of Africa it's safe to walk through, President Obama decided to come back to America for some reason. Why? It's so much easier overseas.

Take the G8 Conference for example. As per all G8 meetings they made a bunch of huge promises that they totally swear they are going to do but also noted that it's difficult to say when they actually were going to get around to them, if ever. Hopefully Barry learned a few lessons during his first G8: talk up everything, accomplish nothing in a ridiculously short amount of time, then proclaim everything a massive success.

Take their climate change agreement that "the increase in global average temperature above pre-industrial levels ought not to exceed two degrees centigrade." Note that not only did they not come to any hard numbers or binding plans about how to actually do this, nut that even the language on their agreement is weaselly. "Ought not", not must not, can not, or, critically, will not. Then there's that pledge to give $20 billion for farm aid in Africa. If it's like other pledges they'll just end up crying poverty and stiffing Africa for the dinner check. Then Obama went for a quick jaunt to Africa where he got to strut around and bask in the glow of that farm aid promise that the rest of the G8 is going to welsh on and take easy shots at African despots, calling for an end to their tyranny.

Now he's coming home where he has to actually get things done and get them by the world's dumbest legislative body. Why tangle with this domestic madness? Did he need to watch the Sotomayor circus? Watch Goldmann-Sachs post up huge profits off the backs of the last round of bailouts? Watch Senators dick around on health care? There's nothing for you here Barry, just run and never look back. Turtle until a G20 or another G8 meeting comes around. Then you'll be able to feel like you've done something again.

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.

Broken News: Gore, lonely, warns of Martians

NASHVILLE—With the environmental crisis knocked from the headlines by discussion of the impending world financial meltdown and a fading public profile which has given him an increased amount of isolation from the masses, aides close to former President-Elect Al Gore say he is becoming increasingly detached and isolated from human contact. In a desperate attempt to regain some measure attention and adulation, the lonely figure has taken to warning anyone who will listen about the impending threat of Martian invasion.

“He just doesn’t have anything to do, the poor guy,” remarked friend and 2000 recount lawyer David Boies. “He’s already convinced everyone to address the worldwide environmental threat, but now there’s no money or political will to do it. It’s all 'economy' this, 'bailout' that, 'horrific financial apocalypse' the other. The movie came out, he got his Oscar, he did his speaking tour, and he got his Nobel, now what? People already understand; he can’t make them care more. They’re tuning him out.”

Staring wistfully at a copy of Earth in the Balance, Boies continued, tears welling up in his eyes. “He even took to wearing the Oscar and Nobel Prize on a chain around his neck just to get people to notice him and take an interest again. Then he welded the both of them to one of those large metal staffs and started ‘knighting’ people to go forth and carry out his environmental works. That didn’t work either; people are too concerned with their 401k and didn’t find his Enviro-Pope costume convincing enough. Now…*sigh*…he just won’t stop about the Martian thing.”

Causing further disillusionment in the environmental cause is all the other celebrities that have rushed into the void, promoting their own Earth causes and climate change ideas, stealing Mr. Gore’s thunder. Chief among them is Leonardo DiCaprio, for whom the Vice-President shares no small level of enmity. After seeing DiCaprio's Vanity Fair "Green Issue" cover shoot and 11th Hour environmental film, Mr. Gore has reportedly taken to sending anonymous threats to the actor's house.

Staffers have also reported evidence of a secret room in the attic where Mr. Gore retires, often for hours, to cry. One aide who saw the room, under the condition of anonymity, remarked upon the presence of a What’s Eating Gilbert Grape poster that had been defecated on and what could only be described as dozens of smashed fair trade gin bottles and soy ink pentagrams painted on the floor.

“Sure the fact that environmental issues are no longer his sole domain is dispiriting to him,” mused former Senate legislative assistant Nathan Handsmith. “We all remember when AOL and CompuServe started up and he vowed never to use the internet again. We all remember the ensuing week of indecipherable Morse code telegraphs we had to communicate with. But I think it’s just the diminished sense of importance. Remember after 2004 when the movie came out and he won the Nobel? He was everywhere. In '07 Democrats were begging him to run for President again, and this was with Hillary and Obama already in the race.”

“Now?” A weary Handsmith continued. “He’s been forgotten, and he thinks warning about some newer bigger threat is going to get him back in the limelight again. That HBO Recount movie didn’t help either. Brought back a lot of bad memories. We almost had him devolve back into the crazy bearded mountain man phase from 2001 where he wouldn’t shave and all he would eat was huckleberry pie and drink moonshine. We thought we had dodged the bullet, but he’s just gone a touch manic as of late.”

This Martian Panic features many of the classic Gore-isms that have previously enthralled tens of millions. For example, the overarching threats of global calamity now include Martian Horror Cruisers filled with little green dimensional wizards capable of bending light to their will. Gore's indecipherable science often involves conceits such as Einstein-Rosen bridges, teleportation, and bowel disrupting frequencies. In the role of a unified global solution we hear an impassioned plea for a moon base, portal disruptors, and Earth’s own carrier-class Battle Cruiser, dubbed the Battlestar Gorelactica.

Gore is reportedly also hoping to release another film, but insiders say that so far his ‘film’ consists of poorly spliced footage from copies of Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Independence Day he apparently downloaded off the internet. They even say he’s convinced himself that the international community is going to have to create an award more prestigious than the Nobel just so they can give it to him.

There have even been police reports of a bleary eyed Gore wandering the hills outside Nashville in a bathrobe, boxer shorts, and fuzzy polar bear slippers, carrying around star charts and a toy Millennium Falcon, accosting anyone he runs across with tales of the Martians. While no official reports have been filed the tolerance of both Gore's staff and the local police department for his eccentricities is rapidly waning.

“Truthfully, if Obama wins, he’s gonna need to give Al a special team over at NASA,” observed Boies. “Nothing big, just a room, some trained medical professionals, a few bottles of gin, and a copy of The Departed. Let him stew and rage for a few weeks. Smash some bottles, get fucked up, and work up a good froth over Leo. Let Al work some shit out. He’ll either move on to something else, or hell, he just might find a way to convince us this entire Martian sortie is true. But this shit needs to end...and soon.”