He's back!

You may remember insane Tea Party candidate and Founding Father fetishist Rick Barber, who is running for Congress in Alabama. He was the guy complaining about IRS and Census oppression in front of a gun stroking Washington and calling for an armed uprising against the government. Gather your armies!

Well, he's back and this time he has a pedantic argument about the Whisky Act, an overlong rendition of the Star Spangled Banner, a girly slappy fight with Glenn Beck to enact and this time he brought Honest Abe with him.



So...... no... taxes? Because.... taxes are exactly like..... slavery? And..... the holocaust? THOSE GODDAMN BLACKS ARE GETTING FREE BAILOUT MEALS!

One minor historical quibble. You know that part where you reference slavery and the Civil War and how "We shed a lot of blood to stop that in the past, didn't we?". Yeah.... you're from Alabama. You didn't shed any blood to stop slavery. You people, your state, and your side shed blood to keep slavery. It was an important dividing point between the two sides. Us Northern homosexual liberals who are oppressing everyone with the tyranny of health care? We're the ones who fought against slavery. Also: Lincoln loved the shit out of taxes.

Anyway, keep it up, Rick. I await the next one with Teddy Roosevelt carrying a big stick and complaining about those damned Mexicans he fought and financial reform. I'm sure it's like... child murder or something.

Your daily update of what constitutes education in Texas

Well the madness is over and Texas has finally passed the last of their historical "adjustments" to make sure the children of Texas are readily aware that history has a nefarious liberal secular bias. They didn't get to add in all the parts about Indians turning into Mexicans and copious Dracula references that they wanted, but they have enough for now.

Of interest, one of the women on the Texas Board of Education came out and said that public education was a "tool of perversion" and another man referred to any opposition as coming from "the pagan left". So it's nice that the sane people are exercising control over this process.

So what were they able to sneak in at the last moment?

Elevating Confederate Leader Jefferson Davis To The Level Of Abraham Lincoln.

Requiring That Historical Figures — Except Conservative Ones — Must Be Dead For Students To Study Them.

That's right. As the argument went, keeping Davis out was "an attempt to “whitewash” history." Which, given the board's attempts to remove blacks and Latinos from their history books, even rechristen the Atlantic Slave Trade as the Atlantic Triangular Trade, is something the board would know a great deal about. So Davis' speeches are kept in to contrast with Lincoln's speeches. One notable thing about Davis' speeches? They're ones that don't talk about slavery being one of the main reason for secession and the Civil War.

As for the second, yeah, if you're a minority or viewed as a dirty liberal, you can't get into the history books unless you're dead. Even if you're dead, you might not make it in if you've offended these people's imaginary conception of Jesus. Just ask Thomas Jefferson. But if you're white and really conservative? Please, come right into the textbook, if you're having trouble finding room just elbow a founding father or a civil rights pioneer out of the way and have a seat.

But surely not every crackpot idea these goons have gets into these textbooks, right? Shockingly, that's true. Referring to President Barry as Barack Hussein Obama, probably with a couple of Islamic crescents and a black power fist encircling it, was apparently too nakedly political and openly race bait-y for the board. Instead, he's referred to as Barack H. Obama, or, alternately, "The black one that done usurped the White House" and is listed again in the section "12 signs that the rapture is imminent" under the header "Blacks in places blacks shouldn't be."

It's a shame this is over for now. I would have liked to have heard the board opine on European history as well as English Lit requirements. Sadly God doesn't love me enough to have these people take a whack at science requirements. Maybe they did and Bibles have replaced Biology 1010 textbooks. I guess we'll find out. Godspeed, Texas schoolchildren. Just remember, when it comes times to take your SAT's, remember to fill in the bubble for what seems to be the exact opposite of the things you just spent 12 years learning.

Down with the union!

Look we all know that health care reform is many things. A nefarious conspiracy to murder the Greatest Generation, a liberal communist socialist plot to retroactively rape the founding fathers, Nazism, an affront to God, and the personification of all various forms of wars, atrocities, historical black marks, and the work of evil men.

In recent days we've been getting even more specific criticisms of what reform is like. Lindsay Graham mused that it was just like when the dirty japs got all liquored up on sake and made kamikaze runs on our warships. Glenn Beck disagreed. He feels that reform is like when the dirty japs bombed us at Pearl Harbor. In any event I think we know one thing: the passage of health care is a revenge plot from Emperor Hirohito, Japan sucks, and Sunday might just be the day that lives in infamy.

But Rep. Paul Broun of Georgia has other ideas. Health care reform is like the bloodiest conflict in US history... but in a bad way.

BROUN: If ObamaCare passes, that free insurance card that’s in people’s pockets is gonna be as worthless as a Confederate dollar after the War Between The States — the Great War of Yankee Aggression.

OK, that wasn't so much a critique of health reform as it was a cheap way to get indignant about Lincoln. Free insurance card? What the hell is that? Plus, the reason Confederate money was so worthless is because they lost the Civil War. By the way, that's what we call it: the Civil War. Or, alternately, the Great War of Southern Treason. In any event, this marks an improvement in Broun's rhetoric as he previously was warning his constituents about how Obama had taken the necessary steps to declare martial law and rule as a dictator.

Maybe this is just part of a new "late 19th century Reconstruction-era racism" bent to health reform criticism. Many have taken up calling reform reparations for black people. Like Glenn Beck. Becuase if there's one thing worse than the descent into socialism, it's the idea that the descent into socialism will result in blacks getting stuff, which is against the founding principles of this country.

So let me reassure the Broun's, Beck's, and Limbaugh's of the world: even if health reform does pass whites will still have considerably more shit than black people. Regrettably though, the South will still have lost the Civil War. So there's a positive and negative flipside to that coin. Sorry, and might I add: THE UNION FOREVER!

Cheap Blogging Crutch 08.03

GE's silencing of Olbermann and MSNBC's sleazy use of Richard Wolffe
Glenn Greenwald on a story on how Jeffrey Immelt and Rupert Murdoch got together to decide that they should explicitly interfere with their news organizations for the purpose of protecting the corporate interests of their parent companies. Also: on using corporate lobbyists and advisers as "political analysts". Remind me again, why is the news industry dying and dragging us down with it?

Ahmadinejad’s Opponents Snub Election Ceremony
Talk about poor losers. Strike that, they actually did win. But still, can't the crybabies who had their election invalidated by a religious ruling council suck it up and go take a gander at the death of any notion of democracy they thought their country had? It is a rare opportunity to trainwreck gawk.

Land of Lincoln
Say happy 100th birthday to the penny! A useless, near valueless object of alleged legal tender that costs more to make than it is actually worth. Plus it just unjustly fuels the ego of Ghost Lincoln and is still a brutal reminder to all the surviving Confederate soldiers and the subjugation of states rights during the War of Northern Aggression. The penny: may we be rid of it soon.

Welcome to Svalbard, Here’s Your Bird-Defense Stick
A heart warming story of science, seed collecting, doomsday, blogging, smashing the fuck out of devil birds with a wood plank, menacing polar bears, Norway, and travelogue information should you decide to lose your mind and visit the Earth's northernmost settlement.

Scientists Drill a Mile Into Active Deep Sea Fault Zone
Why would they do such a thing? Certainly not to control the world's earthquakes. And if you believe anything to the contrary a bald, scarred man in a silver jumpsuit will be by later to slowly dip you into a pit of acid. The cover story is that they're allegedly trying to radically advance the understanding and gathering seismic data. They also had a mile long drill sitting around and really felt the need to use it for something.

Restart of Large Hadron Collider now November
Oh for fucks sake, will you nerds just murder God and suck us all into a swirling black vortex of death already? The project has been delayed as they have had to deal with helium leaks at their combination absolute zero cooling & birthday balloon station. Some goddamned idiot also misplaced a pallet full of particles, setting work back another week. Re-start in November, no work until December? How long is the world supposed to belay their excitement over particles colliding?

NEW PENNIES!!!!!!! NEW PENNIES!!!!!!!!!

In a baffling decision, not only did the US Mint decide to keep making pennies, which no one needs and cost more to make than they are worth, but to spruce them up with depictions of Abe Lincoln's life. Pictured are the log cabin he grew up in, reading on a log with his trusty skull bashing mallet at his side, posing for a statue outside the Illinois capitol, and the unfinished US capitol, which was unfinished either because Lincoln destroyed it for laughs or because he was the one who finished building it with his own goddamn bare hands.

The pennies are being put into circulation for Abe's 200th birthday celebration. How about we find another way to honor him, like not making him be on the most useless piece of metal in the US. Maybe have him with his arm around Sacajawea and flashing the peace sign on the dollar coin, or giving Franklin a noogie on the $100, or maybe put two Lincoln's on the five, high fiving. Maybe the second Lincoln is copper colored and they're high fiving because he's finally moved on up off of the penny, I'll let the Mint figure that one out.

Belated B-Day

Four score and twenty caliber, motherfuckers!

Just wanted to wish a belated happy birthday to Honest Abe Lincoln, our 16th President and inventor of the boombox with extra bass. Abe would have turned 200 yesterday if Booth hadn't shot him in the head and had the Civil War not diverted his attempts to finish his immortality potion and his indestructible mechanical war suit. Only the machine gun arm was ever completed.

Civil War in 2010

You know maybe people are taking this Obama/Lincoln thing too far. First it was all that Team of Rivals nonsense, now apparently Barack Obama is going to preside over the breakup of the United States and a civil war in 2010. Unclear on the status of a chin beard or top hat in Obama's future.

For a decade, Russian academic Igor Panarin has been predicting the U.S. will fall apart in 2010. For most of that time, he admits, few took his argument -- that an economic and moral collapse will trigger a civil war and the eventual breakup of the U.S. -- very seriously. Now he's found an eager audience: Russian state media.

In recent weeks, he's been interviewed as much as twice a day about his predictions. "It's a record," says Prof. Panarin. "But I think the attention is going to grow even stronger."
...
"There's a 55-45% chance right now that disintegration will occur," he says. "One could rejoice in that process," he adds, poker-faced. "But if we're talking reasonably, it's not the best scenario -- for Russia." Though Russia would become more powerful on the global stage, he says, its economy would suffer because it currently depends heavily on the dollar and on trade with the U.S.

Mr. Panarin posits, in brief, that mass immigration, economic decline, and moral degradation will trigger a civil war next fall and the collapse of the dollar. Around the end of June 2010, or early July, he says, the U.S. will break into six pieces -- with Alaska reverting to Russian control.

This is intensely dispiriting to those of us who were excited about the end of the world in 2012. Now it turns out we'll be fighting in the trenches with six other US geo-states in a battle for resources and won't have time to watch Quetzalcoatl destroy the earth. Lest we think the man spouting these predictions is a nut, it turns out he's a former KGB analyst, is the dean of the Russian Foreign Ministry's diplomatic academy, gives lectures, visits the Kremlin, and appears on TV as a US/Russia expert. So he's at the very least a well conected, high ranking nut.

According to him we in the Northeast will become Atlantic America and will join the European Union, while Canada eats the midwest and California takes all of the PAC-10 and brings it under Chinese influence. Showing his complete understanding of Texas, he thinks Texas and other nearby states will break off and join Mexico or fall under Mexican influence. Sarah Palin throws of the shackles of forbidden love and brings Alaska back to dearest Vladimir, and the Japs take Hawaii. Apparently no one self governs, we all just break up and then join disparate nations thousands of miles away.

So, sorry to bring the bad news, but we're in for a breakup. I'll be European in a few years and you'll be a Texican or Calichinese. Some Russian guy predicted it.