The only tea that refreshes after a hard day of demanding a Mexican prove he's a citizen

The racially charged immigration laws of Arizona have claimed an innocent victim. No, not the basic notions of fairness, freedom, liberty, or America. And no, I'm not talking about some innocent Mexican guy who was imprisoned. Please, it's only been a few days, that won't be happening for at least another week or so. No, what I'm talking about is the innocent victims that just so happen to brew beverages that now bear the unfortunate scarlet letter of the state of Arizona.

Opponents of Arizona's new anti-immigrant law are calling for a boycott of the state's products - including the popular Arizona Iced Tea.
...
Online, misguided tea fans vowed to switch to Lipton or Snapple.

"Dear Arizona: If you don't change your immigration policy, I will have to stop drinking your enjoyable brand of iced tea," Twittered Jody Beth in Los Angeles.

"It is the drink of fascists," wrote Travis Nichols in Chicago.

The problem? Arizona Ice Tea is brewed in New York and the makers of it only marginally hate Mexicans. It is however still the official drink of fascists and fascism. They signed a promotional sponsorship deal with Fascism in 2007 and it doesn't run out until 2014.

I mean if you do want to get outraged at innocent companies that just happened to be started by people living in a state controlled by right wing mental patients, you should point your rage at Cold Stone Creamery, U-Haul, and Best Western. Though if you do that just try and tell me who it is that will cart a storage truck full of German-chökolätekäke (kakke?) and Cheesecake Fantasy to your fleabag motel? Huh? Who?

I think people should stop getting mad at companies with 'Arizona' in the title, companies from Arizona, and various cacti and save their anger for the lawmakers who voted this in and the people who support it. Plus, we're missing what we should truly be mad about: the fact that Arizona's reality is killing Arizona based satire. Look, Mexico just released a travel warning for Mexicans vacationing or visiting in Arizona. That could have fueled a Broken In Brief piece at the very least! This is what we need to be pissed about: reality stealing the ideas of These Bastards. Which is horrifying, come to think of it.

Interactive fascism

View Book Bans and Challenges, 2007-2009 in a larger map

via the American Library Association comes this Google Map of all the recorded 513 book ban challenges for last year. I know what you're saying "Only 513? We must be getting more tolerant." Nope. The ALA thinks that only about 20-25% of bans get reported.

Most surprising about the list? No Utah. There's always next year, though. As the 2009 list is not yet out, these are all for last year. But according to the ALA's top 10 Richardson and Parnell's And Tango Makes Three was last years most banned book. It's a book about gay penguins. Pulling into second is Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, which is about God as we know Him being a lie and polar bears kicking the shit out of each other. Lest you think that expressing tolerance, dislike of religion, and combining them with arctic animals is the only thing that will get you on the list, rest assured, humanizing Arabs gets you a black mark.

Looking back at previous top 10's I see that Catcher in the Rye, Huck Finn, and Of Mice and Men are still making waves. Really? Some school districts are still hashing it out whether or not these are literary classics? I just hope that when the ALA drops their 2009 list, hopefully during Banned Book Week (plan your book burning parties accordingly) next month, we can finally start getting some consistent new blood in there. If we don't change things up, people are just going to tune out yet another Huck Finn banning. Twain's had his day, let's start making a concerted effort to revile Phillip Pullman and Cormac McCarthy. For the sake of the children.

So much crazy

Aardvark aficionado Glen Beck and Michelle Bachmann discuss the encroaching liberal horror and tyranny of the census, and whether Obama's Stasi will just imprison the brave souls who refuse to fill out the forms because they believed in something Bachmann said, or whether they'll all just be rounded up into interment camps after their neighbors are ordered to spy on them for the Census overlords.

One silver lining to the latest example of Michelle Bachmann's stunning paranoid stupidity: if she convinces as little as a few thousand Minnesotans to not fill out census forms Minnesota would lose a Census verified/population determined House seat, of which hers is the most likely to be eliminated. So keep on keepin' on Michelle. Self negate. Plus if you do end up eliminating your own seat I want to hear the new crazy conspiracy theories about how the Illuminati or whoever removed you from office to silence you.

Oh, fuck the both of these guys and the President

There was going to be a release of detainee interrogation photos, as per a FOIA request by the ACLU and an impending court ruling that the government must release the photos. But, in a stunning display of shrieking and enflamed cries of "think of the children/baby Jesus", that realease is likely to be delayed, probably permanently. Why? Because of Joe Lieberman and Lindsay Graham, with an assist to President Obama.

The White House is actively supporting a new bill jointly sponsored by Sens. Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman -- called The Detainee Photographic Records Protection Act of 2009 -- that literally has no purpose other than to allow the government to suppress any "photograph taken between September 11, 2001 and January 22, 2009 relating to the treatment of individuals engaged, captured, or detained after September 11, 2001, by the Armed Forces of the United States in operations outside of the United States." As long as the Defense Secretary certifies -- with no review possible -- that disclosure would "endanger" American citizens or our troops, then the photographs can be suppressed even if FOIA requires disclosure. The certification lasts 3 years and can be renewed indefinitely.

In fact, Lindsay and Holy Joe have threatened to throw a complete hissy fit and attach this bill to everything if it is removed from the current war supplemental. That's right, a specific bill designed to subvert current law and an upcoming ruling in an attempt to hide our interrogation conduct over the past eight years. Bravo. Cue up the Lee Greenwood.

I'm just glad we're over that whole nation of laws business and full into the phase where we make it legally OK to ignore laws that relate to evidence of the breaking of other laws based on the shrieking of two foppish cry babies. Where's an eagle or flag I can salute.

Really? Already?

There's socialists in the corn!!!

Apparently our elected betters are just not going to whine about socialism and the march to fascism that we're inexorably on. No, one enterprising man has decided to skip that process entirely and move entirely to the Joe McCarthy phase of trying to out the supposed socialists and communists already burrowed deep inside our government. Because that whole process all went so well the first time McCarthy tried it.

Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.) puts the number of socialists in the House at 17.

"Some of the men and women I work with in Congress are socialists," Bachus told local government leaders on Thursday, according to the Birmingham News.

Bachus gave the specific number of House socialists when pressed later by a reporter.

He has a list, a secret list, of 17 socialists in the House. While he won't show that list to you, he's totally got it and it's totally comprised of people who are destroying our government. Really though, only 17? Judging from the last few months of right wing punditry and Congressional whining, everyone in the Democratic party from Bernie Sanders to Ben Nelson was a card carrying socialist. Especially one B. Hussein Obama. Not only was everyone a socialist, everything they tried to pass was either pure distilled socialism or the thing that was going to put its thumb on the scale that tips us into a socialist revolution. Now it's just the concerted efforts of 17 House members? I'm disappointed.

At this point, after Michelle Bachmann and Spencer Bachus, if you're a Republican and have the prefix 'Bach' in your name, I'm going to assume you're batshit crazy and two steps away from love knifing me in a parking lot. Democrats and civilians with the same 'Bach' prefix will be treated with the same skepticism. It's the new scarlet letter.

Tyranny on our shores

So, we're about a week out from Hannity, Beck, and Bachmann hooting like howler monkeys, jumping up and down, and throwing their feces at pictures of Obama and Stalin....right? Or is that already happening? If this is their state of mind less than three months in, what's year 4 going to look like? Pace yourselves.

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Quote of the day

Glen Beck, deciding that yesterday's Colbert induced castration wasn't really vicious enough, decided to speak up again.

It all adds up to me, having to admit that I was wrong. Our government is not marching down the road towards communism or socialism.

Oh, Christ, I'm sorry Glen. Looks like I jumped the gun and attacked you before I knew what you said. That comment showed some real contrition and humility and I....oh, you weren't done?

But now I have to tell you that they’re not marching us that direction. They’re marching us to a non-violent fascism. Or to put it another way, they’re marching us to 1984. Big Brother. … Like it or not, fascism is on the rise.

There's the Glen Beck we know and love: relentlessly stupid and paranoid! In Beck's defense he clearly went on to say he didn't mean Hitler/Nazi fascism.....then gave this little speech in front on a video wall running images and video of the Nazi's. Does anybody on Fox actually know what the words socialism, communism, or fascism mean? Someone get Beck a dictionary, a history book, and a 4th grade World Studies teacher.

I just want to thank Beck and his fellow conservative intellectuals. If it weren't for them how would I know that everything Democrats are doing is in some way comparable to Hitler, worse than Hitler, sending us on the road to Hitlerville, has that minty aroma of Hitler, or has rising concerns of Hitlerism? Now I know: everything is Hitler.

President Norris

I may run for president of Texas
by Chuck Norris

On Glenn Beck's radio show last week, I quipped in response to our wayward federal government, "I may run for president of Texas."

That need may be a reality sooner than we think. If not me, someone someday may again be running for president of the Lone Star state, if the state of the union continues to turn into the enemy of the state.

From the East Coast to the "Left Coast," America seems to be moving further and further from its founders' vision and government.

Don't let me stop you Chuck, please, do go on.

How much more will Americans take? When will enough be enough? And, when that time comes, will our leaders finally listen or will history need to record a second American Revolution?
...
"If this country starts to spiral out of control and Mexico melts down or whatever, if it really starts to spiral out of control, before America allows a country to become a totalitarian country...Americans won't stand for it. There will be parts of the country that will rise up." Then Glenn asked me and his listening audience, "And where's that going to come from?" He answered his own question, "Texas, it's going to come from Texas. Do you agree with that Chuck?" I replied, "Oh yeah!" Definitely.
...
For those losing hope, and others wanting to rekindle the patriotic fires of early America, I encourage you to join Fox News' Glenn Beck, me and millions of people across the country in the live telecast, "We Surround Them," on Friday afternoon. Thousands of cell groups will be united around the country in solidarity over the concerns for our nation.

There are times when I think that the satire pieces we run are just taking natural events within the GOP and tweaking them slightly out of proportion. Then Chuck Norris goes and declares attempts to save the economy as totalitarianism, advises secession and a possible second Civil War over the neutered measures the government is taking, and half jokingly vows to run for President of Texas.

Then SC Gov. Mark Sanford declares the US is Zimbabwe and Obama is Mugabe, right after he fucks his state's school system for $700 million, because the government passed a stimulus and he doesn't understand economics. It's about that time I realize that satirizing the GOP has essentially been reduced to just passing on what they did, while trying to comically/mentally blunt the repercussions of their actions.

President Chuck, please secede. You run Texas, I'll run the Islamic Caliphate of Mattsylvania. Start up your new awesome country based around the teachings of Glenn Beck. I promise not to miss Texas (maybe I'll miss Austin) if you promise to take Oklahoma, Kentucky, and most of the South with you. You can live in your tax cutting, Mexican skull busting, symbolic tea party paradise of New Freedonia and we don't have to let you drag us down with you. Go. Faster. Before the icy hand of health care is at your throat.

What did we tell you? WHAT DID WE TELL YOU?

Super secret Muslim agent:

President Barack Obama called Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas today and promised to work toward a "durable peace" in the reigon, Abbas' spokesman says. "This is my first phone call to a foreign leader and I'm making it only hours after I took office," the spokesman quoted Obama as telling Abbas.

Soon he will melt down your guns and use the metal to construct Madrassas, Chomsky will become required reading for all primary school students and the mandatory government abortion lines will begin forming. Do you even know what you've unleashed, America?