Picture of the day

As we were busy/sleeping one off/still drunk/lazy yesterday/over the weekend/most days, we forgot to commemorate the 66th anniversary of D-Day: the day we gave Fritz what for. To help commemorate the event the Boston Herald's Big Picture blog posted up some photos from the build-up, execution, and aftermath of the invasion.

As always: click to embiggen.

The military got gayed

After months of promises and years of work, finally a compromise has been reached that will allow gay men and women to serve in the US military. This is, of course, the end of the world. Now we'll have gays all up and down our armed forces... something that has never before occurred in the history of combat or something. They'll be in there, translating things into and from Farsi and Arabic... in a gay way. They'll be gaying up combat, shooting terrorists all gay like. They'll be wearing sequined camo, talking about how such and such a tank is faaaabulous. A tank is not fabulous, it is a machine of war!

Because this is terrible and the end of US military dominance or something, the usual suspects have been out in full force to tell us how Obama just ended the world in a hellstorm of ultra gay fire. I think you'll be surprised in the direction they took this.

During a radio broadcast, Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association explained:

So Hitler himself was an active homosexual. And some people wonder, didn't the Germans, didn't the Nazis, persecute homosexuals? And it is true they did; they persecuted effeminate homosexuals. But Hitler recruited around him homosexuals to make up his Stormtroopers, they were his enforcers, they were his thugs. And Hitler discovered that he could not get straight soldiers to be savage and brutal and vicious enough to carry out his orders, but that homosexual solders basically had no limits and the savagery and brutality they were willing to inflict on whomever Hitler sent them after. So he surrounded himself, virtually all of the Stormtroopers, the Brownshirts, were male homosexuals.

And here you thought the main objection from religious types and social conservatives was that gays were too weak and girly to be in the military. Some terrorist would come over the horizon and a gay soldier would shriek like a woman, throw his purse at the enemy, and then spring out of the bunker to strike at the enemy with limp wrists, screaming "You brute!"

Nope. Turns out gays were not only the backbone of the Nazi party, the Nazi war machine, and the Nazi SS, but they were in fact too brutal and savage. So violent and unhinged that we can never let them serve. I'll say this: he might have got his history completely wrong and tried to tie gays and Nazis together in one of the most ugly ways possible, but at least he moved his stereotypes forward a little bit from a foppish, effeminate caricature to some sort of overly manly savage killer. That's... a kind of progress.

The kind of progress the Family Research Council was not ready for.

On a conference call with reporters today, FRC Senior Fellow for Policy Studies Peter Sprigg delivered the results of what he said was the first-ever study of "homosexual assault" in the military.
...
"We are today releasing an analysis of publicly available documents which show that homosexuals in the military are three times more likely to commit sexual assaults than heterosexuals are relative to their numbers," Sprigg said. "We believe this problem would only increase if the current law against homosexuality...were to be repealed."
...
"If open homosexuality was permitted in the military, these numbers can only increase," Sprigg said. "The number of homosexuals would grow, the threat of discharge for homosexual behavior would be eliminated and protected class status for homosexuals would make victims hesitant to report assaults and make commanders hesitant to punish them for fear of appearing homophobic."

That's right. Repealing DADT will turn the military into some internal gay rape factory, where innocent straight men are wantonly raped by gays and are afraid to report it because the gays have been made emperors of the armed forces. And he backed it up with a completely scientific study that I'm sure would stand up to scrutiny from an independent, outside source.

So I think you can see the clear case for why this is the end of the world. Stripping DADT will not allow men and women to proudly serve this country openly and without fear of discharge. No, it'll create the gay rape SS. Do we really want that?

Contract law

Via Reavis Eitel comes a look at how the inimitable Hunter S. Thompson viewed TV production companies, interviews, documentaries, and contracts. Especially contracts.

Click to embiggen, you awful jackass.

What to fear next

Now that health care has passed what are we supposed to fear? I'm sure the general icy black hand of socialism is a given, but what specifically? In the run-up it was the grim spectre of death panels. But here we are a few weeks past the bill's passage and both of my grandmothers are still up and kicking. I'm neck deep in grandmothers and it looks like there's nary a government sponsored plan to ice them. We were lied to.

Surely we can't be done with being afraid of health reform, can we? I saw the rage people tried to gin up about the IRS, flying planes into offices and such, but it didn't seem like their crazy heart was in it. There has to be some other nefarious plans hidden within the depths of this health reform bill that was some unconscionable number of pages. Something that can be compared to Nazism. Wait, I have an idea that combines the nascent IRS fear mongering, classic health care panic, and liberal doses of Godwin's Law. Someone get me Newt Gingrich!

GINGRICH: I believe one of the biggest issues in September and October will be 16,000 IRS agents and I suspect every Republican candidate will campaign on a promise to cut off all funding in January for the 16,000 IRS agents. You don’t need a health Gestapo in the United States. And I think the Democrats are going to be faced with a real decision, do they really want to campaign in September, October favoring 16,000 more IRS agents to enforce the health law? And what does it tell you about a health law so complicated that you need 16,000 government policemen? It’s sort of creating a brand new health police.

That's right, in the murky depths of the health care bill, comrade Obama has empowered the IRS to be some sort of health care Gestapo that... polices... your health.... care. Or something. I'm not really following what they'll do, but I'll be damned if it isn't sinister, ominous, and should be accompanied by some sort of Bond-style arch-evil music or perhaps the dulcet tones of Richard Wagner.

You know, I can feel that warm sensation of impotent rage in my gut. This feels good. It had left me these last few weeks and I was considering going to a doctor to see if there was anything I could do to get it fixed, but I was too worried my coverage might be better and my bill might be cheaper so I stayed away.

Sure, raging against the IRS is sort of the hack material someone should get to after his bit on women drivers, gittin' 'er done, and why they should make the entire plane out of the black box, but it just feels right. I think it can get me through the summer and into the election period without making me stop to think about how ridiculous it sounds. Thanks, Newt.

Broken News: Everyone and Everything a Nazi

THE FOURTH REICH—In a bombshell study soon to be released by the United States Argumentative Society, nearly all of Americans as well as their thoughts, words, deeds, and beliefs are as bad as the Nazis. Furthermore, thousands are equivalent to many high ranking members of the Third Reich including Hermann Goering, Henrich Himmler, Joseph Goebbels, and Adolph Hitler himself.

Perhaps the most shocking revelation of the study is that large chunks of the country are in fact worse than the Nazis and many Americans worse than Hitler.

“It is with heavy hearts that we reveal these results,” said a pale Dr. Helen Rourke, leader of the USAS research team. “We once we believed that America was a land of the free and a place of opportunity filled with decent, hard-working people trying to make an honest living. However, through close observation of American behavior, particularly that related to political issues, we have found that they view nearly everything and everyone as equal to, or worse than, members of Germany's National Socialist Party circa 1930.”

“Imagine my shock to learn that I was one of these people. I have recently found out that due to the rigorous standards I applied to this study and the strict manner in which I conducted it, some colleagues referred to me as a "Nazi." Even in my own home I am not free of these allegations. After I recently grounded my daughter and refused to let her go out with her friends following poor grades on her report card, I was deemed by her to be ‘worse than Hitler’.”

“I thought I was a good person… I thought this was a good country,” she said, weeping. “I had no idea… no idea.”

Indeed the revelation that everything in America is equivalent to one of the indisputable black marks in human history has come as a shock to the country, with most scarcely able to believe the new state of affairs. Still some are valiantly fighting against the concept that everyone in the country is a Nazi.

“The other day, someone called me a socialist Nazi just because I wanted better health care in this country. Can you believe that?” asked Jim Dale, a Ham Chaser at the Mobile Alabama Sugardale Hog Farm. “As if the one thing that defined the Nazis was cheap access to quality health care. They’re the ones who are the Nazis for calling me a Nazi, what with their free speech squashing and fear mongering. I ain’t no Nazi. Everyone who doesn’t agree with me is a Nazi.”

Mr. Dale highlights the singular contradiction that accompanies this revelation: that all people everywhere, on all sides of all debates, espousing ideas ranging across the ideological spectrum, are all simultaneously Nazis. From those who want cheap health care to those who want to keep the status quo, to those who want better bus access, a salary cap in Major League Baseball, the Edmonton Oilers to win the Stanley Cup, dollar drinks at their local bar, or to go watch their kids at the school play; all of these people are Nazis for one reason or another.

But why? One sociologist thinks he knows.

“It’s changing social mores,” said Dr. Herbert Hume, a sociologist and professional Naziologist at MIT. “Americans have placed such tight moral and ethical standards on their daily life and beliefs that they view any departure from that standard as equivalent to the ideals espoused by a group of people that perpetrated some of the greatest atrocities in all of human history.”

He added, “It’s certainly not because we’re a nation of hyperbolic children! Anyone who says otherwise is worse than twelve Adolf Eichmanns! TWELVE!”

While many scholars agree that America is a terminally insufficient nation full of monstrous, Hitler-like individuals, others feel that sometimes these comparisons go too far.

“Sure, most people are just like the Nazis and just like Joeseph Goebbels,” conceded Harvard historian Jane Williams. “But what about the others who are merely as bad as the Red Chinese or Stalin? Pol Pot was an asshole and many people are exactly like him. Let us not forget Nero, Genghis Khan, Caligula or various roving bands of horse thieves, rapists and horse-rapers. The point is, if Americans would broaden their historical horizons they might find that most of the people and ideas they so loathe have a different, more accurate, grotesque historical mirror.”

With scientists disagreeing when, if ever, Americans might be credited with anything approaching a comprehensive knowledge of world history, the nation must come to grips with the fact that it is chock full of people who are the same as the Nazis.

The wisdom of Beck

A lot of things can be said about Glenn Beck. Most of them involve curse words and the word 'lunatic'. But one does have to appreciate the complete and total way he devotes his life to finding Nazi, communist, and socialist hobgoblins in every corner of life. "Can I eat Cinnamon Life cereal this morning," he asks himself, "Or is this what Hitler wants?" "Sure the Kansas City Chiefs have a storied football tradition.... but I don't like the tint of that red on their jerseys."

Given the fervor with which he attacks these menacing demons and the frequency of his tears, this quest has probably turned his life into some sort of living hell where he exists constantly in fear of anything he does leaving the door open for socialist parasites to scamper up his leg and lay eggs in his brain.

So what's he on about now? Religion. More specifically, religions that are Christian, but have yet to be co-opted by the religious right movement. They are, of course, bastions of Nazism and communism. Keep in mind that when he was delivering this sermon, Beck was actually waving around a swastika and hammer & sickle.

"I'm begging you, your right to religion and freedom to exercise religion and read all of the passages of the Bible as you want to read them and as your church wants to preach them . . . are going to come under the ropes in the next year. If it lasts that long it will be the next year. I beg you, look for the words 'social justice' or 'economic justice' on your church Web site. If you find it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words. Now, am I advising people to leave their church? Yes!"

"Communists are on the left, and the Nazis are on the right. That's what people say. But they both subscribe to one philosophy, and they flew one banner. . . . But on each banner, read the words, here in America: 'social justice.' They talked about economic justice, rights of the workers, redistribution of wealth, and surprisingly, democracy."

'Social justice' and 'economic justice'. Do these words appear anywhere in the bible? No. But the concepts they represent? You know, equality of opportunity, equality of outcome, human rights, basic equality, economic egalitarianism, the dignity of a person, and care for the poor? That's all the stuff Jesus said. Glenn Beck just told everyone to run screaming from a church that asks you to be more like Jesus, John Rawls, and Thomas Aquinas and look out for people.

Guess what, if you're in one of the churches that actually spends it's time working for concepts of social and economic justice instead of prattling on about the gay menace or fighting abortion through means that don't ever actually decrease abortions, you're in one of the good churches. You're in a church that is actually committed to changing things in a beneficial and long-lasting way instead of waging a Pyrrhic campaign of ideology at the expense of meaningful action that will never be won.

On the other hand, fuck Diamond J. Sure He was all "Treat the poor well", "A rich bitch ain't going to heaven unless a camel trots his ass through the eye of this needle", and "Hey Judas, who're all your soldier friends and what's with the kissing?", but when did he ever sufficiently bash gays, praise Reagan, or excuse torture? Never, that's when. So why listen to him. As always, Glenn's right. Next time you hear your pastor talk about Jesus that, poor people this, healed leper that, run.

And remember: that healed leper probably cut into a Nazareth insurance companies bottom line.

Video of the day

Rachel Maddow interviews Quentin Tarantino about Inglourious Basterds and how the movie works as a metaphor for Al-Qaeda and the War on Terror.

.......yes, he is wearing Wu Wear. No, I didn't know they still made it either. That doesn't mean the film was any less great or his points were any less valid.

Headline of the day

Was Hitler on Viagra? New book claims he used drugs cocktail of testosterone... and the semen of young bulls

Yes, nicely reported. The story also reveals that Hitler extensively took anti-flatulence drugs. Let me say unequivocally: I am for this very kind of historically tendentious slander of dictators. I can't get enough of it.

So... anyone have any historical cross-dressing accounts of Joseph Stalin to regale us with?

This man is crazy

Last night in the House former soldier Rep. Patrick Murphy (D- PA) decided to organize a group of floor speeches that supported the repeal of the military's Don't Ask Don't Tell policy. Of course that meant those who opposed it could come up to speak as well and.....we'll say they didn't disappoint. That is if you find bizarre, rambling, incoherent rants about bestiality and Nazi's happening on the floor of the House to be a non-disappointing development.

Let Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX...of course) explain. After decrying DADT as perverse social experimentation, he turned his real to what he really feared: all those gay dudes who he knows totally want him and are going make "the butt sex" with him how outraged he is that we're considering laws like the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Bill and making hate crimes illegal..

If you’re oriented toward animals, bestiality, then, you know, that’s not something that can be used, held against you or any bias be held against you for that. Which means you’d have to strike any laws against bestiality, if you’re oriented toward corpses, toward children, you know, there are all kinds of perversions, [...] pedophiles or necrophiliacs or what most would say is perverse sexual orientations
...
But people have always been willing to give up their liberties, their freedoms in order to gain economic stability. It happened in 1920 and 1930’s. Germany gave up their liberties to gain economic stability and they got a little guy with a mustache, who was the ultimate hate monger.

That's right, if we take away people's rights to use murder and violence as a form of terrorism to intimidate gays then we're just on a slippery slope towards legalizing bestiality, necrophilia, and pedophilia. Hate crimes are an American right and if we take that right away we're going to become Nazi's. He then meandered into a discussion on how he's not a racist because he voted for Alan Keyes, before walking away, leaving a stunned caucus to contemplate what the fuck it is they just listened to. So...uh yeah. Unless we keep throwing gays out of the military and keep allowing hate crimes, we're going to turn into Nazi Germany where fucking dead underage animals replaces church. Makes sense to me.

Cheap Blogging Crutch 09.15

French unease at telecom suicides
The French are getting worried over a disturbing number of suicides in the telecom industry. I'm saying they should tell us what exactly it is they're doing to cause all these suicides and tell us so we can replicate it, preferably in the upper management of the telecom companies that were so eager to allow the government to spy on us without warrants. After that the French need to get to work on transferring the suicide culture over to the banking and financial industries. Try to have a brief worked up by the G-20, Nicolas.

Michael Moore: I May QUIT Documentaries
*gasp* But who will right wingers reflexively point to as rebuttal when someone on the left points out that Rush, Hannity, and Beck are batshit insane? Al Franken is a Senator and Bill Maher is relegated to pay cable and has a nasty habit of criticizing his own side. Now who will come to represent all that is evil about the left...besides it's politicians? I think I smell an opening for Keith Olbermann.

Domestic violence is a "pre-existing condition"?
Who says we need health care reform? I mean just because 8 states treat getting the shit beat out of you by a spouse and a "pre-existing condition" that you need to pay the medical expense for yourself or that half of the insurers use domestic violence as an indicator of how much coverage to allow and what prices to charge, doesn't mean we need to do anything about it. It's just smart business.

Interior Launches Climate Strategy
The first major salvo of the Obama Interior Department is under way and their plan to combat global warming is...uh...a co-ordination council...and...eight...regional response centers. Well, at least that means we'll get progress reports on our global demise. At least it's a start. They are at least acknowledging climate change, which is a massive leap forward from the Bush Administration. Plus they've stopped the burning tire pits and endangered animal cookouts that the Interior Dept. used to engage in. Progress.

Speaking At 9/12 Rally, FreedomWorks Lies, Inflates Attendance By Over 2,000 Percent
Well, for a movement phonily drummed up by soulless mega-corporations in order to protect the status quo and spread the craziest conspiracies about the President, Democrats, and reform possible, I mist say that only lying about their attendance by a factor of 2000% is an ethical step up. They're even circulating a photo from a larger decade old Promise Keepers march in an attempt to inflate the numbers. God, was it too much to ask that they circulate a photo of the Million Man March?

Hugo Boss Acknowledges Link to Nazi Regime
This is not newsworthy in any way, but I found it out yesterday and it blew my mind for some reason. Did you know that Hugo Boss not only supplied Nazi uniforms for the SS, brown shirts for the SA storm troopers, and Hitler Youth uniforms and might have helped design them?

His ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to his newsletter

The Representative from Massachusetts 4th District, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee Barney Frank, reminding everyone that not only do you spell his middle name M-O-T-H-E-R-F-U-C-K-I-N', but that he goes through a 20 gallon drum of brass polish every month. Too bad he wasn't at the town hall with the "Heil Hitler" woman. I think he might have come down into the audience throwin' 'bows.

Why aren't these movies out yet?

The Yellow Star of Sophia and Eton

Britney Spears could be set to follow her successful Circus tour with a role in a new film, according to reports. The 27-year-old star is still touring the world with her Circus tour, and it is claimed a script for a film called The Yellow Star of Sophia and Eton has been handed to Britney to look at.

If she accepts the role, Britney will reportedly play the main role of Sophia LaMont, who creates a time machine and travels back to World War II where she meets a Jewish man called Eton at a concentration camp.

They then fall in love and travel back to the present day with the intention of getting married but they are both killed by Nazis.

Boogie Town

The film is described as a "West Side Story" for the hip hop generation. The story takes place in a futuristic New York City, in the year of 2015 where dancing battles are strictly prohibited. Micha (Marques Houston), a very skilled dancer, begins an underground dancing arena known as "Boogie Town", where dancing teams battle in "Winner Take All" matches. Micha and his crew known as "The Trojans" are long time rivals with "The Warriors" which is led by Jay (Mykal Anthony Bean), his former mentor and once longtime friend.

Both Micha and Jay have "ENERGY", a mysterious and supernatural power. But when Jay finds out that Natalie (Brenda Song), his younger sister, has been secretly dating Micha, the feud between "The Trojans" and "The Warriors" escalates onto the streets. So the only way to have the ultimate Dance-Off where the loser must leave town for good.

A Britney Spears concentration camp drama? A dystopian New York where dancing is outlawed and mutants have power fueled dance offs? Where can I get in line? These sound even more gloriously stupid than a racist robot filled Transformers sequel.