Cheap Blogging Crutch 07.08

Darryl Cunningham Investigates: Homeopathy

In You're Living Up To The Stereotype of Your Country News, Colombian police have uncovered an attempt to send 24 pounds of cocaine to Spain in the form of a molded World Cup statute. Don't plan that celebration, you still have to get through the Oranje first, Espana. Bonus points for creativity, you did find a substance that would make the value of the World Cup even greater. All that aside, if you want an even better story about Colombians and World Cup soccer, give the ESPN documentary The Two Escobars a look.

Let me see if you can follow this. The public sentiment is for cutting the deficit and cutting spending, while at the same time improving the economy and job market. If government were to focus on spending cuts and deficit reduction that would have a negative effect on the economy and job markets, making them worse. Economists know this and have been saying it for months. Our elected betters have been told this for months and should know it. Yet, cutting the deficit and spending is popular. So what is everyone going to do? Try to cut the deficit and spending in order to win in November. Because if we've learned anything over the past decade, it's that doing something smart isn't a good idea if doing something dumb and popular and destructive is. I'll see you in the bread lines.

After years of stalling anything and everything that Democrats could do, Republicans are riding high over thoughts of what could happen in November. They're even planning out their new agenda. But after hamstringing the Democrats on all their priorities, surely Democrats wouldn't be eager to help the GOP go after one of their priorities: gutting Social Security. I mean, that would be ridiculous, helping Republicans carve up one of the great progressive achievements in the country's history, right? Wrong. The Democrats are eager to help. And why not, fucking with Social Security is so very popular. Besides, old people love eating catfood. Good luck with that.

What if I were to tell you that not only was there an Illuminati card game that referenced a Gulf oil spill, but there was an oil company board game from the seventies that talked about the possibility as well. Surely you'd think this was just a decently thought out scenario that simply prefaced an easily possible bad scenario using the oil industry and the area with which they were working in, right? Nope. IT'S PROOF THIS WHOLE OIL SPILL WAS PLANNED ALL ALONG!! JESUS CHRIST, CAN'T YOU SEE IT? Man, the Illuminati, Parker Brothers, the Trilateral Commission, and the Egg Council were all planning this for decades. We're through the looking glass here people. Comb through Trivial Pursuit to see if there are any cryptic references to nuclear war and I'll see when Rock 'em Sock 'em Robots predicted the robots would take over.

Europe Is Better Than Us: #3,215 in a series. In this episode Europe, having surveyed the damage cause by global financial giants, sees that it might be smart to tie bonuses to little things like results, performance, and whether or not a collection of assholes toilets the world economy or not. This is just one of the many, better, steps that their continent has taken while we still dick around wondering if we should leave everything pretty much as is, or give the financial giants a little slap on the knuckles and tell the scamps not to do it again. Plus it comes right at the same time the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development pillories us for hamstringing our own recovery, employment prospects, and general social fabric. On the bright side, if we continue to ignore their good advice and follow their smart lead, nothing they do in Brussels will be able to stop the effects of the next mega crisis America enables. Who's the smart one now, Europe?

In closing, enjoy this racist cat.

Your time spent resting on your stellar reputation is over, Thurgood!

The hearings for Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan are underway. You know the drill: in order to be allowed onto the highest court in the land, the nominee vows to remain as silent as possible, dodge any question that may in fact reveal a personal thought or long held position, and attempt to set a Guinness world record for saying the phrase "I don't answer hypotheticals, Senator." You know, it's the way a serious country full of adults and intelligent elected officials selects a slot on its most august judicial body.

Then there's the dance our elected betters put on. Kagan's supporters on the Democratic side spend their time telling us how she's the most qualified nominee in the history of judges and law, that merely asking her a negatively toned question is likely to make God weep, and that any opposition to putting her immediately on the Supreme Court is rooted in the blackest evil, the foulest magic, and darkest blood rituals.

On the other hand, the GOP concocts scenarios in which her activist judicial fiats will split the earth in two in a literal orgy of flag burning illegal Mexican immigrants performing mandatory abortions on the Children of God, and how it is entirely conceivable that the President has nominated a dangerous mental defective and terrorist sleeper agent who, the second she gets on the bench, will strap C4 to herself and make for the Constitution.

You know how it is. It pretty much went by that book yesterday. But there was an unexpected addendum to yesterday's proceeding. Apparently going after Kagan was not enough, so the GOP decided to set their sights on another ACTIVIST JUDGE: Thurgood Marshall, who is apparently a massive shitbag.

Looks like Senate Judiciary Republicans have at least one unified talking point today: Justice Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American to ever serve on the Supreme Court, was an "activist judge." As Elena Kagan kept on her listening face, multiple senators slammed both Marshall's judicial philosophy and her service as his clerk in the late 1980s.
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In an example of how much the GOP focused on Marshall, his name came up 35 times. President Obama's name was mentioned just 14 times today.

Ranking member Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) said Kagan's reverence for Marshall "tells us much about the nominee," and he meant that more as an indictment than a compliment.

The Washington Post says the Republicans even went so far as to pass out opposition research on Justice Marshall. Thurgood Marshall! You know, the guy who argued Brown v. The Board of Education, worked tirelessly on civil rights, and worked to fix institutional barriers of racial discrimination. That Thurgood Marshall. He was apparently a massively activist asshole. So, of course, the GOP spent an entire day trying to tear him down, discredit him, and attack him in order to knock Kagan's time spent as a law clerk for Marshall. One of the most accomplished, important justice and lawyer in US legal history. I'm not sure they even asked Kagan a question.

But there is one question we do need the answer to: would current GOP Senators vote to confirm Thurgood Marshall to the Supreme Court?

Sen. Orrin Hatch, like many Republicans these days, is arguing that Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan’s hero, Thurgood Marshall, was an activist judge and that raises questions about Kagan’s judicial philosophy.
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I caught up with Hatch after today’s confirmation hearing to ask an obvious question: Would Hatch have voted for Marshall?

“Well, its hard to say,” Hatch said.

Jesus Christ.

/throws up hands, walks away

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.

Ad of the day

When we're looking for a vacation spot, what are we looking for? Sun. Fun. And a good hearty mocking of the most current environmental crisis. Spirit Airlines and Ft. Lauderdale understands this.


Hilarious. Not so much that they're using oil washing up on other beaches to advertise their beaches, it's that they're going to have oil of their beaches sometime within the next month or so. I guess they didn't check any ocean current/oil flow research before they slapped it together. Just kidding, the oil was off your coast two weeks ago. Good luck with your future ads.

He's on a boat

So you're BP. You've recently ridden a non-oil slicked wave of recent good news. You created a $20 billion fund to help take care of people affected by the spill, making you seem barely human instead of completely reptilian. You've finally moved into a position where ships are capturing almost all of the oil spilling out of the undersea well. And as a bonus you removed the deeply unlikable Tony Hayward to a lesser role.

So after this recent wave of decent PR, what do you do? Yacht party? I think I heard yacht party.

Spokeswoman Sheila Williams said Hayward took a break from overseeing BP efforts to stem the undersea gusher in Gulf of Mexico so he could watch his boat "Bob" participate in the J.P. Morgan Asset Management Round the Island Race. The 52-foot yacht is made by the Annapolis, Maryland-based boatbuilder Farr Yacht Design.

The annual one-day race is one of the world's largest, attracting more than 1,700 boats and 16,000 sailors as world-renown yachtsmen compete with wealthy amateurs in the 50-nautical mile course around the island.
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"He's spending a few hours with his family at a weekend. I'm sure that everyone would understand that," Wine said Saturday. "He will be back to deal with the response. It doesn't detract from that at all."

Wine described the race as "one of the biggest sailing events in the world and he's well known to have a keen interest in it."

In his defense, this was his small yacht. The cheap one, the $700,000 one. Now I know Hayward's been pilloried up and down the Gulf Coast for this little boat race trip, but I'm not going to pile on. I mean what better way to research the oil spill than to spend some serious time bobbing and floating on the ocean, like all that oil BP spilled is. Now he understands what all the oil is up to and why. Can we really complain about that?

Plus with the strippers of the Mimosa Dancing Girls strip club suing him, the sea is the only place he can find a moment of relief. With that, the methane dead zones that may kill vast swaths of undersea life, and the fact that sea floor collapses at the leak site may prevent BP from ever capping the well, doesn't the man enjoy a little boat time? Plus *chuckling* the yacht is named "Bob"! Who names a yacht "Bob"? Oh Tony, you are humorous with your rich guy bullshit. Enjoy the boating, I think it's all you'll have left pretty soon.

Not getting it

Rand Paul isn't in the news a lot lately. Mainly because he decided to go hide in a ditch, only pop his head out for softball interviews on Fox, and has relied on the moribund and dying Kentucky newspaper business to help repeat all of that "The Civil Rights Act is for homos" thing he was caught up in.

But because Rand is a man who never wants to pass up a good "government and media are oppressing the average rich white man" jag, he decided that the perfect opportunity to insert himself back in the national debate was the whole Joe Barton apologizes to BP situation. Naturally.

Emerging from relative silence since his rocky general election roll-out, Paul stressed that BP "should be responsible for cleaning up" the mess it created. He did not explicitly address the role that government had to play in compelling the oil giant to do that.

"Lets not convict them before we give them a chance to figure out where the problem came from," Paul said.

Asked specifically if Barton should resign, Paul confessed to having no opinion, save to offer his sympathies once more.

"I'm not really in a position to know about what they should do to him personally. I do know what it is like to be piled on," he said.

No, no Randy my dear boy, you both know what it's like to be justifiably piled on. Everyone going "Can you believe this asshole doesn't like the Civil Rights Act?" was completely justified. Everyone going "Can you believe that asshole apologized personally to BP and BP's CEO during a government hearing on the massive catastrophe they caused?" was totally justified. You weren't being persecuted, you weren't being picked on, the nation and the media just looked at two idiots going virulently against common sense and decency and decided "Hey, let's give these assholes an easy brickbat beating. They deserve it."

As to your other point: we really need to wait for the verdict to come in on this whole BP situation? Really? What do you think an investigation is going to find? An elite strike team of Greenpeace ninja hippies scubaed down to the well and placed some C4 charges and granola at the base of the thing? Some group of rogue whales decided to declare war on the land people and their floating sea fortresses? Ghost possession? Alien conspiracy? Government squelching of the freedoms creating a psychic shockwave that destroyed the Deepwater Horizon? Nah, kid, nah. I think we can close the book on this investigation.

So Rand, next time you feel the need to stand up for the rights of idiots to not get criticized for moronic things they say or mean things the President says about a company comprised of shitbags, pause, take a breath, and step outside the deluded little Ayn Rand/libertarian bubble you live in. It'll save you a lot of piling on.

#bpcares

BP has a message for you, the small chattering masses of people that seem like ants from the big fucking office at the top of the big fucking skyscraper: BP cares about you. You personally. You specifically.

BP Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg: "I care about the small people. I hear comments sometimes that large oil companies are greedy companies or don't care, but that is not the case at BP. We care about the small people."

Now stop fucking causing their stock to plummet YOU UTTER FUCKING PEASANT INGRATES! Sorry, that just slipped out.

Thankfully he used the term "small people" to let all of us know exactly who we were and didn't confuse us with "Big people' like him. Of course they care about the small people; those are the people that drive their company cars, fly their private planes, nanny their children, work their rigs, clean up the oil spill (DON'T TALK TO THEM), and have so expertly made their way of life dependent on oil. And that Gary Coleman guy was hilarious. Small people: good.

Here's a hint, BP: if a Swedish billionaire with a hyphenated name has to come out after two months of the worst ecological disaster in world history and reassure the teeming masses of people that hate him that their faceless mega-conglomerate cares about "the small people".... then it's all become pretty clear that you don't care about the small people or people in general. And we prefer to be called "the unwashed masses."

Your government at work

It's been a long held contention of this blog that the US Senate is where all things good and intelligent go to be made stupid and awful, slowly strangled in an abandoned alley by a cackling horde of willfully negligent septuagenarian bastards. And that's our opinion on a positive day. This can largely be seen in nearly any and all debate on matters of national importance, but is almost always most clearly seen during debates and bills dealing with the attempted economic recovery.

I mean unemployment is only at 10% and it's looking like we're going to enter an entire lost decade of growth.... so who needs to treat any of this with any amount of seriousness? The Senate GOP can keep trying to pull the country down on top of itself with procedural stalling and Senate Democrats can actually be the first group of people in history to die of a thousand self-inflicted paper cuts.

Oh sure, the House has it's moments of horrid futility and stupidity explosions -like, say, when they're attempting to cut growth by $50 billion and cost this country 300,000 jobs in a myopic, ineffective, back-patting, meaningless snit about the deficit- but the Senate really takes the cake when combining large scale inaction and ineffectiveness with small scale fuck yous so petty that they should be delivered by 13 year old girls in text message form. Take the jobs bill the Senate is currently half-assing:

Senate Democrats are exploring whether to eliminate an extra $25 a week in unemployment benefits, part of the economic stimulus legislation passed in 2009, as a way to cut costs and attract Republican votes for a stalled package of tax breaks, tax increases on the affluent and safety-net spending.

Top officials said that change would save billions of dollars over the next six months and could lead to approval of an overall extension of jobless pay by making the legislative package easier to swallow for lawmakers worried about deficit spending.

Now they're just chintzing a couple of bucks out of people so that they can better pass a collection of half-measures that fails to fully address the actual problems this country is experiencing. And they actually want you to believe that knocking $25 bucks out of unemployment benefits is going to make people opposed to actions that might help an actual person, flip head over heels about the prospects of extending the entire program for another couple of months. But hey, I'm sure the deficit hawks and the Blue Dogs will feel good about the minuscule impact they had on the deficit when we're in year ten of a recession. I'm sure taking $25 bucks from the unemployed in the worst economic crisis since the Depression will get those people back on their feet and the economy back in shape in no time.

At least the Roll Down the Window of Your Bentley and Spit At Poor People In the Street Act is stalled in committee.

Quote of the day

During this financial crisis, who really has to respect the chutzpah, nay balls, of our financial betters. They ruined the economies of the world on the backs of financial products they didn't understand, bankrupted several countries, worked against the interests of their clients for their own gain, caused an immense international crisis through low rent gambling and stupidity, and cost the taxpayers trillions. But throughout that, they still have maintained their smug sense of superiority, their complete failure to recognize they did anything even mildly wrong, the belief that they actually provided a service of some tangible value, and attempted to stop any and all attempts to reign in their behavior... of which they largely succeeded.

But every once in a while you get to see the bile and rage bubble up and you see their true contempt for the people they almost deliberately fucked over. In this case you can strike the "almost" from the equation. Bernie Madoff did deliberately fuck over his clients... and he's still mad they didn't thank him for the pleasure.

According to a lengthy new piece by Steve Fishman in New York magazine, Madoff, who apparently pals around with a former mob boss and a spy in a federal prison in Butner, North Carolina told a fellow inmante, "Fuck my victims. I carried them for twenty years, and now I'm doing 150 years.
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"One day, Shannon Hay, a drug dealer who lived in the same unit in Butner as Madoff, asked about his crimes. "He told me his side. He took money off of people who were rich and greedy and wanted more," says Hay, who was released in December. People, in other words, who deserved it.

See, he carried them. By which he means he stole from them and others to enrich himself while running a Ponzi scheme that, in fact, made no actual money. Why aren't these assholes grateful? Why didn't they protect their money overlord Bernie? The ingrates.

So gaze upon one of the biggest and best of the financial industry and marvel. Despite the fact that he stole from people for decades and the overwhelming amount of evidence of wrongdoing that put him in prison for a century and a half, the son of a bitch still thinks he didn't do anything wrong and that he was hard done by. That's some quality delusion and a wonderful example of the mindset that runs rampant through our financial betters. It's why they spend tens of millions opposing regulations or, more recently, stonewall federal panels. They can't believe you think they did something wrong when they shitted the world economy. The insolence, you peasants.

But don't think it's all self absorbed whining for Bernie Madoff, there's some good things he's done recently as well. Namely he got beaten up in a prison fight! So there's that.

On those war things that are still happening

Rep. Alan Grayson is fed up with our two wars and how we pay for them. Yeah, that's right, we're still at war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Surprised the hell out of me when I heard it too.

Grayson isn't happy about this. Moreso, he isn't happy about all the money we have to pay to keep these wars going. Especially considering that Congress is just about to pas a $159 billion “emergency” spending bill to cover the most recent tab. So, he's proposing some new legislation. He call sit The War Is Making You Poor Act. Let him explain.

“The purpose of this bill,” wrote Grayson last week, “is to connect the dots, and to show people in a real and concrete way the cost of these endless wars.” It’s not just the costs of active shooting wars; with hundreds of bases overseas, as far as the defense budget is concerned Americans have been on a permanent wartime footing, to varying degrees, since Pearl Harbor was attacked in 1941. “War is a permanent feature of our societal landscape,” wrote Grayson, “so much so that no one notices it anymore.”

So what does the bill do?

* Limits the amount of funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
* Takes the $159 billion and uses it as a tax cut for Americans, effectively eliminating the federal income tax on the first $35,000 of every American’s income ($70,000 for married couples)
*Makes the Pentagon take the $159 billion for the wars out of their $559 billion dollar defense budget.
* Cuts the Federal deficit by $15.9 billion.

This makes sense, people would like it, it would cut the deficit, and rein in the ridiculous amount we're spending of defense. So of course it'll go over like a loud fart in church and will probably never be allowed to be voted on.

Even Secretary Gates, who is openly advocating for the cutting of billions of dollars worth of projects and telling the President to veto any defense bill that doesn't make the cuts he wants, has to be looking at Grayson and going "Pay for these wars out of money already appropriated?" *makes wanking gesture* "Get fucked, buddy."

So even though nothing will probably happen, Grayson's attempt to make sense will never get through and Gates' request that that Congress stop wasting money on pet military projects for their own districts that the military has no use for will also be ignored, it's nice to see the two attempting to inject a little rationality into our defense debate. Combating the conventional wisdom that wars are free and that defense spending doesn't count as spending is hard to do. Here's hoping that these forthcoming failed attempts don't scar them so badly they they never try again.

Naive kids, trying to act all reasonable and shit. Will wonders never cease?

Sarah's back

If there's one you can say about Sarah Palin it's that she spends an awful lot of time needlessly barging into situations without ever showing that she knows why she initially felt the need to barge into said situation in the first place.

Take the BP oil spill, for instance. With the Obama Administration taking increasing criticism for letting BP handle the cleanup and spill stoppage ineffectively, the best thing to do would either be to let the pressure mount organically or dip in and deftly lay in a few intelligent shots. Or, you could loudly shout that Obama is in bed with Big Oil, try to claim that all of Obama's oil connections and oil money are clouding his judgment, and then try to build some bizarre case that the Democratic Party is the party of Big Oil. She does realize she's the former governor of Alaska, is in the Republican Party, and essentially pours oil on her pancakes each morning and eats it with a smile, right? Now to some, this all might be seen as "intensely and obviously stupid", but our minds do not work like the well oiled steel trap that is America's Dumb Rural Mom.

So when most of the GOP has started backing away from Rand Paul, mouths agape, marveling over the fact that he found a way to make the Republican Party look worse to black voters, what do you think Sarah Palin decided the smart thing to do was? Accuse the interviewer of prejudice and cloak easy, straightforward questions as the Machiavellian machinations of a malevolent media.

"One thing we can learn in this lesson that I have learned and Rand Paul is learning now is don't assume that you can engage in a hypothetical discussion about constitutional impacts with a reporter or a media personality who has an agenda, who may be prejudiced before they even get into the interview in regards to what your answer may be," Palin said. "You know, they are looking for the gotcha moment. And that evidently appears to be what they did with Rand Paul..."

Hmm, yes. I think when America saw the interview they clearly saw that the agenda and prejudice was coming from the interviewer and was not wafting off the guy who just said he was cool with discrimination. And everyone knows that asking a question about Civil Rights so easy ("Civil Rights Act of 1964: Good thing?") that even the most embittered Klansman would know how to answer it on the TV, is just a cheap gotcha question much in the same vein as "What do you read?" "What is your foreign policy experience?" and "Is there something in your eye? You keep winking."

At least she added in a bunch of comments calling for stricter action on BP by Obama... which I'm sure will not come back to bite her in the ass when Obama takes stricter action on BP and she feels the need to decry the onerous pressure of the government on business. Ah well, at least it gives me one chance in my life to say "I agree with Sarah Palin". So, if any large chunks of the earth fall into the sea or the sky turns blood red, I'm sorry. She just happened to make a valid point, however accidentally, inherently dishonest or nakedly political it may have been. There's a first time for everything.

Quote of the day

So what do you do when you seemingly endorse repealing the 1964 Civil Rights Act, set off a firestorm, and have to walk things back so much that at the end of the day you are not only disavowing any connections you have to yourself, but you're seriously considering claiming you have a big tattoo of Martin Luther King high fiving Sojourner Truth across your back?

If you're Rand Paul, you criticize the President and stick up for BP in the midst of a massive ecological nightmare. Of course you do.

On Good Morning America today, Paul also steered the conversation toward something more recent, President Obama's criticism of BP following the oil spill. Paul said: "This sort of, you know 'I'll put my boot heel on the throat of BP,' I think that sounds really un-American in his criticism of business."

Paul continued: The President's reaction is "part of this sort of blame game society" where "it's always someone's fault." Paul added: "Maybe sometimes accidents happen."

"Accidents happen." That's one way of putting it. I'm no political expert, but maybe the best pivot point off of "Businesses should be allowed to discriminate. A pox on the Civil Rights Act" isn't "How dare the President criticize a corporation just because it's extreme negligence is causing an unprecedented environmental disaster." At least Rand took out time to also intensely whine about the criticism he received yesterday.

But, maybe we're being too harsh on Raaaaaaaaandy. As Orrin Hatch explained

“If I were you guys I’d give him a little leeway,” Hatch told reporters. “He just got elected. It’s a tough thing for him to get in the middle of this cauldron.”

Yeah, it's his first day on the job. How's he supposed to know criticizing one of the landmark bills in US history and openly endorsing the right to discriminate would make him look like an ass? C'mon, lay off.

I don't know, Rand, what's on tap for tomorrow? Feel a need to praise the Pope's handling of the whole child molestation thing? Opine on the sporting excellence of the Pittsburgh Pirates? Start an intensive discussion on all the good policy ideas Hitler had? Talk about the chilling effects the Emancipation Proclamation had on business; especially the cotton industry? Whatever it is, I'm sure you'll do it in your trademark smug, entitled style. Never pausing to actually think about how what you're saying sounds. Keep it up, Rand. We need a new punching bag now that Palin and Bachmann have seemingly learned to shut up.

Quote of the day

Look, it's clear that people are overreacting to this unprecedented oil spill thingy dingy in the Gulf. I mean BP CEO Tony Hayward spelled it out for us last week when he explained that the spill was "relatively tiny" when compared to the overall size of the ocean and it's total water volume.

I mean, yeah, when you think about it, covering the entire Gulf of Mexico in oil isn't that big a deal when you consider the earth is over 70% water. Plus it's only the top of the water that's covered in oil. What about all the water underneath that's still perfectly good? What about the depth of the ocean? That's a lot of water, BP could have only massively polluted a small fraction of it. When you think about it, taken against the entirety of human achievement and failure, this is only a small failure on Heyward's part.

Proving that no one in BP's PR Department was brave enough to smack him in the back of the head and ask Heyward what the fuck he was doing, Tony went right back out there to keep hitting that line of defense.

I think the environmental impact of this disaster is likely to be very, very modest. It is impossible to say and we will mount, as part of the aftermath, a very detailed environmental assessment as we go forward. We’re going to do that with some of the science institutions in the U.S. But everything we can see at the moment suggests that the overall environmental impact of this will be very, very modest.

Yes... modest. Very, very modest.

Plus, it's not like this is the only Gulf. If people want to see a Gulf they can go to the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of Aden, the Gulf of Carpentaria, the Gulf of Tonkin, or the Gulf of Riga. Everyone loves Latvia, right? So when you think about how many Gulf's there are and how much ocean water there is by area and volume, it's like this didn't even happen. You hear me? THIS DIDN'T HAPPEN!

Mascottery

We all love the Olympics. The pomp, the circumstance, the athletes, the competition. But when you ask people "what do the Olympics need to add" you get one clear answer. The answer you used to get was "A tightly regimented, visually appealing opening ceremony performance from an oppressive communist country." But since Beijing, those wishes have subsided. Now the first thing people say is "Olympic mascots that not only look like giant penises with arms, but seem to be wholly conceived as a reference to a slang term for the penis."

London 2012 gives you Wenlock and Mandeville... the one eyed monsters.


No, no, it all makes sense. See:

The mascots have been given a back story, created by acclaimed author and former children’s laureate Michael Morpurgo, based around the idea that they were formed from the last drops of steel left over from girders made for the Olympic Stadium.

Ahh,that's why they look like giant dancing cocks. Sure beats the pants of Atlanta 1996's Izzy... the dancing blue sperm in sneakers.

So thank you London for allowing what is evidently some large scale prank by giggling teenagers to slip by the 80 year-old Lords, Sirs, and Barons who were probably running this thing. Much thanks to the 20 and 30 year-olds who never spoke up to point this out.

We know you weren't going to wow us with the opening ceremonies, as 30 Rock explained... you don't have control over your people like that. But thanks for giving us the next best thing: two penis shaped "one-eyed monsters... *wink*" as mascots. The world thanks you and eagerly awaits the London games.

Barry is perplexed

It's so sad when you see the President get his hopes up and thinks someone on the other side of the political divide might congratulate him for something or pay attention to the facts of a situation. He seems genuinely confused. "They wanted A, I gave them A, now they're complaining I did the opposite of A. Guh?"

It must be a horrid nightmare of opposites he lives in. He gets health reform legislation through making sure to explicitly use the private insurance system as the provider and people knock him for a government takeover. He advances a nuclear treaty that started under Reagan and gets knocked for practically inviting nukes to be dropped on us and betraying Reagan. So imagine his surprise when he thought that people clamoring for lower taxes would notice all the lower taxes.

OBAMA: We cut taxes for 95 percent of working Americans just like I promised we would on the campaign. […] So I’ve been a little amused over the last couple days where people have been having these rallies about taxes. You would think they would be saying, “Thank you!” That’s what you’d think!

There's your first problem: ascribing thought to the Tea Party movement. Sure taxes are at their lowest levels in 60 years, but 2/3'rds of those damn teabaggers think taxes went up. On the other hand, that poll yesterday showed the teabaggers are richer, more conservative, and whiter than America, so maybe they're in that 5% that didn't get a tax cut. Which syncs up with polling that shows teabaggers are only 4% of the country. Maybe that other 1% is just too rich to care.

So chin up, Barry. I mean if they haven't come around on the fact that you're not a Kenyan or that you can't be both the radical black progeny of a radical black preacher and a Muslim, they aren't going to get it on taxes either. Try to start them off slowly, maybe get them to learn the definition of socialism and then have Rahm work up some easy to read graphs showing the tax rate. I'm sure they'll come around.

Shocking findings

As it is April 15th, Evil Government Stealing Your Money To Give It To The Blacks Day as some know it, there is of course a great deal more attention placed on the Tea Party and the Teabaggers. Because, after all, in addition to being an amateur society of birth certificate experts who could eyeball a man who was born in Mombasa at 100 paces, their movement is ostensibly about taxes or something. That's what the TEA stands for... Taxed Enough Already.

Sure sure, fine fine, they don't actually know anything about taxes or tax cuts they've gotten from Hussein Obama X or really... anything, but they do loudly claim that this is all about taxes... somewhere in between several rants about fascism, how that chubby Glenn Beck boy is right, and how they're holding out hope for that Palin/Bachmann ticket.

But what of the Teabaggers? Who are they? If the immediate thought running through your head was whitewhitewhiteoooohsweetjesusfuckingwhitepeople well... you were right. As a New York Times/CBS News poll explains.

The 18 percent of Americans who identify themselves as Tea Party supporters tend to be Republican, white, male, married and older than 45.

They hold more conservative views on a range of issues than Republicans generally. They are also more likely to describe themselves as “very conservative” and President Obama as “very liberal.”

And while most Republicans say they are “dissatisfied” with Washington, Tea Party supporters are more likely to classify themselves as “angry.”

I am Jack's utter lack of surprise. But only if there was some way this poll also quantified their seeming large scale racial resentment and white victimhood persecution complexes.

Tea Party supporters’ fierce animosity toward Washington, and the president in particular, is rooted in deep pessimism about the direction of the country and the conviction that the policies of the Obama administration are disproportionately directed at helping the poor rather than the middle class or the rich.

The overwhelming majority of supporters say Mr. Obama does not share the values most Americans live by and that he does not understand the problems of people like themselves. More than half say the policies of the administration favor the poor, and 25 percent think that the administration favors blacks over whites — compared with 11 percent of the general public. They are more likely than the general public, and Republicans, to say that too much has been made of the problems facing black people.

No! You don't say!

Lest you think this article and poll is merely there to state the obvious, there is a treasure trove of interviews with Teabaggers who aside from divulging their thought on how Obama is a Kenyan, a Muslim who dishonors this country by not picking a DC church to go to, general rage at "spending" and "waste", blah blah socialism, accusations that Obama is taking America away from what it used to be, how Obama is making the country not great, they are also filled with rage over socialist government programs... which they then reveal they're for when, like with Medicare or Social Security, they are in them.

To quoth Steve Benen at the Washington Monthly

If you were to make a Venn Diagram of the issues Tea Party members care about, and the issues Tea Party members are confused about, you'd only see one circle.

But these are an important group of Americans that it is important we listen to and they will get incessant coverage even though about 4% of the country is a Teabagger and blah blah blah.

At least we now officially know that the Tea Party is comprised of old, rich, ultra-conservative white people who don't know anything about what they claim they're most interested in. At least that's nice to have it finally made official.

Perhaps I was too hasty...

You know earlier I awarded the understatement of the day the Jerusalem city officials over their "zoning issues" comment on the Middle East peace process. I think I might have jumped the gun. I clearly forgot about Southern Republican's capacity for racial insensitivity and treason celebration.

As you might be aware, April is Confederate History Month as so declared by Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell. Quick historical recap: they seceded, piles of bodies, we put boot to ass, four score and seven, yay North! It is also African American Woman's Fitness Month, National Car Care Month, Irritable Bowel Syndrome Month, Holy Humor Month, Soy Foods Month, and National Straw Hat Month. It's a busy month. But in his declaration of National Traitor Appreciation Confederate History Month, Governor McDonnell forgot to leave out one tiny thing about the war that all previous governors seemed to have remembered. I'll let you guess which one. Hint: it involved the blacks.

McDonnell said Tuesday that the move was designed to promote tourism in the state, which next year will mark the 150th anniversary of the start of the war. McDonnell said he did not include a reference to slavery because “there were any number of aspects to that conflict between the states. Obviously, it involved slavery. It involved other issues. But I focused on the ones I thought were most significant for Virginia.“

Yes, there were any number of aspects to the Civil War, Bob. Sure, there were other issues. Sure that business with the dark ones was kind of sort of tangentially involved with what Confederates appreciated. However I'm going to go out on a limb here and speak for historians: slavery... yeah it kinda was one of the larger issues. Some might say the largest one. I don't want to speak out of turn, but I think the consensus is in on that one.

So I think Bobby is in contention for Understatement of the Day. Yeah, reducing slavery into just one of the many issues and aspects surrounding the Civil War and one not even significant enough to warrant a mention? Yeah, that's going to fit in nicely.

I don't know, maybe we need to start up a National Southern Education About Slavery Month or Admitting You Are Celebrating Atrocities and Treason in Your Defense of the Confederacy Month. Maybe they could be this month. We'll just bump Prevent Lyme Disease in Dogs Month, National Pecan Month, or Women's Eye Health and Safety Month to May in order to free up some space.

Our Betters: Joe assesses a successful first week

INT. OVAL OFFICE


Rahm Emanuel: Listen, I don’t know what to do at this point. The POTUS wants his ass out of this office as fast as humanly possible, but with minimal ego bruising. We’ve been trying for the past few days, but he just doesn’t seem to get the hint. You’ve worked with him for a while, maybe you have some ideas.


Ronald Klain: Don’t put this shit on me. I may be his Chief of Staff, but that doesn’t mean I know how that tangled snarl of madness between his ears works.

Emanuel: Fuck that! This situation needs to be rectified! Where is he?

Klain: I have no idea… wait….

(perks ears up)

Klain: I think….

(distant sound of ass slapping)

Klain: He draws near…

(off-key singing of "Hail to the Chief", drawing closer)

Klain: Three... two...

(door flies open)


President Joe Biden: Fellas! How the hell are you doing? I feel like I could literally run through a brick wall, cock-first!

(slaps both on the ass, hard)

Biden: My old Chief of Staff and my new Chief of Staff together. Rumblin’, tumblin’, swapping notes, talkin’ shop. Fantastic! Ronnie buddy, I miss the hell out of you!

(awkwardly massages Klain’s shoulders)

Biden: Enough of that sentimental horseshit. It’s time we got down to the hard business of discussing the Biden Presidency.

Emanuel: Yeah… about that. You see…

Biden: I think it’s been a pretty damn good first few days, if you don’t mind my saying. We’ve hit the ground running.

Klain: No, see…

Biden: We’re literally fixin’ the problems of the American people. But I have my concerns about how smoothly the Biden Presidency is running…

Emanuel: Sir, you aren’t President. As we’ve made clear: just because President Obama went to Kabul doesn’t mean he “abdicated” or that you were in charge or anything. You are not the President.

Biden: Now, these concerns about my Presidency aren’t a reflection on any problems I have with you Rahm, or how smoothly you’ve run things. But I want things smoother. Baby’s ass smooth! That’s the kind of ship I used to run when I was the Veep, right Ron Jovi?

Klain: *sighs* You’re still the Vice-President…

Biden: First order of business: Michelle. Is she my wife now? Because I already have a wife. Jill. Doctor. Hell of a lass. I’m not saying’ Papa Joe wouldn’t mind a little double trouble, but there was some tension last night at dinner. I didn’t know whether to kiss Michelle or which of the little ones was Sasha and which one was Malia or what. Can I get a ruling?

Emanuel: You aren’t the fucking President. Michelle Obama isn’t your wife. Stay out of the residence. I don’t know why you would even think…

Biden: Second order of business….. Flo! FLO!!!

(a voice comes from outside the Oval Office)


Katherine Johnson: For the last time Mr. Vice-President my name is not “Flo”. My name is Katherine. Some people even choose to call me Katie…

Biden: Outstanding, Flo. How ‘bout you get us men a couple of scotches and sodas and some scotches without soda. Am I right!

(Biden punches Klain in the sternum, laughs.)

Johnson: Again, I am not a drinks girl. Nor am I here to get your laundry. I am the Personal Secretary to the President. And again, you are not the President.


Biden: Women in the workplace! Unbelievable. Now, back to what I was saying. I think that there are some staffing problems in my White House.

Emanuel: Dear God, shut up and leave.

Biden: I’m talking about the kitchen staff, mostly. Had a five-cheese pasta with my wife, Michelle, and the kids last night. I swear… I could only taste four.


Biden: Fontina… I think it was missing fontina....

(snaps back)


Biden: Anyway… you know what? FLO!!!

Johnson: Mr. Vice-Pres…

Biden: Belay that drink order. Get the entire White House staff up here right now.

Johnson: *sighs and dies a little inside* Fine.

Biden: Time to get down a jaw with them, Biden style. Right, Ronstoppable?

(White House staff crowds into Oval Office)


Biden: Come on in, make yourselves comfortable. People, I think this new Administration has the chance to be great, literally great. But it isn’t just us suits in the offices drinkin’ hot toddies that make the gears of this country spin; it’s the little people too. Lemme relate to you an unrelated story.

Klain: Oh God…

(Biden clears throat, wells up with pride)

Biden: Ladies and gentlemen, I’m from Scranton. Awful place. But back there they had a swimmin’ hole in a quarry that we used to dive in to from literally a hundred feet up. And we’d dive into it. The frightening part was you go down really far, I mean literally really far. So deep it's totally black. Your chest constricts, you panic and you don't know whether you're swimming down or up. But when you get about 12 to 14 feet from the top you see light and everything is OK. You're still 12 feet underwater, but it's OK. You see light.

(puzzled staff looks at Emanuel and Klain)

Biden: That's the American people, man. We've gotta give them light.

(strolls into the audience, pointing with both hands toward a sun-lit windows)

Emanuel: What the fuck?

Biden: So just give them the light. Whether it’s stopping yourself from calling me the Vice-President or not skimping on cheeses in dinner dishes or siding with the First Lady when she throws me out of the Presidential bed… we gotta get this ship tightened up! For the American people!

(smoke begins wafting in under the Oval Office door)

Emanuel: Thank fucking God.

(door flies open, cigarette smoke envelopes the room)


President Barack Obama: What the fuck is going on? Why is the entire goddamn staff in here? No one’s giving tours, opening doors, keeping watch, doing work. Seriously, what the fuck?

Biden: Barry! Well, you see... what was…

Obama: A 14-hour overnight flight from Kabul and I come back to this shit? For the last time, Joe, get the fuck out of my office and back to the Vice-Presidential residence. Don't make me ship you to the Middle East again.


Vice-President Joe Biden: *mumbling* Yes sir.

(does Charlie Brown walk out of Oval Office)

Obama: Everyone leave! Go do your jobs! This is supposed to be a serious place of business.

(everyone exits the Oval Office)

Emanuel: Thank you. We just couldn’t get him to leave.

Klain: I’ll up his meds or something.

Obama: No, no. I knew the score when I put him on the ticket. *sighs* You think Hillary or Evan Bayh would have given us this much hassle?

Emanuel: No fuckin' way, sir.

(Obama snaps fingers, points at swear jar)

Obama: Folding money, Rahm.

Not getting it

Karl Rove is a busy man. Not only does he have the time to do commentary for Fox News, write a book, cut a bloody swath through the fact-checking community, give Stephen Colbert new ham based material, engage in the black arts that keep his 3,000 year old body alive for one more 24-hour period ,take pride in torture, and poison the area gopher population for free around his local community, but he also has time to make extremely loaded statements that show little to no self awareness of that administration he was in and that President he served.

Take it away, Turd Blossom.

ROVE:...they let a cowboy president try to act in an extra-constitutional way to violate a fundamental principle in the Constitution, all without having done their homework in advance.

What's Karl talking about? Is that a reference to himself letting Bush and Cheney run wild? Is he trying to blame other staffers for the mistakes and crimes of the Bush Administration? Is he trying to place blame on Congressional Democrats and Republicans for failing to utilize their oversight on the White House?

No, he's attacking the Obama Administration for not sitting back and allowing a military coup overthrow the democratically elected President of Honduras. Of course he is. You know maybe we should take him at his word on this. I mean if anyone could deadeye a cowboy President violating the Constitution at 100 paces, it's Karl Rove. Hell he studied at the feet of the master for nearly eight years. He could teach the course.

On the other hand, he clearly doesn't understand what's in our Constitution, so how can we expect him to know what's in Honduras' Constitution or even where Honduras is?

But the man is an expert on homework. I mean how could you accuse your opponent of fathering a black lovechild out of wedlock if you hadn't done the research to learn that they adopted a Bangladeshi child ahead of time?

No, he's an expert. We should listen to him. Obama: let military coups go through! We all saw what wonders it did for Haiti. Remember to send that thank you note to Bush, Cheney, and Rove.

Dodd moves on, doesn't understand what 'compromise' means

Some small amount of relief is to be allowed on the financial reform front. After weeks in which it appeared that the Consumer Financial Protection Agency was being weakened, that bad concessions to predatory industries were being made in order to stay buddy buddy with ranking GOP committee members, and disappointing decisions, made in the name of 'bipartisanship', were being made in order to keep letting the finance and banking industries screw us hard and not have to change their behavior after toileting the economy, now it seems that Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd has said "fuck this shit" and is moving forward with his own bill.

Largely because he seems to realize that the GOP strategy of "pretending to negotiate in good faith in an attempt to stall things, get large concessions for things they want, and then not support the bill", last employed in the health care debate, was wasting time, making the bill worse, not adding GOP support, and in danger of losing him Democratic support. So Dodd will unveil his own bill... and he's promising that it'll have most of the concessions he made to the GOP in it for some reason.

Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd said he will release his version of legislation to overhaul financial rules, signaling that talks on a compromise with Republican Bob Corker have collapsed.
...
“I have been fortunate to have a strong partner in Senator Corker and my new proposal will reflect his input and the good work done by many of our colleagues,” Dodd said. “Our talks will continue and it is still our hope to come to agreement on a strong bill all of the Senate can be proud to support.”
...
“It has always been my goal to produce a consensus package,” Dodd said in the statement.

The kind of consensus that involves little to no Republican support and will involve the very people you negotiated with calling whatever the bill is some sort of socialist giveaway to banks? So you can't continue on with the negotiations, you have to move forward, you don't think the GOP is on board or will help out in any way (trenchant insight), but yet you're going to keep all of their suggestions that weakened various ways of regulating and governing the industries that just set fire to everyone's money? Makes sense.

So you don't have a consensus, you don't have a compromise... but you'll stick to the comprise negotiated just for the hell of it anyway instead of moving for more stringent, smarter, and better protections and laws? Sounds like a Democrat to me. Now's when you unleash the crazy liberal communist shit in order to drive them back to the table. Someone should tell Dodd how to negotiate. But I guess he does have to think about reelection.... oh that's right, he's retiring. So this all makes complete sense. Good luck with all of that, Chris.