Afghanistan: A short play

President Obama: You know Stan, I'm glad to have you running things in Afghanistan. As I've said many times publicly: your strategies, leadership, and vision are absolutely integral to any future success our mission in Afghanistan will have. Especially now that we're entering one of the most critical "make or break" times in our offensive campaign against the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Again, you are absolutely integral to our mission.


General McChrystal: Thank you Mr. President and let me say how honored I am to be leading this vital charge against the Afghan insurgency.
...
By-the-by, and this is just a little thing.... I may have given a tiny little interview to Rolling Stone where I maybe had a few too many Bud Light Limes and was maybe a little critical of your administration. Nothing serious, but maybe a few of my aides go a little too far in criticizing specific people in your administration. Not me, mind you, my aides. A little embarrassing? Sure. A little short sighted? Sure. Ripe for parody? Definitely. But nothing that would cause anyone to drastically reassess our geopolitical strategy vis-a-vis the war on terror and our counterinsurgency strategies and Afghanistan policies... right?


President Obama: ..............YOU'RE FUCKING FIRED!!!!!!

FIN

Nice to see that we won't let something like a war or a war strategy get dicked around over what amounts to an indelicate decorum gaffe combined with incessant, brainless 24-hour news outrage, right? Eh, at least we'll have those trillions from those Afghan minerals to spend soon.

Cheap Blogging Crutch 06.09

From Buzzfeed's Annotated Guide To Images From The Anti-BP Movement

In We All Know This Intuitively news the AP has kindly revealed that 58% of all the judges in areas affected by the BP spill have financial ties to the oil industry. Seems low. Just wanted you to know that in case you were getting any ideas in your head about "They'll get theirs through the legal system." Nah, kid, nah.

Breaking from years of established US government and official New World immigration policy, Native Americans have been allowed a legal victory that will seemingly come without betrayal from the white man, smallpox blankets, mass slaughter, some horribly inhumane forced resettlement, or a cloying portrayal as cat people in a James Cameron movie. It seems some in the justice system have forgotten the principles this country was founded on: fucking over Indians at all costs. Hopefully this is stopped before they gain the sense and legal standing to get justice on all that other stuff we, by which I mean all the white people who were here before my ancestors immigrated here, did to them.

With all the reports of environmental calamity coming from the Gulf, it's hard not to consider the worst case scenarios for the entire region, economy, and wildlife. But what about considering the worst case scenario for BP? Thankfully Andrew Ross Sorkin goes through what might happen and the possible future is quite a theoretical delight. Bankruptcy, cleanup costs going over $20 billion, $15 billion in claims, billions in Clean Water Act fines, Tony Hayward being pushed into a wheat thresher and then having pig excrement rubbed in his wounds, endless litigation, an unrepairable reputation, and BP being forced to break itself up are all possible options. All of them might happen. I'm crossing my fingers for the wheat thresher one. Just keep thinking positive and they all might happen.

In Punishing the Whistle-blowers, Not the Criminals They Expose news, the US Intelligence analyst who exposed the video of helicopter gunmen essentially murdering innocent civilians was arrested. It's nice to know what our priorities as a country are: arrest people who expose wrongdoing; let the perpetrators who flagrantly breaks laws off scot free while continuing their illegal policies. We have an awesome country.

Rolling Stone has put up an article on the BP oil spill and the Obama response. It should essentially be titled The Shit You Should Actually Be Mad At Obama Over. It goes over the hiring of cronies, the failure to reform MMS, and all the other problems we pointed out before. It'd be a good place for our media to start taking a look. But instead we'll continue to get stories about whether Obama needs to get angrier, the crisis over Obama not showing enough anger, and now: did Obama show too much anger when he said "know whose ass to kick" on the TV? Like I said, our priorities as a country are just super.

In closing we leave you with a review of Willow Ufgood/Wicket's biography Size Matters Not.

Pride

It's been cold out recently, so you may have thought that climate change wasn't happening. I mean after all, if it's cold right where you are, right at that very moment, how can the planet be warming on a year to year basis? But still, magazines, liberal actors, and scientists continue to claim that not only is there some sort of climate problem, but that people who actively deny it and work against it are somehow bad people. The most recent of which was Rolling Stone, who published a list of the planet's 17 worst enemies from big businessmen to elected leaders to phony scientists.

Well some people aren't happy with that list. People like international laughingstock Sen. Jim Inhofe, fresh off a failed trip to Copenhagen where he was ridiculed by the foreign press and made an ass out of himself. He's mad people aren't respecting the breadth and depth of damage he's doing to this planet.

"I should have been number one," Inhofe told KFAQ radio in Tulsa. "I guess [Warren] Buffet has a lot more money so he went first."
...
"My first response was I should have been No. 1, not No. 7," he said. "I am serious about that. I have spent now literally years on this thing, and it has been a long, involved thing.''

That's pride, baby. Granted, Rolling Stone did dub him "God's Denier", but chronicling his actions does leave him a little light on accomplishments. Sure he acted like a dangerous idiot, makes claims that CO2 isn't a pollutant, thinks God will bail everyone out if he's wrong, and makes petulant stands in committee meetings. But where's the concrete action? What's he actually done? Unless he's got a massive tire fire burning out behind his Senate office it's hard to place him against billionaire industrialists and oil company execs.

But one does appreciate his commitment. Most people would be dangerously unnerved by the seeming disconnect between their statements and recorded fact, but either Sen. Inhofe was able to tamp down that conscience with industry money or he wasn't born with it in the first place. Still Jim, there's always future Rolling Stone articles on the worst climate change offenders. You can try to increase your ranking for next year, two years from now, ten years from now, or... well I'm not sure how many years we can count on either the publishing industry or the planet not collapsing, so you might have to get a move on.

Cheap Blogging Crutch 12.18

U.S. training plan: Read first, shoot later
From liberal rag Stars and Stripes, comes a look at how the US is using literacy training to get people into the Afghan army and police, while also using a desire to get into the Afghan military and police as a way to spread literacy. We still pay less than the Taliban does, but we are giving them job skills. Shame we can't do it for anything cheaper than an extra hundred billion.

The sports-entertainment crossover: it's sublimely funny. Just ask speedskating savior Stephen Colbert
Sports Illustrated takes a look at Stephen Colbert's successful quest to save the US speed skating team through sponsorship and what it might mean for the future of Olympic sponsorship. All part of the new issue of SI that features Colbert on the cover... in a speed skating spandex suit. This is going to be the best Olympic sponsorship by a comedy program since SCTV sponsored the Canadian men's two man luge team.

In 2010, The Civilian Space Industry Finally Takes Off
It's almost at that point in time where we're starting to get past that point all our favorite sci-fi TV, movies, and books described as "the future" and into that part they called "the distant future". What do we have to show for it? The ability to watch porn anywhere and HDTV. No moon bases and nothing that even remotely hovers in a car. But 2010 is the year which we can also pay billionaires for the right to rocket our asses up into low orbit, to feel a sensation that Buzz Aldrin and Alan Shepard got tired of describing three decades ago. The future is slowly creeping up, it's just a shame that it's more in the "carnival ride" aspects of the future and not the "to boldly go..." ones.

Collider Sets Record, and Europe Takes U.S.’s Lead
Well the Large Hadron Collider is up and running and while it isn't yet up to the task of killing God or crushing Europe into a singularity, it is up to the task of rubbing America's nose in shit. It has already set the record for accelerating protons (to 1.2 trillion volts), for number and speed of collisions, for the number of particle physicists in one room named Jens, for the slowest particle on record, the largest particle on record, most PhD's at a nude science kegger, and most appearances of the "particle physicists do it with momentum and position" bumper sticker. Here's congratulating them on their serious endeavors.

People finally realize Facebook intends to make money off of their data
Yeah, Facebook is starting to become mildly evil in regards to privacy, attempting to make money, and making everything on the site public. Turns out that you can't expect Facebook to exist forever without trying to make a buck of your info. Social media isn't private, especially free social media. Shocking, I know. However, this will help you stalk 15 year-olds and ex-girlfriends you are convinced still love you without a restraining order entering into it. So, that's a plus.

Obama's Big Sellout
Matt Taibbi's big Rolling Stone piece on the Obama Administration and that whole thing where we intended to bail out banks and financial institutions while providing increased scrutiny and oversight before turning our attention to the American people, before we promptly forgot the whole scrutiny, oversight, and American people parts. He's probably a little too focused on Obama and Bob Rubin and not the collection of money humpers in Congress, but it is another thorough indictment of the way this country works. Shame he used the title "Obama's Big Sellout", what's he going to use for his article detailing the health care debacle?

Boris

It's such an unassuming, boring headline: Secret interviews add insight to Clinton presidency. You look at it and go "meh" because you already know what's in it: Clinton talking about the sex scandals, impeachment, blow-ups with Gore over the 2000 election, health care this, financial regulation that, "I could have done more". But you really need to go through it, otherwise you miss a slice of fried gold like this:

[Clinton] relayed how Boris Yeltsin's late-night drinking during a visit to Washington in 1995 nearly created an international incident. The Russian president was staying at Blair House, the government guest quarters. Late at night, Clinton told Branch, Secret Service agents found Yeltsin clad only in his underwear, standing alone on Pennsylvania Avenue and trying to hail a cab. He wanted a pizza, he told them, his words slurring.

The next night, Yeltsin eluded security forces again when he climbed down back stairs to the Blair House basement. A building guard took Yeltsin for a drunken intruder until Russian and U.S. agents arrived on the scene and rescued him.

He just wanted a pizza! Sure there's that whole "die for the President thing", but after reading that, did you ever want to be in the Secret Service more? This does raise some serious questions, and not just "Was Matt Taibbi underselling the drunkenness in his Rolling Stone obituary of Yeltsin?" What do you think the booze protocol for Boris was? Did they fly around with an oversized steamer trunk full of booze for him, did some poor staffer have to make a run each time they hit a new city, or was there a staffer trailing the Presidential motorcade in a pickup truck with the cargo bed filled with Vladimir and Banker's Club?

Pull Murray Waas and Sy Hersh off of whatever they're doing and tell them to find this out. We don't need some new depressing story on who Cheney was ordering to have killed or what CIA agent was outed, we need to know the elaborate procedures for getting Boris Yeltsin properly soused and how the Russian authorities, and foreign authorities, had to wrangle him while he was completely lit up. There have to be a million stories like this. We need to hear them.

Read this and read it now

Even though Matthew mentioned Taibbi's Rolling Stone piece on health care in yesterday's Cheap Blogging Crutch, I wanted to dedicate an entire post to the thing because, well, it's that good and important of a read. Especially in light of last night's shenanigans.

From Sick and Wrong, RS, 9/3/09:

To recap, here's what ended up happening with health care. First, they gave away single-payer before a single gavel had fallen, apparently as a bargaining chip to the very insurers mostly responsible for creating the crisis in the first place. Then they watered down the public option so as to make it almost meaningless, while simultaneously beefing up the individual mandate, which would force millions of people now uninsured to buy a product that is no longer certain to be either cheaper or more likely to prevent them from going bankrupt. The bill won't make drugs cheaper, and it might make paperwork for doctors even more unwieldy and complex than it is now. In fact, the various reform measures suck so badly that PhRMA, the notorious mouthpiece for the pharmaceutical industry which last year spent more than $20 million lobbying against health care reform, is now gratefully spending more than seven times that much on a marketing campaign to help the president get what he wants.

When finished, you may go back to your Facebook yes-we-canning.

Cheap Blogging Crutch 09.09

Follow the money: the world's sharpest fraudbusters
Wired UK gives us the story of the world's elite team of financial fraudbusters: The Super Best Money Friends. Follow them as they investigate, expose, and prosecute thieving jackals from the finance and banking industry. It's a very interesting look at not only how people are duped by these schemes, but how they are uncovered, and how they are handled once discovered. With a little luck and a little higher profile, this group of men might be the very group of people we ignore about fraud and bubbles before we begin our next financial sector induced freefall off a cliff.

Dick Cheney 'put airline bomb plot case in jeopardy'
How much does Dick Cheney love illegally imprisoning terrorist suspects and flaunting the law? Well according to the Times, so much so that he'll willingly jeopardize actual legal efforts to imprison those same terrorist suspects in such a reckless manner as to almost let them go free while ensuring that their collaborators do go free or are never even discovered. God, it's such a shame we don't have his leadership on the war on terror anymore. Thanks, Dick.

Bending the Curve: Effective Steps to Address Long-Term Health Care Spending Growth
Look, look, I know, I know, I'm sorry. Yes this is a link to a Brookings Institute study on how to effectively reduce health care costs. It's full of numbers and figures and probably has a chart or two to go along with it's complete absence of curse words or dick jokes. But, if you are interested in a litany of smart things that aren't being considered in the health care debate, this is a great place to start working up some edumacated libary book smartifying anger.

Sick and Wrong
Finally. Rolling Stone has now put up Matt Taibbi's extensive look at the legislative and political effort to fuck you hard on health care. Now you can move from just vaguely knowing the shapeless mass that is trying, and succeeding, to stick it to you, to seeing the true form of the beast and what specific horrible curses and incantations they are hurling at you. Surprisingly it only took five steps to completely screw things up.

The mainstreaming of crazy
Phil Plait of Discover Magazine's Bad Astronomy blog, himself no stranger to fighting bad science and lies about everything from climate change to moon landings, finally cracks and unleashes hell on the poisoned state of debate, intellectualism, and intelligence in this country. What finally caused him to crack? The GOP outrage over Obama telling schoolkids to study hard and stay in school. Yeah, that was crazy, but I'd only rate it about a 4 out of 10 on the Beck Scale.

Cheap Blogging Crutch 09.02

The "Intolerance" Party? GOP Strategists Worry Ideologues Are Bad For The Party's Future
Some within the GOP are waking up to the idea that maybe, just maybe, having Limbaugh, Hannity, and Beck as the main faces of your party is...well let's be charitable and say...not good. They want to grab the party back from the ideologues. One thing, no...two things. First, don't you actually have to have ideas to be an ideologue? Secondly, if 58% of your party has problems believing that Barry was born in the US, can you really save the the party from the overwhelming majority of itself?

Health Care Reform: Sick and Wrong
If you're like me, a cheap fucker who can't be bothered to pay actual money for printed material, Rolling Stones has put up this handy little series of video clips whereupon Matt Taibbi explains the reasoning and arguments behind his new "Democrats are rotten fuckers" health care article, currently in the "Why the Beatles Broke Up" issue. This should hold you over until they put the full article up for free and you can spend your precious money on something worthwhile, like cheap gin.

Tort Reform Unlikely to Cut Health Care Costs
Among the smaller arguments made by Republicans arguing against health care reform, is that they'd like to talk about serious reforms but the Democrats have taken the most important issue off the table (tort reform of medical malpractice lawsuits) because they're run by trial lawyers. It's not an argument you hear often because, let's face it, is has none of the zip of "They're gonna kill granny." But now someone has bothered to look at the issue and has come to the conclusion that...it wouldn't reduce costs at all. Oh well, back to the grandma killing well.

Stephen Fry: In search of the planet's most endangered species
The great Stephen Fry has just finished his newest project: searching out and documenting some of the world's rarest and endangered species. A mission he carries out in honor of his friend, the late author Douglas Adams. He has a book coming out about the journey called Last Chance to See, and the first installment on the journey is up on the Guardian website on the search to find the Giant Jumping Rat of Madagascar and New Zealand's Man-Eating Parrot, which, sadly, isn't 6 feet tall.

iPhone App Finds Disease Outbreaks Near You
Oh iPhone, is there anything you can't do? Now, with the help of your fellow citizens, you can be alerted to when any assholes start plaguing your area with their pig-related AIDS, zombie infections, and Entitilitus. When someone sees evidence of a plague outbreak red pin points appear on a Google map along with links to the news story, nearby medical supply depots that sell flu masks in bulk are identified, and links to guns stores where you can buy shotguns powerful enough to take the head off of one of the shambling undead are highlighted.

Cheap Blogging Crutch 08.26

How America Lost the War on Drugs
Ben Wallace-Wells of Rolling Stone traces America's failure/loss in the War on Drugs. How did we lose? To make a long story short: by fighting it. Among the highlights: RAND researchers finding out 13 years ago that the best way to reduce drug usage was treatment and education, not South American bombing campaigns and guerrilla wars. The study has never been implemented. Good times.

Progressive Caucus Finds Itself In A Strange Place: Power
HuffPo looks at the strange new thing rippling through the Democratic party: progressives and liberals who are taken seriously by the party establishment. My God, the horror. Mainly it has to do with them sticking to their guns (for once) on the issue of a public health insurance option. If a decent health care plan gets passed (HA!!) these are going to be the dirty liberal sons of bitches to thank.

NFL targeting binge drinking among fans in new season
Oh NFL, this means war. First you pussy up the game with more judgment calls about intent and hitting hard, then you continue to subject us to the commercial torments of John Cougar Mellencamp, and now you have the nerve to try to fight our ability to get blackout drunk in a parking lot at 9 a.m. on a Sunday morning or go to the concession stand in the 3rd quarter and come back with seven 28 ounce beers? Damn your evil eyes, Roger Goodell, damn them to hell. Hell is, incidentally, a Detroit Lions vs. Cleveland Browns week 16 match-up played over and over endlessly on a black and white TV.

Public Opinion and Gay Marriage
Some number crunchers have taken a look at gay marriage and have found out that not only has support for destroying Jesus' carefully written marriage laws becoming more popular, but that after gay marriage is legalized in a state it becomes even more popular. If we don't stop this menace what's next? Complete tolerance? No thank you, I already have enough weddings to go to.

Jeremy Scahill Slams Chuck Todd, Media, Congress Over Blackwater On "Real Time With Bill Maher" (VIDEO)
God bless you Mr. Scahill, three worthier targets for scorn could not be found. Mostly his outrage (outrage that is available in paperback) stems from the fact that no one in our pampered media elite or any of our elected betters seems to find it noteworthy or important that Blackwater is employed as a "Christian supremacist fighting force to eliminate Muslims and destroy Islam globally, and then they bill taxpayers again for this killing that they're doing and they're not held to the same standard as soldiers." That and they might also murder whistle-blowers on American soil. Chuck Todd's response: Waaaaaaaaaah. That's right dear media, everyone who thinks that extra legal mercenary fighting forces are bad are the crazy ones.

Cheap Blogging Crutch 07.17

US gun debate fires up as states allow weapons in bars
Want to know what you can't do in most bars? Smoke. But some states are coming up with a compromise: if you want to kill yourself or be killed in a secondhand manner, they are willing to allow handguns to be carried in bars to increase that possibility. Liquor and firearms, I thought those two wouldn't go together. Apparently in Arizona and Tennessee they do. So order a Jack & Coke and bring your Smith & Wesson, that confrontation over at the jukebox just got interesting. Sam Peckinpah interesting.

When Do They Need a Fig Leaf?
Summer is here and the New York Times is here to expose the new menace plaguing the countryside: armies of nude toddlers running free. Yes, there's a miniature streaking epidemic. From sunburn concerns to neighbors who catch a glimpse of a nude toddler in the yard and then spend the day wondering if their door isn't about to be kicked in by Chris Hansen,their apparent perversion shown on NBC, and jail time followed by registry on a sex offenders list. When will these nude 3 year old freaks learn: this is a Puritan country. Go off and commit unspeakable acts of violence like a normal child.

Economy in China Regains Robust Pace of Growth
What's that? The communofascisocialist Red Chinese understand more about economics than the free market, flag eating, $$$ loving people for New Freemerica? You mean focusing your efforts on appropriate levels government spending and loans and not loading up bills with ineffective tax cuts to appease Republicans is the way to go about an economic stimulus? Who would have thought? Except all those economist assholes. Of course they may be lying, but that's also a good plan. In any event, as long as their recovery isn't tied to the brutal suppression of dissident activity by Chinese Uighurs, we can copy it. Because we unfortunately sent all our Uighurs to tropical islands.

Chuck Todd's arguments against investigations
Want to know one of the main reasons you should actively despise the media in this country? People like Chuck Todd are a start. But it's more of their general kowtowing to power and their blinkered insistence that we shouldn't prosecute those pesky people who illegally tortured and spied and broke all those laws because it would be "distracting" and "looking back" and "partisan." Check out Glenn Greenwald's blogging destruction of Chuck Todd, then listen to his podcast, where he has Chuck on and then destroys him in audio form.

Who Will Succeed Kim Jong Il?
I'm guessing it's going to be someone with the words "Kim Jong" in their name. And I'm right, with Kimbo's #3 three son Kim Jong Un, slated to take up the family business. What's known about him? Almost nothing except he went to a Swiss school and loves NBA basketball. This should be read just for the stories his classmates give of finding out he's a dictator's son, theirs thoughts on the possibility he'll be the new dictator, and their descriptions of his b-ball prowess. The bad news if Un succeeds Il: not only another brutal dictator who's probably crazy, but one who could challenge Barry in a 1-on-1 match. The good news: if we make Michael Jordan a North Korean ambassador, we might be able to get Un to do what ever we want.

As Goldman Sachs Posts Record Profits, Matt Taibbi Probes Role of Investment Giant in US Financial Meltdown
Democracy Now has Matt Taibbi on to not only discuss his Rolling Stone article, now up in full on RS.com, but to also discuss the recent news that Goldman Sachs posted up its biggest quarterly profit ever. Needless to say he's not exactly surprised. Check out his blog for further discussion on the issue, rebuttals to criticism he's received, and people who he thinks can help explain the issue better than him.

Cheap Blogging Crutch 07.03

The Great American Bubble Machine
Matt Taibbi decides to take a look at Goldman-Sachs and their manipulation of financial crisis' to their advantage, their culpability in creating bubbles, and their governmental influence and manages not to sound like a tinfoil hatted crank. He begins by calling them a "a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money" and the piece has resulted in GS shrieking hysterically at him for daring to point out some obvious facts. Unfortunately Rolling Stone has only put up excerpts from the article, so to see the full body blow he delivers you'll have to buy the magazine. I think it's worth a purchase.

To Critics, New Policy on Terror Looks Old
Charlie Savage of the New York Times takes a look at some of the Obama Administration's embraces of Bush era....let's call them unethical dalliances. The picture painted is not too pretty as many of the policies have now become entrenched methods and have now been legitimized. Some would even go so far as to say all Obama has done is just enact the “liberal, centrist, Democratic version of the construction of these same governing practices.” I think he forgets one important factor: it's OK because a Democrat is doing it. At least I think that's the going rationale for some these days. If you're interested, Savage does an interview with Glenn Greenwald where they point out and discuss all this stuff.

In Tactical Shift, Troops Will Stay and Hold Ground in Afghanistan
Hey what present did you want to receive in celebration of the Nation's impending 233rd birthday? If it was a major increase of ground forces in Afghanistan and an escalation in combat in a concerted effort to knock the Taliban out of the country, then you're in luck. This is all part of President Obama's larger body of work entitled "Doing things that were supposed to have been done eight years ago". It's a work of art that will be on display around this country for at least until January of 2013.

This Post Brought to You by Poker
Wonkish statistics molester Nate Silver has decided to put his robot brain to work mathematically analyzing the game of poker and using it to slay the competition at the World Series of Poker. It's ostensibly "research" for a "book", but papa needs money and he's got a gambling itch to scratch. He also discusses the UIGEA law that helped the rise of online poker and efforts to legalize (and tax) online poker. But we'll have to wait for what we're all interested in: video of Silver dominating the competition as he tries to understand the human emotions surrounding "loss" and "anguish".

Lunar Probe Sends First High-Res Images
NASA has sent a probe up to the moon and unlike the Japanese has no plans to smash it into the Sea of Tranquility for shits and giggles. No, they're taking photos, mapping it, and gathering data for America's glorious "safe human return to the moon". That's right moon, we're making you our bitch again...or for the first time depending on various conspiracy theories. In any event this is all part of NASA's new mission to do awesome covers of its old material.

Broken In Brief: Keith Richards coldly adds Michael Jackson’s name to list of musicians he’s outlived

TOP OF A COCONUT TREE—Today representatives for the Rolling Stones announced that, as has been his customary ritual, that nigh-immortal guitarist Keith Richards, 65, added the King of Pop’s name to a list of musicians he had outlived. The entry was made in between fits of laughter, coughing, and intermittent bouts of lucidity.

“We were informed through his handlers and translators that Mr. Richards not only scrawled Jackson’s name in the book but made reference to reports of his death relating to drugs, before making a nearly unintelligible remark about Mr. Jackson being a ‘grotty little week kneed Nancy’,” revealed Stones spokeswoman Theodora Mitchell. “The tome of course is the same leather bound book that Mr. Richards, during a brief bit of sobriety in 1978, discovered was in his possession and evidently turned out to be a diary that he had been writing in for the previous decade. As is customary we are told he inscribed Jackson’s name on the list, which now reaches nearly 40 pages, with a pen he crudely made out of chunks of black tar heroin.”

The list is something Richards started when, during a routine physical for the 1989 Steel Wheels Tour, a physician remarked to the guitarist that his blood legally qualified as a poison, that his physiology resembled some sort of hybrid between a undead zombie and a piece of beef jerky, and that casual estimates put the number of times Mr. Richards should have died in the “low thousands.” It was at this point that Richards created the list as a defiant means of marking his ability to survive decades of fame, money, and constant intoxication inside the music industry and chart his progress as what he called “God’s perfect specimen.”

Sources close to Mr. Richards note that after putting Jackson’s name down he went back to sleep, but not before asking his staff to send a snide bouquet to the funeral and asking his assistant to remind him to send a note to Amy Winehouse expressing his admiration for her lifestyle.

Cheap Blogging Crutch 06.05

North Korea's Kim Anoints Youngest Son As Heir
Scratch any plans you had of moving to North Korea and running for President after Kim Jong-Il kicks off. Seems they're a little nepotistic in Pyongyang. Shocking. Though given the exponential increase in craziness from Kim Il-Sung to Kim Jong-Il, I wonder how crazy we can expect Kim Jong-Un to be? Might someone be making a go a Caligula's "Craziest Leader" title? We'll have to wait and see.

Earth Gets Billion-Year Life Extension
Just in case you were thinking of scuttling your plans to put your brain in a robot body in a bid for immorality just because the Earth only had a lousy billion more years to go, well you are in luck. Science has given the Earth a full 2.3 billion years of habitability. So get back in the garage and keep tinkering, science says it'll be worth the effort.

U.S. Accidentally Releases List of Nuclear Sites
Whoops! Ever have one of those days when nothing goes right? You burn your toast, catch every red light, get shot down by the pretty girl at the office, you lose your briefcase, and then you accidentally release a confidential list of every nuclear site in the United States? Yeah, that happens to everyone. Especially the nuclear one. Boy is egg gonna be on this guy's face if a nuclear site is attacked by terrorists. He's gonna get ribbed so hard at the water cooler.

Manchester United name Aon Corp as new £80m shirt sponsors
An era come to an end. The government is no longer funding the shirt sponsorship of the world's premier (or at least second best) soccer team. Sadly this kills my dream of getting them to put Ben Bernake's head on the front of their jerseys. Good choice going with another financial services giant, ManU. It worked so well last time.

Miranda Kerr Naked On Rolling Stone For Environment, "Specifically Koalas"
Thank dying koalas and a tragic eucalyptus shortage, for a near nude Miranda Kerr. Though this does raise an important question: exactly how many koalas are you willing to make sure die in order to get Kerr to not strategically cover up her naughty bits? Is it strange that I know the exact number of koalas I'd be willing to murder?

Evgeni Malkin's mother's lucky borscht
Want to know the secret borscht recipe that's fueling Evgeni Malkin to the most points in a playoffs since Gretzky in 93 and the most multi-point games since Lemieux in 92? The PG come through in spades. "1 pound any kind of meat, cubed." Oh Mrs. Malkin, I think I'm in love.

Maverick reformer who took on and reformed the corrupt oil companies in need of reform

At some point we'll stop kicking the McCain-Palin campaign on its way to the ground and settle for dancing on the corpse. I'm still not sure when and where this line is to be drawn, but for now let's just enjoy the following.

ST. PAUL -- Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin began building clout in her state's political circles in part by serving as a director of an independent political group organized by the now embattled Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens...

...Stevens had been helpful to Palin during her run for governor, swooping in with a last moment endorsement. And the two filmed a campaign commercial together to highlight Stevens's endorsement of Palin during the 2006 race.

Video can be seen HERE, courtesy of RollingStone.

Broken In Brief: R&B Artist’s Lyrical Metaphors Deemed "Confusing, Incomprehensible"

MOTOWN--Chart-topping R&B singer Aston Martins is defending himself from allegations that the metaphors for intercourse and love on his new album “Sex Junket” are confusing and incomprehensible. The record has already gone platinum on the strength of the title track, as well as the hits "Foggy Bottom Dune Buggy" and "Scotch Tape on my Cumulus Clouds,"

“I’ve been in this business for near on 30 years and I’ll be damned in anyone can tell me what a ‘duffel full of mocha postcards’ is supposed to represent,” complained Rolling Stone music critic Trent Romes. “Furthermore the references to his ‘arcane chipotle’, the ‘solemn warble of the ibex’ and the incessant allusions to Airwolf are confusing. Where’s all the ‘getting biz-zay’ and obvious penis talk? I don’t even know what he wants to penetrate with what. I still gave it three stars, as is Rolling Stone policy.”

This is an about-face for Martins, who had for years been criticized for the overt and explicit nature of his lyrics. “Suddenly it’s all ‘No, don’t sing Face Fuck You While Your Husband’s at Work, be more discreet and artistic’, then I’m all layered and shit and they hate it,” said Martins during a radio interview today. “I got hip to metaphor and allusion and suddenly they can’t deal. Sometimes I just want to tell a girl she’s the ‘nylon rope on my mortarboard’ or that I want to ‘eat a Denny’s grand slam breakfast in the comment section of her blog’ and now these people want to kill my artistic expression. I don’t know, maybe its back to the more gritty days of 'Shit, I'm Rich' and ‘The Sexual Deviancy Listed In This Song Will Get Me Arrested in the South.’” Martins’ label, Lady Stain Productions, has promised to put a “Martins-to-English” page on his website so the artist can explain the reasoning behind some of the more obscure sexual references.

These Bastards guide to HurriMcCain 08: Finale

She did it folks! Sarah Palin came out to give a speech and neither fell off the stage, cursed a blue streak, or spontaneously combusted. That means the speech was a rousing success! Then there was the sideshow in the stands. The Palin family decided to play a game of pass the baby, handing the kid off to another person in between every shot. Support the neck! Also there were all those great awkward shots of the kid that knocked up their daughter and the awkward interactions he had with the family and the McCains. They seemed so glad his penis shenanigans put him in a position to be there. Happyfamilyhappyfamilyhappyfamily. I hope the kid made sure the check cleared first before he flew down.

Then there was Rudy Giuliani, who strode to the stage and set the Reichstag house on fire. Josh Marshall, quoting Molly Ivins, said he preferred this speech in the original German. I'm not sure I'd even give it the credit of being translated. I'm sure I heard a Dussledorf, hinterland, putsch, and gespuckt in there. Also, Rudy hates the fuck out of community organizers. So do the delegates and Palin. Fuck you Obama and all community organizers, how dare that be the only thing you've ever done!

Mittens gave a bizarre speech labeled by David Brooks on PBS as "borderline insane" about Adam Smith, why the word liberal was a synonym of bad, and seemed to think torture, warrantless arrests, secret trials, and habeas corpus suspension were the ideals this country was founded on. Someone get him a history book. Also Mike Huckabee told a story about veterans who stole desks from children.

The thing that stuck out to me is that they are giving almost zero airtime to any of the alleged policy or plans McCain will theoretically enact if he's elected. The closest they get is saying McCain wants to do something about something. It's all McCain biography and attacks. Want a solution to economic problems? Good luck finding a reference to it, but then again, McCain was a POW and Obama is a liberal. Want a plan to create more jobs? McCain can't raise his arms and Obama wants to tax your air breathing. Want some form of health care coverage? Obama was a fucking community organizer! If you tuned into this wondering what the Republicans want to do the next four years if elected, well they'll get to governing later, they have to talk about McCain and evil liberals first. All you have to do is change out the name Obama and the war and any of these speeches could have been given at any Republican convention since the fifties. There is nothing to distinguish that this party even knows what the major problems facing America in 2008. This is a convention pitched entirely to the base, the 20% of people who still believe in Bush and think the country is on the right track. Good luck on that election strategy.

And for the party that wants to demonize the other as suffering some form of deranged celebrity worship of its candidate, they sure are throwing stones in glass houses. Every speech is taken up by about 80% hero worship of John McCain and exultations of him as the ultimate American, nay God. Over and over and over we are told that we aren't good enough to deserve the honor of his mere presence and that the Presidency should be awarded to McCain as a prize for his meritorious service. They certainly aren't suggesting we should hand the Presidency over to him based on his policies. I'm not sure anyone knows what they are.

Tonight, the finale. John McCain hits the stage. The theme is "Barack Obama was a community organizer!" said in an exasperated and disgusted manner.

Speaker
Tim Pawlenty, Governor and Bridge Destroyer
Ahh, the coveted "I'm the governor of this state, you'll sit there and like what I have to say!" spot. I think his slogan for reelection was "A different kind of embarrassing than Jesse Ventura". No, RNC crowd, this man isn't up there to test the mics, he's giving a speech. At this point I don't think there's any new parts of McCain's biography to read from, so just expect a repeat of the greatest hits. If you see him squinting up there its just that he's trying to convince himself that the McCain/Palin signs say McCain/Pawlenty. No Tim, you're still the governor of Minnesota, deal with it.

Speaker
Senator Sam Brownback
Good thing they got all the crazies out of the way before the final ni.....oh shit Sam Brownback. If you want to see a tense standoff over immigration policy wait till Brownback and Tancredo hit the pre-speech buffet. Rolling Stone once said that this is the man Jesus would vote for and was God's Senator. Apparently Jesus only represents about 3% of the vote in Iowa and doesn't live in any other states. I guess they had to let him speak, lest his God be angered. But really, the last night? I guess too many people pulled out, pretended they were sick, or were indicted.

Nominee for President
Senator John McCain
If this is like any other McCain prepared speech it's going to be horrible. A colossally awful mishmash of obvious reading off a teleprompter, bizarre tonal notes, insincere inflection, weird grins, creepy laughing and creepier smiling, delivered in a voice that would make Joe Lieberman wonder where the energy is. Maybe here is where John will finally lay out some idea of what he actually wants to do with the Presidency. Or he'll just mention that he was a POW and that he's not actually questioning Barack Obama's patriotism when he insinuates he's a traitor. Early ratings estimates show that the first three nights weren't nearly as highly watched as the first three nights of the DNC, so I'm not holding out hopes that nearly 40 million people are going to see John-boy speechify. Maybe that's good. I'm hoping for the sort of uncomfortable comedy that shows up in Ricky Gervais' work. But maybe the kid has a good speech in him. We'll see. God help him if he gets 40 million and bombs.

Bonus drinking game: POW! or whining about the media analysis of the horrible VP pick. You are going to leave a whiskey soaked corpse.

Betcha thought that mountaintop would look a little different

Can you dig it?

Has anyone else seen the stage erected at Invesco for Obama's Cyrus moment this evening? This Acropo-liptic affront to basic decency comes courtesy of RDA Entertainment, the same folks responsible for those tasteful, elegant sets featured on previous Britney Spears tours.

Once the photos were made public, the McCain campaign immediately unloaded a few rounds into the barrel, rolling out such witticisms as "Temple of Obama" and "Barackopolis." To his credit, Obama Chief Strategist David Axelrod returned fire by mocking the McCain campaign for "shooting barbs about the opulence of our convention from the mountaintop in Sedona."

This is what it's come to. The two entrenched oligarchies that rule our political system are locked in a pissing contest over aluminum scaffolding and faux stone columns erected for an event where scalped tickets are going for thousands of dollars. Be sure to unhinge your jaw before receiving this particular brand of populism.

Oh well, at least Obama's convention dais isn't as unsettling as McCain's (pictured below).

Ron Wood decided to sober up after 40 years

Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood enters rehab

Good for him that he's decided to sober up, but that's not why I posted this. I did that to point out two things the news release reports.

1.) Ron Wood is currently cheating on his wife with a woman who wasn't even born when they got married.

2.) Keith Richards (patron saint of sobriety) tried to get Wood into rehab before by....... wielding knives and waving guns in his face as he screamed utter jibberish Keith-ese into his face about rehab, drugs, Johnny Depp and falling out of coconut trees.

I don't care how many decades ago Beggar's Banquet was, I want to be in the Rolling Stones now.