Obama's new plot to infect the minds of our braindead, zombie youth

My confidence in the right wing outrage machine is fading. Sure they had a great week manipulating media anger and getting the Obama Administration to fire an innocent woman for made up reasons, but they're slipping on the little things.

I mean Rush or Glenn Beck should be on this, throwing a hissy fit as we speak. EA Sport put Obama into a video game! OH WON'T THESE SOCIALISTS STOP TRYING TO FORCE THEIR COMMUNISM DOWN OUR THROATS!!!! That's right, when you win the Super Bowl in the upcoming Madden 11, they have an expanded celebration sequence, complete with a digitally awkward Commissioner Goodell, a specialized speech by hyperactive scream machine Gus Johnson, and a team White House trip where digital players shake hands with a digital Obama and hand him a digital jersey, digitally warping the minds of the youth with 1's and 0's about upping the minimum wage, card check, and expanding the social safety net. WHY CAN'T THEY MEET REAGAN?

Virtual Obama greeting Madden 2011 Super Bowl winners @ Yahoo! Video

I'm not sure if this also will take into account the multi-season Franchise Mode. If I take my theoretical Steelers to the 2013 Super Bowl... who will be President then? Will it still be Obama, or has EA also put together a complex political matrix that analyzes candidates real time and slaps in a likely winner? Will digital Hines Ward be shaking hands with President Palin? I must know! Will the 2016 winners shake hands with Uncle Joe, replete with a fifth of whisky in his hand, or will they be shaking hands with a guerrilla leader amid gunfire and pile of tires on fire?

All I know is that a decent and respectably crazy Tea Party movement and Fox News establishment would have already declared this the end of civilization and deemed it a nefarious liberal plot to brainwash kids. Perhaps this is too cutting edge for them. Maybe they have to work their way from the Maypo kid saying something supportive about Woodrow Wilson on a Victrola recording to the Lone Ranger saying something vaguely supportive of the WPA on the radio, before making the jump to video games.

He's in our sporting video games.

Tragedy

As Michele Bachmann explained to us yesterday, we are in the midst of a crisis. A large corporation is being held to account for the things it has done. The scandal! The shame of it all. But lest we dismiss her fevered rantings as some outlier in the GOP, the rest of her cohorts took to the streets to drum up support for BP and the horribly onerous conditions that they've been put in.

Rep. Joe Barton of Texas ('natch) took time out of a public hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee to apologize directly to the executives at BP. How sweet of the man.

BARTON:I’m ashamed of what happened in the White House yesterday. I think it is a tragedy of the first proportion that a private corporation can be subjected to what I would characterize as a shakedown, in this case a $20 billion shakedown
...
I apologize, I do not want to live in a country where anytime a citizen or a corporation does something that is legitimately wrong is subject to some sort of political pressure that is again in my words amounts to a shakedown. So I apologize.

Yes, how dare they be forced to set aside funds to pay for cleanup and to help offset the possible irreparable harm they've caused to the marine economy of the Gulf Coast. What an outrage.

Not able to leave Bachmann and Barton out on their offshore shilling rig, Alabama Governor Haley Barbour took time out of his busy schedule of taking oil money and denying that oil spills were a problem or that the oil was even hitting his shores to dance for oil nickels.

BARBOUR:I do worry that this idea of making them make a huge escrow fund is going to make it less likely that they’ll pay for everything. They need their capital to drill wells. They need their capital to produce income.

That's right, BP setting aside $20 billion to pay for damages will somehow make it less likely that they'll pay for the damage. Actually, I'm fairly sure that it means they'll be paying $20 billion at a minimum. But no worries, the greater risk is that by setting aside this money to help everyone whose lives they've ruined, that this will make it harder for them to open more rigs and make more money. Christ, I'm tearing up here. poor BP. Why haven't we thought about their ability to make a profit curing this crisis? We're monsters!

Oh, they are making rather large profits even given the costs of the cleanup? Well... they could be making more.

In fact Barbour, Barton, and Bachmann are all just reading off a common script that has arisen in the right wing media over the past few days: namely that this is unconscionable that BP is being held responsible, it is unconscionable that they're being demonized and blamed for actions they caused, and that somehow our Muslim President Hussein Obama X is going to use this independent fund as a "slush fund" to... something something socialism ooga booga liberals. Somehow paying out claims becomes bribery and that's if the black President doesn't steal the money and stash it away with Fannie Mae and ACORN to... I don't know... build a time machine and go back and make white people the slaves, abolish freedom, and rape Ben Franklin.

Why defend a widely loathed corporate entity in the most tin earned manner possible? Because after decades of conservatives fighting for the rights of corporations to do whatever whenever with no repercussions, BP has done the unforgivable: admitted responsibility for a mistake and made some attempt to make it right. We went through an entire economic collapse without the responsible parties even so much as saying "Whoops". If this continues, other corporations might have to issues apologies, *gasp* pay to fix problems they created, and the unfettered right of business to be allowed to do anything to make a buck might be challenged. So thus the attempt at restitution and the government has to be made to seem worse than BP the giant Gulf of Oil they've created.

Funny how it always seems to work out like that.

Video of the day

Rachel Maddow on fake outrage and out an out lying by conservative media misinformation, most recently personified in Climategate and the ACORN/Pimp scandal, the latter of which is taken down further by her here.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

It kind of makes you wish Rachel was allowed to drop a full on "bullshit" during the piece. You know she wanted to. Yeah, she does pretty much have the best news commentary show on TV. But it could use some swearing.

(via Bad Astronomy)

Stay classy, Eric and the rest of the GOP

As Sean referenced in his post yesterday, the dead-enders of the teabagging spectrum of American politics are not taking the prospect of cheaper, more accessible health care well. In no small part egged on by the litany of right wing commentators and politicians calling majority enacting of broadly popular legislation tyranny, the end of civilization, the end of America, Armageddon, and calling for revolution or at least an armed insurrection, there has been an uptick in violence towards Democratic lawmakers who voted for the bill. Everything from bricks through windows, to phoned in death threats, to faxing nooses to lawmakers, to cutting the gas lines of the brother of Congressman Perriello, to mailing white powder to Anthony Weiner, it's really a cavalcade of dangerous low level right wing terrorism by petulant children. Catalog the ongoing stupidity at TPM.

And so the response from Democrats has been to condemn the attacks and ask that Republicans maybe tone down the insanity juuust a few notches, maybe stop the calls for a new American revolution, and downgrade the danger to society from complete apocalypse to minor Armageddon. So in turn John Boenher went out and released a statement affirming that bad things were bad and good things were good, but wanted you to understand that he knew bad things were bad. Thus the response from Democrats was "Uhhh... Ok" and they knew in their hearts that this was as much of an apology as they were going to get.

But apparently some memo has been going around the halls of Congress and the GOP has decided that they aren't coming across as big enough assholes during this run of violence, so Eric Cantor immediately followed up Boehner's vague speech with one placing the blame on where it truly lied: with Democrats.

"I've never blamed anyone in this body for that. Period. Any suggestion that a leader in this body that would incite threats or acts against other members is akin to saying that I would endanger myself, my wife or my children."

Cantor said a bullet was shot through the window of his Richmond, Va., campaign office this week, and that he's gotten threatening emails.
...
"It is reckless to use these incidents as media vehicles for political gain," he said. He called out DCCC Chair Chris Van Hollen and DNC Chair Tim Kaine by name as those who are "dangerously fanning the flames by suggesting that these incidents be used as a political weapon."

"To use such threats against members of congress is not a partisan issue," he said. "By ratcheting up the rhetoric some will only inflame these situations to dangerous levels."

There's video, so you can see that he actually said that with a straight face. Yes, it is not the people who are calling for revolution and heralding the end of all things that are to blame for violence, it's people who point out that the violence is politically motivated after the fact that are clearly to blame. And he's been subject to violence too! Not that he would ever stoop to politicizing it by politicizing it in a political speech about politicizing violence. Sure, police called bullshit on his claims and said that his "bullet attack" was just random and the result of a bullet, fired into the air, randomly coming down and striking his office. Don't you see how that's worse? Gravity is attacking Eric Cantor!

Soon, other Republicans were taking Cantor's ideas to heart and were out in full force blaming Democrats for this. Reps Price and Bachmann hit the airwaves to decry Democratic politicization of right wing fueled attacks. In the case of Tom Perriello, where a Tea Party activist deliberately posted up the address of Perriello's brother and told fellow teabaggers to "drop by", thinking it was Rep Perriello's house, and then, magically, a gas line got cut, the NRCC not only downplayed the violence but excused it and claimed that the real victims were those in Periello's district who would be harmed by cheaper health care. It should be noted that Periello's brother has a wife and 4 small children.

Way to keep it classy, GOP. I thought there wasn't a lower place you could go, but the inciting of violence and then tacitly endorsing it and excusing it when it happens, only stopping to blame victims, was something I didn't see coming. It was my mistake for thinking some shred of human decency existed when things like gas lines being cut, children being endangers, and anthrax threats were being made and you'd have some sort of discernibly human reaction. Guess not. Whatever, keep calling for revolution, uprisings, and coded statements about "showing lawmakers the will of the people... wink wink", I'm sure it has no connection to any of these attacks. Keep it classy. Maybe there will be an actual death soon for you to blame on the victim.

Americans are an ungrateful people

On the same day he handed over 32 million new customers to the health care and insurance industries, Barry gets hit with this new Harris poll. We, however, get to be entertained by statistical irrelevance birthed by suggestive phrasing and innuendo. Seriously, this is some amazing shit, even for an obvious push poll. According to this poll, 57% of Republicans believe that Barack Obama is a Muslim.

Sure. As evidenced by his long-standing relationship with the Trinity United Church of Christ and its campaign manager's dream of a former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, not to mention the extremely public retelling of his journey to Christianity.

Also found in the poll:

• 67% of Republicans believe that Obama is a socialist.
• 62% of Republicans believe that Fruit Punch is a gay boxer.
• 45% of Republicans believe that Obama was "not born in the United States."
• 77% of Republicans believe that "Lost" will sort itself out by season's end.
• 38% of Republicans believe that Obama is "doing many things Hitler did."
• 51% of Republicans believe that John Boehner's skin tone is natural.
• 24% of Republicans believe that Obama "may be the antiChrist."
• 83% of Republicans believe that Greedo shot first.

How we love you, Harris Polling. You make Louie Gohmert look like a fucking constitutional law scholar.

Compare/Contrast

Via Matthew Yglesias comes these first two little nuggets.

The founding principles of the Conservative Party of Canada, who just so happen to rule America's Hat:

A belief that all Canadians should have reasonable access to quality health care regardless of their ability to pay;

The policy agenda of the the Conservative Party in the United Kingdom, who is soon going to rule in Brittania:

Over three years ago David Cameron spelled out his priorities in three letters – NHS. Since then, we have consistently fought to protect the values the NHS stands for and have campaigned to defend the NHS from Labour’s cuts and reorganisations.

As the party of the NHS, we will never change the idea at the heart of our NHS – that healthcare in this country is free at the point of use and available to everyone based on need, not ability to pay.

And from the Republican Party's House Minority John Boehner comes the GOP's governing principles:

With the stroke of a pen, President Obama has signed away another share of Americans' freedom. We will take it back.

The US got hosed when God was doling out conservatives to all the countries.

Eat it, Jefferson. Eat it hard.

Last week we congratulated Texas for sending Don McElroy, the man who was spearheading Texas' efforts to use school textbooks as a means to rewrite history with a right wing christian conservative bent, packing in a primary contest. But we added in the caveat that the man still had several months left on his term and the board still had a christian conservative bent, so there was still time for them to do some damage. And boy did they ever decide to use the time they had left.

Among the changes made include:

removing a reference to “sex and gender as social constructs” in order to avoid exposing students to “transvestites, transsexuals and who knows what else”, refused to require that students learn the Constitution prevents the U.S. government from promoting one religion over all others, added references to "laws of nature and nature's God" in sections about major political ideas, made the second amendment the only relevant idea in the Bill of Rights, considered it important to learn about "the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s, including Phyllis Schlafly, the Contract With America, the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority and the National Rifle Association", students now learn about the "violent philosophy of the Black Panthers" to counterbalance the nonviolence platform of MLK, tries to excuse the inherent racism of Japanese internment, added apologetics for McCarthyism and the McCarthy hearings because I guess that whole period wasn't all bad, made it so that Hispanics don't exist inside of US history, added ominous references to the "unintended consequences" of of the Great Society legislation, affirmative action and Title IX, removed the word "capitalism" because it has a "negative connotation", and knocked Thomas Jefferson out of the required curriculum and the Enlightenment... mostly because he coined the phrase “separation between church and state”. It also didn't help that he was a paleontologist.

So America is a Christian nation whose founders gave no thought to anything other than Biblical law ruling the land, whites did everything, McCarthyism and internment weren't so bad, and Thomas Jefferson isn't important to US history but Phyllis Schlafly is. Let's let Donny boy explain himself.

“We are adding balance,” said Dr. Don McLeroy, the leader of the conservative faction on the board, after the vote. “History has already been skewed. Academia is skewed too far to the left.”

Yes, reality does have a well known liberal bias. What's one of the non-crazy board members think?

Mary Helen Berlanga, [stormed] out of a meeting late Thursday night, saying, “They can just pretend this is a white America and Hispanics don’t exist.”

Yes they can.

“They are going overboard, they are not experts, they are not historians,” she said. “They are rewriting history, not only of Texas but of the United States and the world.”

Yeah, but if you rewrite history, then it becomes history! See how it works? Ah well, who needed to learn about Thomas Jefferson anyway? If he was important he would have had a bigger role in HBO's John Adams mini-series.

A round of applause for Texas' contributions to education, culture, and knowledge. It's not enough that our culture, media, entertainment, government, politicians, and news work to dumb this country down, now we have to go into books in an attempt to more proactively dumb our kids down. I'm sure it's all for the best, who learns anything from history anyway?

Cheap Blogging Crutch 03.12

Waterboarding for dummies
We all know that waterboarding was like a gentle dunk into a lavender and lemon scented bath. Not only that, but Guantanamo is literally like a day spa. But some people, like those who read internal documents outlining our nation's waterboarding practices, want to claim that the procedure was brutal, involved the special design of torture tools, and a liquid diet so that the detainees would not choke to death on their own vomit and lose consciousness. They also devised the use of a special saline solution to drown people with, because the volume of water being forced down the brown people's throats was so great that they were in danger of ultra-rare hyponatremia. You know, frat house prank stuff. Stick out that chest with pride America, it was all done in your name to little discernible benefit.

Nebraska Prenatal Bill Stirs Fight Over Immigration
The typical sarcastic jibe towards pro-lifers is that "life begins at conception and ends at birth", noting how many right wing "life" advocates try to fuck those kids medically, socially, economically, and politically the second they are born. But in Nebraska we're seeing another new strain of pro-life advocacy: the fetus is a life... unless it's a Mexican one, then who gives a fuck? It's part of the Nebraska legislatures new attempt to deny prenatal care to poor, pregnant immigrants. Seriously. I guess it's biblically valid, Jesus weren't no Mexicano.

Did Focus On The Family Board Force Dobson Out?
James Dobson has been pushed aside by Focus on the Family. He founded the organization in 1977 as a vehicle to explain to Americans how gays were causing earthquakes and tornadoes, and has now been removed from the chairmanship of the group and forced to give up his radio show. The reason is presumably that the board doesn't want their organization to bee seen as hatefully crazy and that some have even broached the idea that people who don't vote Republican might be legitimate humans. So they're attempting to modernize and court Democrats. Yeah, I just shuddered at that last sentence too. Anyway, they point is that James Dobson is out of work. So if you happen to have some gays in your neighborhood that need shouted at or some sluts that need shamed... you could do worse. Give him a call.

Church Abuse Scandals 'Creeping Ever Closer' To The Pope
For those of you who like watching the Catholic Church collapse under the wight of it's own crimes, cover-ups, and inability to actually follow the teachings of that beard guy with the holes in his hands, you might want to take note at the recent goings on at the Vatican with Pope Versace I. Yes yes, gay prostitution scandal, but must you focus on the tawdry? There's an actual physical abuse scandal... that involves the Pope's brother. Okay, there's allegations of sexual abuse too, but the man has already admitted the physical abuse charges. At least they're branching out, keeping things fresh.

Health Care Close After Democrats, White House Meet
Are you ready to get your hopes up one last time? It seems that House Democrats, Senate Democrats, and the White House are thiiiiiiis close to hashing out a compromise to get the fuck over themselves and pass a goddamned health care reform bill. Again. You'll note that this is totally different from the last time they all announced they were thiiiis close to hashing out a compromise and that they were going to move on health care soon. And it'll probably lead to another situation where they announced that they have moved even closer to hashing out a compromise to pass a reform bill. If only they had the same conviction for voting on a health care bill as they had for announcing that they were close to voting on a bill, well, we'd have a bill passed. But don't worry, they're getting to it. They promise. Just a few more months. They're close.

A pat on the head for Texas

It's easy to deride Texas, they give us so much material. Whether it's their constant promotion and encouragement of institutionalized ignorance, their governor's low level insanity and penchant for using his office as a platform to execute innocent men and pander to teabaggers, or Colt McCoy getting injured and Alabama molesting the Longhorns on national TV, the state is funny. 'Trainwreck'/'finding humor in the horror' funny, but funny.

But when the state manages to do something good, it is our duty to point it out and praise them for it. You remember Don McElroy, right? He's the man that was spearheading the effort to rewrite Texas' textbooks to not only espouse unscientific creationist nonsense, but rewrite history book as some sort of conservative/Republican promotional tool and elevate Reagan and Jerry Falwell somewhere above George Washington and Thomas Jefferson in American historical importance. This essentially meant that textbooks would be rewritten for dozens of states. Well, he's going to have to look for a job.

Social conservatives on the State Board of Education suffered a setback with the primary loss of former board chairman Don McLeroy, but the group still aims to have its say on setting new curriculum standards.

Mount Pleasant Republican Thomas Ratliff edged out McLeroy in the GOP primary Tuesday for the board seat...Ratliff's campaign was based in part on reducing the influence of the board's social conservative bloc.
...
Ratliff, who got 50.5 percent of the vote, said his long-term goal is to help move the board back to a strong focus on education and remove politics from the process.

Good luck with that. Congrats Texas, you've moved one step away from what we all thought your societal future was: loinclothed, ten gallon hat wearing cavemen shrieking at the sun for cursing the cattle with ill omens.

We aren't going to thank you too hard, Ratliff won by 50.5%, McElroy still has seven fucking months to damage the brains of children, and let's not discount all the damage he's already done, but it seems you are dimly aware of the predicament you are putting yourselves into.

So, mild congratulations abounds.

Shamu and God

God is an angry wizard, that much is certain. When we anger him he casts down judgment in the form of unspeakable horrors. Category Five hurricanes because of the gays. Terrorist attacks because of the gays. Giant country destroying earthquakes because of the blacks making a pact with the devil. Also: probably a little about the gays.

And how do we know this? Well 15 minutes after it happens some helpful thumper of a bible, usually Pat Robertson, comes out and tells us so... and, if you wouldn't mind, asks for a donation. Now as our most amusing, leaping sea creatures rise up against us instead of entertaining the whole family, we can only ask one thing: what have the gays done this time? Oh enlighten us, American Family Association.

Chalk another death up to animal rights insanity and to the ongoing failure of the West to take counsel on practical matters from the Scripture. [...] Says the ancient civil code of Israel, “When an ox gores a man or woman to death, the ox shall be stoned, and its flesh shall not be eaten, but the owner shall not be liable.” (Exodus 21:28) So, your animal kills somebody, your moral responsibility is to put that animal to death. You have no moral culpability in the death, because you didn’t know the animal was going to go postal on somebody. But, the Scripture soberly warns, if one of your animals kills a second time because you didn’t kill it after it claimed its first human victim, this time you die right along with your animal. To use the example from Exodus, if your ox kills a second time, “the ox shall be stoned, and its owner also shall be put to death.” (Exodus 21:29)

You're off the hook, gays. Shamu went nuts because Sea World doesn't properly follow Exodus in it's animal handling guidelines.... among other basic safety issues it doesn't follow. For some reason the Sea World Corporation are also against killing their own handlers as punishment. And so God has cursed them yet again. The Bible is an informative How-To guide, not just spiritually, but in the running of your amusement park.

But I think it's too pat an answer to blame the Christian God for his hand in orca related deaths. Smiting Haiti and New Orleans? Of course, that makes sense. But I think we can squarely put the blame for this one on Neptune. We have stolen His sea creatures from His oceans, and he is slowly taking his revenge by killing marine biologists one by one. Or perhaps the Snorks are behind it, I don't know. All I know is that God doesn't usually wet his beak in this penny ante death stuff. God plays big, bets big, wins big.

So just in case you forgot, the AFA would like to remind you: God is responsible for everything horrible that makes the news. Doesn't that just make you want to rush out and find religion?

Stay classy, Stevesy

Steve King (R-IA), sometimes know as the House GOP's other crazy congressman named King, hates his ass some IRS. And who could disagree with him. I mean they just take our money and give it to the government to spend on things like roads, defense, and other such things a government does. Who came up with this idea? The IRS sucks! Also the DMV is slow and why can't the airlines give us a bigger bag of peanuts, amirite?

But considering that whole thing where a fringe lunatic rammed his airplane into an IRS building in a bloody, fiery explosion of short-sighted, petty, and murderous spite, you'd think that maybe a certain IRS hating congressman would want to tone down his rhetoric just a tad. Well, that's why you don't have the smarts to get elected in Iowa's 5th District.

KING: I think if we’d abolished the IRS back when I first advocated it, he wouldn’t have a target for his airplane. ... It’s sad the incident in Texas happened, but by the same token, it’s an agency that is unnecessary and when the day comes when that is over and we abolish the IRS, it’s going to be a happy day for America.

TP: So some of his grievances were legitimate?

KING: I don’t know if his grievances were legitimate, I’ve read part of the material. I can tell you I’ve been audited by the IRS and I’ve had the sense of ‘why is the IRS in my kitchen.’ Why do they have their thumb in the middle of my back.

It's sad and all, but he sympathizes with a terrorist. The IRS, who do they think they are investigating discrepancies in tax filings?

But while someone might think that saying something like that while bodies and a building are still smoldering is a touch indelicate, isn't smart, and that staffers somewhere would be imminently yelling at their boss to just shut the fuck up already, well, again, that's why he's in the House and you're sitting there in your house.

During his closing remarks [at CPAC], King veered into a complaint about high taxes, and said he could "empathize" with the man who flew a plane into an IRS building last week.

During the question and answer session, the Media Matters staffer asked King to clarify his comment, reminding him of his sworn duty to protect the American people from all sworn enemies, foreign and domestic. In response, said the staffer, King gave a long and convoluted answer about having been personally audited by the IRS, and ended by saying he intended to hold a fundraiser to help people "implode" their local IRS office.

Don't you understand that this man was audited! Audited! A US Congressman, one of the most honest subset of people of earth. On earth! That's why we need to implode the IRS. Implode, which I'll note is a totally classy suggestion and not at all as offensive as using the word explode.

So congrats to Iowa's Steve King. You took a right wing terrorist attack against the government that resulted in dead Americans and tried to spin it into right wing street cred by repeatedly announcing your empathy for a terrorist, announcing how you sympathized with his motives (I still can't get over the fucking gall of that audit), and noting how you wanted to organize citizens to take further action against the IRS, though probably not with airplane attacks. How nicely offensive of you. The IRS sucks, don't let any terrorist attack, basic human decency, tact, or common sense momentarily sway you from that crusade. Stay classy.

You gotta pay to teabag

My fellow teabaggers, I have news on the groups of people who have attempted to steal our moniker in the service of politics; the tea party teabaggers. I know we were all pissed off that they took our testicle related thing and named their movement after it, but we have to put that behind us. They're in trouble and they're not sure what to do.

In the latest sign of rancor in Tea Party circles, a convention billed as an effort to bring together conservative activists from across the country is being attacked by some leading Tea Partiers as inauthentic, too tied to the GOP, and -- at $549 per head -- too expensive for the working Americans the movement aspires to represent.
...
Tea Party Patriots, which helped put together a September rally that drew tens of thousands to Washington, view the confab -- which is being held at Nashville's swank Opryland Gaylord hotel -- as the "usurpation of a grassroots movement," according to Mark Meckler, a leader of the group. "Most people in our movement can't afford anything like that," Meckler told TPMmuckraker, referring to the price tag. "So it's really not aimed at the average grassroots person."
...
"The Tea Party Movement is about to be hijacked," wrote one activist in an online comment recently.

Consternations! When did the tea party movement stop being about not understanding what the hell they were protesting, misspelled placards, and inarticulate insanity. Who could have ever foreseen that a movement that had already been hijacked by corporations in order to promote corporate goals, would further be hijacked in order to suck the last remaining dimes out of the true believers?

But why the exorbitant price to wave teabags around? Well, when you have to pay the giants of reactionary, ill-informed stupidity, Michelle Bachmann and Sarah Palin, upwards of $100,000 a piece to come speak, the value of such an endeavor has to be passed on to the peasants. But it's worth it. They're getting the premiere clueless conservative harpy tag team of the age. This is like getting to see the Hart Foundation in their prime taking apart some helpless jobbers on a Saturday morning. Only with more teabags and birth certificate conspiracies and less turnbuckle work. Same amount of pink though.

I just feel sorry for he true believers who are being shut out. I'll just take solace in the fact that they didn't understand that they while they were protesting against invisible tax increases they had received tax cuts, that they didn't understand economics or the bailouts, that they didn't understand health care, they didn't understand the facts surrounding the birth of our current President, and that they didn't understand what the word "teabagging" meant to the rest of the country, so they probably won't fully understand what's going on now. I'll just point out that corporations and leaders can't hijack something they already fully owned, advise them to run any name they might choose for a new splinter group through the urban dictionary, and leave it at that.

Republicans, we have found your teabag king

With Sarah Palin roaming the countryside promoting her book in a hellstorm of lies, ignorant policy statements, lies, softball interviews, lies, and petty gamesmanship, we are left with no doubt that she is the charming dainty Queen of the Grand Duchy of Teabaggery. Ahh, but who will rule alongside her in political irrelevance? Many suitors have tried to claim the crown, but few have succeeded, letting the taint of rationality and moderation scuttle their ascension. Thankfully, Doug Hoffman has stepped up to the plate.

Oh, you thought he went away when his carpetbagging maelstrom of teabagging wisdom and local ignorance cause the people of NY-23 to elect the first Democrat there since whites owned blacks? Nope! On the advice of Glenn Beck (bonus points~!), Hoffman has not only unconceded the race he already lost and for which the winner, Bill Owns, has already been sworn in for and is casting votes in the House for, but has unveiled a conspiracy so deep and so nefarious that it will no doubt shake the very core of teabagger society.

“As evidence surfaces, we find out that reported results from election night were far from accurate. ACORN and the unions did their best to try and sway the results to Obamacare supporter Bill Owens," Hoffman wrote on his campaign site. "Rest assured, they will not succeed, and I am therefore revoking my statement of concession.”
...
"The people of NY-23 deserve to have their ballots counted properly, but we can't let ACORN or the unions keep that from happening. They have more lawyers and more experience tampering with democracy," he wrote.

"We need to make sure that fair elections are a reality in NY-23, just like our Founding Fathers envisioned. So long as we remain the "land of the free," we MUST ensure every vote is counted. Help us today so we may be the first of many conservative victories during the Obama Regime."

Dougy, Dougy, Dougy, aren't we forgetting the black hand of...well.....blacks, illegal immigrants and abortion doctors that helped steal this election from your deserving hands? Surely ACORN and labor unions alone couldn't derail this Hoffman juggernaut, could it? No, it was a conspiracy. ACORN has even gotten to Oswego County GOP Chairman George Williams and made him deny the truth. To the beverage aisle of your local supermarket, teabaggers! Your new king is going to need a lot of visible tea bag support and birth certificate analysis. Good luck. Expose this fraud for what it is.

Stay classy, Jerome

We aren't even 24 hours past the Ft. Hood shooting, but we do know it's time for one thing: EXPLOITING IT FOR POLITICAL GAIN!!!! MORE BODIES = MORE EXPLOITATION!!! Take it, Jerome Corsi, you souless fucking degenerate:

Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the alleged shooter in yesterday's massacre at Fort Hood, played a homeland security advisory role in President Barack Obama's transition into the White House, according to a key university policy institute document.

Of course it isn't remotely true, but who has time for bodies to get cold when there is shit to sling at Obama! Whooo!!! The first decency line has been breached folks, it's only downhill from here.

Now personally, I would have prescribed a two day waiting period for crazed conspiracy theories that attempt to appropriate gross personal and public tragedies for a perceived leg up in some unending political dick measuring contest that has consumed politics in this country. Not because of any mourning period or sense of respect for the families of the dead, no because this baby is so rife with angles of cheap political exploitation, we want everyone to have their good material ready to go for the Sunday Morning news programs. I mean there's the Muslim angle, the military angle, the pro-war angle, the anti-war angle, the gun control angle, the terrorism angle, and the disgusting, Corsi-esque new lows in human decency that we've yet to explore. I mean anyone from the right or left will have a field day waving these corpses around to justify whatever it is they believed before the shooting happened. Awesome!

I think I'm going to go sit in my closet and drink for this entire weekend. Maybe when I emerge we'll be fully into the "He was in ACORN and taking the orders of Obama in order to kill freedom and pass socialist Obamacare" phase and this will all seem slightly less soul killing.

The Bible (Expurgated version)

Have you ever picked up your Bible (the one you have steadying a wobbly end table or the one you're hiding your rock hammer in) and just thought to yourself "Christ almighty, this Christ almighty guy won't stop with the liberal bullshit!"? You aren't alone, the folks at Conservapedia think so too.

Liberal bias has become the single biggest distortion in modern Bible translations.
...
As of 2009, there is no fully conservative translation of the Bible which satisfies the following ten guidelines
1. Framework against Liberal Bias: providing a strong framework that enables a thought-for-thought translation without corruption by liberal bias
2. Not Emasculated: avoiding unisex, "gender inclusive" language, and other modern emasculation of Christianity
...
4.Utilize Powerful Conservative Terms
...
7. Express Free Market Parables; explaining the numerous economic parables with their full free-market meaning
...
10. Prefer Conciseness over Liberal Wordiness
...
Socialistic terminology permeates English translations of the Bible, without justification. This improperly encourages the "social justice" movement among Christians.

*stands up and applauds* Truly this is the final stupid culmination of the meshing of evangelicals with right wing Republicans. God is too much of a liberal socialist pussy for them, so they must "edit" Him.

Now far be it from me to criticize selective belief of the Bible. I was raised Catholic and we are notorious pickers and choosers of our faith. As part of my belief system I have chosen not to follow the parts of the Bible where the words are put onto paper and then bound in between a front cover and a back cover. But if the holy Jeebus has failed you as a Conservative icon, why not just worship a new deity? May I suggest money and Reagan. Hell, they already tell plenty of horseshit stories about Dutch ending communism, just add in a leper getting healed, trickle down economics working, and one where Ronnie casts Jimmy Carter from the temple.

It just seems to me that would be easier than trying to hammer a 2000 year old text into conforming with whatever it is the far right believes in this week.

Quote of the day

Today it's a lovely little ditty from the Values Voter Summit, in which the Young America Foundation's Jason Mattera decides to take it upon himself to trenchantly sum up the sheer intellectual weight associated with the last decade or so of Republican party policy and politics:

If conservatives (David) smite liberals (Goliath), they will be rewarded with the hot conservative women, just like King Saul promised his daughter to the warrior who slew the evil giant. “You know his daughter must have been beautiful because there’s no guy whose gonna die for an ugly girl,” Mattera chortled. “Our women are hot. We have Michelle Malkin. Who does the left have, Rachel Maddow? Sorry, I prefer that my women not look like dudes.”

Well, I'd check that Adam's apple on Ann Coutler before I get too excited there Skippy. Still, I must say I do applaud Mr. Mattera. I've been trying for years to combine tit ogling, the Bible, and the implication that the yelling lady on the TV is thiiiiiiiis close to banging me and all my like minded friends for our services to the movement into a serious argument for my beliefs. Just haven't been able to cobble it together.

Quote of the weekend

Former Miss California Carrie "Jesus wanted me to get these implants" Prejean, vying to become the third most influential Republican behind Joe the Plumber and Sarah Palin, on how large of a golden house God is going to give her for hating fags harder than any beauty queen had ever attempted to do during a beauty pageant.

"Even though I didn't win the crown that night," said Prejean, while pausing to fight back tears, "I know that the Lord has so much of a bigger crown in heaven for me." "God chose me for that moment because he knew that not only would I be the one to stand up for him and for the truth, but because he knew I was strong enough to get through all the junk that I've been through," said Prejean. "I feel as if I'm Miss Universe."

You aren't Miss Universe. That's a separate crown where the organizers also would have been horrified at your "God sez so" opinion on "opposite marriage." But you are set up quite well to vie for the crown in an even more degrading, emotionally crippling beauty pageant: the 2012 Republican Presidential Primary. You keep flogging that anti-gay, "free speech means everyone has to reward me for saying something repellent", dishonest, Bible thumping, ego mania and you might just vault Michelle Bachmann into the VP slot on Sarah Palin's White House run.

Meme of the day

Ahh Tumblr, you have brought forth another useful creation. While it's no Fuck Yeah Sharks, new site Look At This Fucking Teabagger does provide a nice repository of all the funny (in a frightening way) teabagger photos, placards, and video interviews (such as the one above my Max Blumenthal) from their various protests. REAL AMURACANS! Gawk! Recoil in horror!

Weekend reading assignment

In Wal-Mart's Image
Harold Meyerson of the American Prospect looks into the almost Dickensian beginnings of the Wal-Mart empire and how it ties together with how retail business operates within the US economy and our financial collapse through a review of two new books on the subject.

Shotgun Adoption
Kathryn Joyce of the Nation takes a look at the Christian right's community of crisis pregnancy centers and their ties to the Christian right's adoption agencies and finds an almost 'baby mill' type environment filled with lies, coercion, near brainwashing, and mental abuse towards the pregnant women who partake of their services in an attempt to shepherd newborns for large adoption fees. Heartwarming stuff.

An Insider’s Guide to the Large Hadron Collider
Wired Science provides excerpts from the new book Collider by Paul Halpern, a book which looks at the creation and running of the LHC as well as the theory, mechanics, and science of the experimental high-energy physics going on in it. In it are detailed diagrams on how they plan to use the LHC to capture and kill God by opening up a black hole and devouring the Solar System, as well as pictures of the gravestone they had made up for our Creator.

Homeland Security Marked By Waste, Lack of Oversight
I know I'm going to shock you here, but it turns out that not only did Mayberry and Hooterville not need all that money to protect the Sorghum Festival from al Qaeda, but it turns out that the money they did get they wasted. At least that's the conclusion of G.W. Schultz and the Center for Investigative Reporting. I don't know, maybe lawnmowers, big screen TV's, and boxed up, never used security equipment are useful in scaring away Osama.

Heads up

In case you were wondering what the new crazy conspiracy theory the Hannity's and Beck's of the world would harp on next, well you're in for a treat as they've both started to ramp up on their new outrage: Obama's maddening and assuredly illegal use of Senate confirmed advisers that are called 'czars' that he totally invented as a way to steal precious freedom sauce out of the hearts of bald eagles everywhere and reign his liberal tyranny down on the God fearing people of America, one brutal command at a time.

Fox News personality Sean Hannity was one of the rally’s keynote speakers, and he took the opportunity to gloat about Van Jones’ resignation. He vowed to the audience that he would get rid of “every other one” of Obama’s so-called czars:

HANNITY: Do you want another czar?

CROWD: No!

HANNITY: I don’t think so. By the way, we got rid of one, and my job starting tomorrow night is to get rid of every other one. I promise you that!

Yes, yes, let me soak in the crazy. There is no greater outrage currently going on right now than the use of advisers and liaisons to specifically address and oversee specific issues, like drugs or border security or intelligence co-operation, within various large governmental organizations. Why? Because they're called 'czars' and that's a Russian term! Nazis! Unaccountable evil despots!

God bless your crazy little hearts, talk radio. I just love your ability to take something that has been a practice since Nixon and not only blame Obama for it, but claim that it's a shadow government undermining democracy. Now to most people this would be easily mocked lunacy. But then again, you aren't a Congressional GOP member. See, if you're Jack "The emergency room is all the health care the peasants need" Kingston or Dr. Michelle Bachmann (scientist) this is a cause that needs immediate legislative action. So in case you were wondering what the next inane rash of bullshit that will plague your airwaves at the expense of real information or real issues....here you are. It's czars. Enjoy.