Category: Stupid

2 January 2013, 7:47 PM

My Heart So Doesn’t Break For John Boehner

I understand where he is coming from on Hurricane Sandy.

The Teabagger part of his caucus sees New York as nothing but n***ers, k*kes, and f***ots, and he did not want to try to pass a bill sending New York any money before he is reelected , because he has a whole sh%$-mess of folks who think that aid to a storm ravaged New York is aid to the enemy.

So, he decided not to bring up any sort of aid for the damage Sandy this session.

Bad move, dude.

He ignited a bipartisan sh%$-storm.

Republican stalwart, and supporter of lightly complected terrorists Peter King went on TV and suggested that people from the area should stop making political contributions to Republicans.

And then New Jersey Governor Chris “Does Not Play Well With Others” Christie said that Boehner had lied to him about the bill being on the agenda and that he refused to take his calls, and that Boehner’s chief rival, Eric Cantor, had tried to help on this.

So Boehner caved, and there will be a vote on Sandy relief on Friday for $9 billion in relief, and a vote for an additional $51 billion on January 15.

Sucks to be him.

Heh.

28 December 2012, 7:59 PM

Astronomical Headline of the Year

Tell me that this was not the product of much giggles by the editorial staff:

Uranus takes a pounding more frequently than thought

Uranus isn’t just gassy, it’s also tilted completely sideways, such that instead of rotating like a spinning top, it rolls around the plane of the solar system more like a giant ball. Now astronomers think they know how this happened, and it means that Uranus has been pounded really, really hard not once, but twice.

Uranus’ axial tilt of 98 degrees means that it’s got one pole pointed almost directly at the sun, and one pole pointed out into space. As the planet revolves around the sun, these poles slowly switch places, meaning that if you lived there, you’d get 42 years of sunlight followed by 42 years of darkness, with a short time in between where things would seem almost normal.

Needless to say, this sort of behavior is a bit strange for Uranus, although nobody’s quite been able to determine how it happened. New simulations from astronomers at the Observatory of Côte d’Azur in Nice, France may have just figured it out, and the answer seems to be that Uranus has suffered from not one but two giant impacts..

H/t LD at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.

26 December 2012, 8:55 PM

Republicans Do Not Have a Monopoly On Stupid

Case in point, Senator Barbara Boxer is proposing to deploy National Guard to public schools:

Federal funds would be made available to deploy National Guard troops at schools under legislation introduced Wednesday by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) in response to last week’s mass slaying at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn.

The Save Our Schools Act would leave it to governors to decide whether to call out the National Guard and how to use troops around schools.

“Is it not part of the national defense to make sure that your children are safe?” Boxer said at Capitol Hill press conference.

Yes, armed soldiers patrolling the corridors of our schools is such a good idea.

We really need to strengthen out Posse Comitatus law, not abolish it.

26 December 2012, 8:44 PM

I Miss Madame La Guillotine

Roll Stewart!

Jerry Della Femina, who made his fortune on Madison Avenue, is whining like a baby about taxes, and claims that he is selling his posh Hamptons estate as a result:

He got taxed out of town.

Legendary advertising guru Jerry Della Femina is the latest Hamptons fat cat to unload his East End spread at the precipice of the dreaded fiscal cliff, The Post has learned.

The flamboyant Madison Avenue guru has sold his 8,500-square-foot estate — the host of many legendary Hamptons bashes — for $25 million, and blames his flight squarely on President Obama’s fiscal policies.

“I want the proceeds of this sale to go to my kids and my grandkids,” said the man behind iconic ad campaigns for Meow Mix and Absolut Vodka. “I don’t want my money going to Obama, and that’s what’s going to happen in the New Year. That’s why I sold right now, that’s why I wanted to get this done.”

Seriously.

This sort of sh%$ has me wishing for the return Maximilien de Robespierre.

I’ll leave it to Jon Stewart to express how I feel, though he was actually directing it to hack journo Bernie Goldberg.

22 December 2012, 9:07 PM

Worst………Speaker………Ever

You cannot negotiate with him, because, when push comes to shove, he is completely incapable of delivering the votes, even on a meaningless vote that was intended to call out a President that his caucus hates:

I just finished laughing from this spectacle on the House floor today. The House leadership tried desperately to pass “Plan B,” the main part of which was an extension of the Bush tax cuts on the first $1 million of income. In truth, all of the other giveaways in it would actually result in lower taxes for many wealthy earners, but tax rates have this weird power, especially within the Republican caucus. And you could just feel today that conservatives weren’t willing to pass the bill, even at that ridiculously high level. John Boehner and the leadership added a sweetener in the form of a package that eliminated the sequester on defense spending and applied it to more discretionary spending cuts, and even that barely passed, tainted by the association to Plan B.

We waited for a vote. And waited. Then the House Republicans held a closed caucus. And then Boehner had to come out and call the whole thing off.

The House did not take up the tax measure today because it did not have sufficient support from our members to pass. Now it is up to the president to work with Senator Reid on legislation to avert the fiscal cliff. The House has already passed legislation to stop all of the January 1 tax rate increases and replace the sequester with responsible spending cuts that will begin to address our nation’s crippling debt. The Senate must now act.

This is astonishing. Boehner spent three days talking up Plan B, which you just don’t do without the votes in hand. But conservative groups rule the House, and they turned against a bill that gives tax breaks to everyone making up to $1 million, along with enough reductions in other taxes to soften the blow for those poor millionaires. But House Republicans just aren’t going to do it, on this or any tax increase.

Seriously, negotiating with John Boehner is over the budget like negotiating with the Tatyana Egorova, coach of FC Rossiyanka, the leading Russian women’s soccer team over nuclear arms reductions.

Even if you assume good faith negotiations, they simply cannot deliver on their promises.

21 December 2012, 8:15 PM

2 Manny Guns, Sulushen iz Moar Gunz

So, the NRA has finally made a statement about how to prevent more gun deaths, at schools, and their solution is lots of people with high powered weapons, and if that gets too expensive, they are suggesting amateur volunteers with guns:

After a weeklong silence, the National Rifle Association announced Friday that it wants to arm security officers at every school in the country, implicating violent video games, the news media and lax law enforcement as being far more to blame for the recent rash of mass shootings than guns.

“The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” said Wayne LaPierre, the N.R.A. vice president, said at a media event that was interrupted by protesters. One held up a banner saying, “N.R.A. Killing Our Kids.”

The N.R.A.’s plan for countering school shootings, coming a week after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., was met with widespread derision from school administrators, law enforcement officials and politicians, with some critics calling it “delusional” and “paranoid.” Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, a Republican, said arming schools would not make them safer.

Even conservative politicians who had voiced support this week for arming more school officers did not rush to embrace the N.R.A.’s plan.

………

Mr. LaPierre said his organization would fund and develop a program called the National Model School Shield Program, to work with schools to arm and train school guards, including retired police officers and volunteers. The gun rights group named Asa Hutchinson, a former Republican congressman from Arkansas who has been a strong supporter, to lead a task force to develop the program.

………

But what the N.R.A. proposed would expand the use of armed officers nationwide and make greater use of not just police officers, but armed volunteers — including retired police officers and reservists — to patrol school grounds. The organization offered no estimates of the cost.

(emphasis mine)

Seriously, you want any Johnny off the street and hang out with MY children? I don’t think so.

Tell you what, how we levy a tax on gun and ammunition sales to cover all this sh%$?

BTW, the Universe is having nothing of Mr. LaPierre’s bullshit. As they were giving their non-press conference (no questions allowed), another mass shooting was happening in Pennsylvania, and it happened despite the presence in the area of peace officers with guns:

The National Rifle Association today held its first press conference since last week’s deadly shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary, and the takeaway was clear: We need more guns.

“The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” said NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre.

He went on to call for an armed police officer to be stationed in “every single school” across America to prevent further mass shootings, as critics tried to point out that armed law enforcement officials might not be the panacea the NRA thinks it is.

But before they could finish their sentence, the counterargument made itself as news broke of a mass shooting event in Pennsylvania with multiple casualties, including state troopers.

According to local reports out of Blair County, at least four people were killed and five more were injured in a shooting spree near Altoona. The gunman is said to be among the dead, and at least two state troopers were hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries.

WPXI’s Courtney Brennan says she was told by emergency officials that the shooting suspect “was ‘mobile’ at one point and went up and down a rural road and shot victims.”

No additional information is available at this time, but a spokeswoman told the Altoona Mirror it was “a relatively large crime scene.”

Seriously, The Onion needs to shut down and lay off all of its own staff, because they have been trumped by the world we actually have.

20 December 2012, 9:08 PM

Obama Will Definitely Nominate Hagel for Secretary of Defense

How do I know this, because in 1998, Chuck Hagel aggressively gay bashed James Hormel when he was nominated to be ambassador to Luxemberg:

The nation’s largest LGBT rights group on Thursday called “unacceptable” comments former Sen. Chuck Hagel made in 1998 opposing a Clinton administration nominee because he was “openly aggressively gay.”

The 14-year-old comments about Clinton’s nominee to be ambassador to Luxembourg, James Hormel, came to light Thursday as Hagel is a front-runner to be nominated by President Obama for defense secretary in his second term.

Human Rights Campaign spokesman Michael Cole-Schwartz also said, however, that “we do not know … how [Hagel’]s views have evolved over time” and that the group “look[s] forward to hearing from Senator Hagel on these issues should he be nominated.”

The Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund, which works to support out LGBT presidential appointees, noted that times have changed since Hormel’s nomination.

This would not be a SecDef who will move aggressively on removing the last vestiges of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” from the military.

His nomination, absent a serious and sincere mea culpa, would be a finger in the eye of the LGBT community, which would give Obama the sort of “Sister Souljah moment” opportunity that he loves so much, which is why I think Hagel will be nominated by Obama.

20 December 2012, 8:51 PM

If You Spend the Better Part of a Decade Sh%$ting on a Profession………

It appears to me that if you are going to do your level best to be horrible to teachers, and to make their lives a living hell, it’s Probably not a good idea to let them bring firearms to work and to give them military training:

Tennessee has emerged this week as a center of the “the answer is more guns in schools” sentiment following the Newtown, Conn. elementary school shooting.

A member of the Republican-controlled legislature plans during its upcoming session to introduce a bill that would allow the state to pay for secretly armed teachers in classrooms so, the sponsor told TPM, potential shooters don’t know who has a gun and who doesn’t.

Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam (R) has said the idea will be part of his discussions about how to prevent a shooting like the one in Newtown from happening in the Volunteer State.

This is not quite as stupid as McArdle’s suggestion that we brainwash 6 year old children into gang tackling gun toting maniacs, but it’s pretty f%$#ing close.

I am waiting for The Onion to announce mass layoffs, because they can no longer compete with reality.

19 December 2012, 8:11 PM

As If Facebook Did Not Suck Enough

I’m sure you have heard of the Instagram thing, where they came out with new terms of service which said that they could sell your photographs, and you did not get anything.

It’s a classic Facebook move, but it really does not bother me, because I don’t “get” instagram.

If I want to funky things to photos I snap with my camera phone, I’ll do it on my PC on an old copy of Paint Shop Pro.^*

That being said, I really don’t get Facebook either. I appreciate its huge user base, and I signed up so that I could mirror my blog there, boosting eyeballs.

In the process I did reconnect with a bunch of old friends, but again, that’s largely a function of the user base, not the site.

One of the problems is that it appears that every upgrade makes the totality of the experience worse.

The latest innovation is that Facebook will be adding auto start videos to its video feed:

Get ready for video ads in your news feed.

Facebook is set to unveil a new video-ad product in the first half of next year in its largest attempt to date to attract big swaths of ad dollars from TV advertisers, according to several industry executives who have been briefed on the company’s plans over the past few weeks.

………

In what’s sure to be a controversial move, the visual component of the Facebook video ads will start playing automatically — a dynamic known as “autoplay” — according to two of the executives. Facebook is still debating whether to have the audio component of the ads activated automatically as well, one of these people said.

On the desktop version of Facebook, the video ads are expected to grab a user’s attention by expanding out of the news feed into webpage real estate in both the left and right columns — or rails — of the screen. Facebook is also working on a way to ensure that the video ads stand out on the mobile apps as well, though it is unclear how exactly the company will accomplish this.

I guess that they decided that the whole anal probe ad server thing just wasn’t evil enough.

I do not get it. Are already running their server farms on power generated by incinerating harp seal pups, and claiming that it was “green” energy.

Isn’t that evil enough for them?

Damn, he needs to buy a white Persian cat and a bond villain lair, and be done with it.

^*BTW, a big f%$# you to the folks Adobe^® who bought the makers of the program, JASC, and shut them down a couple of years later, because they did not want the product, a fairly capable and easy to use image editor, they just wanted to shut down a competitor.

18 December 2012, 8:19 PM

Megan “Math is Hard” McArdle is the Most Horrible Person in Punditry

In her latest spewing (no direct link, ever) she suggests that we need to train school children to gang rush gunmen:

I’d also like us to encourage people to gang rush shooters, rather than following their instincts to hide; if we drilled it into young people that the correct thing to do is for everyone to instantly run at the guy with the gun, these sorts of mass shootings would be less deadly, because even a guy with a very powerful weapon can be brought down by 8-12 unarmed bodies piling on him at once.

Ummm ……… You ignorant Randroid sociopath, you are are unaware of the physical capabilities of a 6 year-old child.

Let me illustrate this with pictures.

This is 8-12 6 year old children:

This is the worst ranked defense in the NFL, the New Orleans Saints:

While I could concede that the Saints (What is with those pink shoes and gloves) might be able to take down an adult armed with a wet noodle, those kids could not take down a llama, or for that matter, the Dali Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibet.

Repeating for the benefit of the terminally stupid:

Children with llama

New Orleans Saints:

Dali Lama

And the Dali Lama, and the aforementioned 2 “l” llama, are both more likely to take down a gunman armed with an assault rifle than are the children.

Why does this child or privilege and political patronage have a job?

13 December 2012, 7:08 PM

Wanker of the Day

Dude, if you are that sad about Lieberman’s exit to Connecticut, go with him.

11 December 2012, 8:03 PM

Wanker of the Day

Brendan Nyhan, who seems to think that fact checkers should put their thumbs on the scale so they can condemn the standard political fibbers and the pathological liars in equal numbers.

Read the exchange in the comments between him and Dan Froomkin, where the latter eviscerates Nyhan for his dumb-ass “a pox on both their houses” bullsh%$.

Shame on the Columbia Journalism review for publishing this crap.

10 December 2012, 11:46 PM

Worst Marketing Decsion Ever

Worst Marketing Decision Ever: Drycleaner Puts “Pro-life” Message on Their Hangers

Yes, this is real.

5 December 2012, 6:55 PM

And Congress Gets Into Antivax Bullsh%$

What a surprise, the conman Darryl Issa supports this, and rather depressingly Dennis Kucinich jumps in with both feet:

I’m not exaggerating. The Committee on Oversight and Government Reform held a hearing trying to look into the cause and prevention of autism. Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.) launched into a several-minute diatribe (beginning at 12:58 in the video above) that starts off in an Orwellian statement: He claims he’s not antivax. Then he launches into a five-minute speech that promotes long-debunked and clearly incorrect antivax claims, targeting mercury for the most part. Burton has long been an advocate for quackery; for at least a decade he has used Congressional situations like this to promote antiscience.

In the latest hearing, Burton sounds like a crackpot conspiracy theorist, to be honest, saying he knows—better than thousands of scientists who have spent their careers investigating these topics—that thimerosal causes neurological disorders (including autism). He goes on for some time about mercury (as does Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) starting at 21:44 in the video), making it clear he doesn’t have a clue what he’s talking about. For example, very few vaccines still use mercury, and the ones that do use it in tiny amounts and in a form that does not accumulate in the body.

Talking about the danger of mercury in vaccines is like talking about the danger of having hydrogen—an explosive element!—in water. It’s nonsense.

I won’t go further into details, because this shameful travesty of truth and medical health goes on for an hour. On Forbes.com, Steven Salzberg wrote a fantastic article about this Congressional farce. I strongly urge you to read it, since Salzberg brings the hammer down on the Congresscritters who think they know more about science than the scientists who actually devote their lives to this topic.

Let’s be clear, the anti-vaxers do more than hurt themselves, and their hapless children. They harm those for whom vaccines have limited effectiveness, or who are too young, like Dana McCaffrey, because they destroy herd immunity.

The modern version of this was started Andrew Wakefield by a con man who had an interest in a (surprise, non working) “treatment” alternative ginned up a phony controversy to line his own pockets.

The people who support this crap are being either evil or stupid.

4 December 2012, 7:58 PM

Seriously, The Republicans Must Be Running Out of People to Piss Off………

So now they have decided to go after the disabled.

The Republicans in the Senate just killed a treaty on rights of the disabled:

The Senate rejected a United Nations treaty aimed at banning discrimination against individuals with disabilities Tuesday, falling five votes short of the two-thirds needed in a 61-38 vote.

The U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities calls on participating countries to work to attain equality in access to education, healthcare and more, and was based largely on the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. It was negotiated by President George W. Bush’s administration in 2006 and has since been signed by President Obama. So far, 126 countries have ratified the treaty.

The treaty, which passed through the Senate Foreign Relations Committee before an attempt to ratify it through a voice vote fell flat in August, had a broad base of support, with Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) standing next to each other Monday to implore senators to join their cause.

Former Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.), backed by his wife, fellow former Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R-N.C.), attended Tuesday’s vote to urge the treaty’s ratification. The former Senate majority leader looked on from his wheelchair as senators voted from their desks instead of approaching the room’s podium.

But many Republicans, who accounted for the 38 opposing votes, have been vocal in their opposition to the treaty, which they say infringes on U.S. sovereignty.

It appears that was as a result of the tinfoil hat conspiracy theories from the “whacko, my parents are first cousins, X-Files wannabe, black helicopter, tinfoil hat wearing, stupid, dim-witted, thinks pro wrestling is real,” lunatics^*from the right wing of the home schooling movement that now defines the Republican base.

^*Sorry, I think that I just channeled the comedian Denis Leary.

19 November 2012, 9:46 PM

Please, Do This

In 1968, my father said, “Those stupid bastards, they’ve nominated Nixon. There’s no way that they will win now.”

He was, of course, spectacularly wrong, but I feel much more secure in saying that I support Charlotte Allen’s call for Sarah Palin to be the 2016 Republican nominee:

The Republican Party has been doing a lot of hand-wringing and finger-pointing since the presidential election. Half the conservative columnists and bloggers say the GOP lost because it overemphasized social issues such as abortion and gay marriage. The other half says the party didn’t emphasize them enough. And everyone denounces Project ORCA, the campaign’s attempt to turn out voters via technology.

But I’ve got a suggestion for cutting short the GOP angst: Sarah Palin for president in 2016.

You think I’m joking? Think again.

Read the rest of the article. There’s not a bit of snark. She’s serious.

I so want to see this.

I think that we could have a 40 state Democratic victory.

The difference between Palin and Nixon is two fold: She’s as dumb as a bag of hammers, and she believes her own PR.

8 November 2012, 8:42 PM

We Finally Find Some Vote Fraud

And it’s a Republican:

Authorities in New Mexico are investigating an Albuquerque father who allegedly showed up at a polling place to vote on behalf of his 18-year-old son, news station KOB reported on Tuesday night.

According to Bernalillo County Clerk Maggie Toulouse Oliver, elections workers got suspicious when the silver-haired father showed up to vote and told them he was born in 1994. He was still allowed to cast a ballot, but the workers took down his license plate number when he left. Later, he showed up at a different location and voted under his own name, according to KOB.

………

The elder Pino later called Schwartz to tell him he had made a mistake by voting on behalf of his son, but said his son had given him permission. Both were registered as Republicans at the same Albuquerque address, according to KOB.

Seriously, how many times have I said that the ‘Phants are like the Soviets, in that you know what they are doing, because they accuse us of doing it?

Un-dirtyword-believable.

1 November 2012, 6:40 PM

Tucker Carlson, Your Kung Fu is Weak

Yes, Tucker Carlson’s Daily Caller has announced what must be the least poorly sourced and lamest sex “scandal” of this election season (No direct link to his clown show, ever):

Tucker Carlson’s website The Daily Caller is taking a shot at the October Surprise game, accusing New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez of soliciting prostitutes while on a trip to the Dominican Republic. According to videotaped interviews with two anonymous women published on the website last night, Menendez agreed to pay the women $500 for sex during a visit to the country earlier this year. They identified the Senator from a picture, but said they were only given $100 after being brought to see him at a fancy resort on the island. A spokesperson for Menendez, who is up for re-election on Tuesday, calls the story “completely false.”

Why is this lame? Or, more accurately why is this lame for reasons onther than being “broken” by the Daily Caller?

How about this:

There are also a few other factors working against them in this story, like the fact that Menendez is not married (so there’s no infidelity angle), prostitution is technically legal in the Dominican Republic, and the solid Democratic state that he serves is a little distracted by other matters right now. However, Menendez was one of the Senators who called on Secret Service agents that reportedly hired prostitutes in Colombia to be fired.

So, in the worst case, he did not cheat on his wife, and he did not break the law.

What’s more, beyond the complaints of the two women, the Daily Caller did not even present evidence that Menendex was in the Dominican Republic at the time alleged.

Seriously, lame.

28 September 2012, 7:18 PM

What a Whiny Bitch, Todd Akin Edition

He’s whining about how Claire McCaskill was mean to him in the debates:

Republican Senate candidate Todd Akin compared the recent debate performance of Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill to that of a “wildcat,” saying she is worried about her reelection chances.

McCaskill came on strong during their first debate last week, criticizing Akin’s earlier suggestion that pregnancy “rarely” results from “legitimate rape” because women’s bodies have a way of shutting down conception. McCaskill said his views were extreme and out of the mainstream.

“The first two minutes, wow, it’s like somebody let a wildcat out of the cage,” Akin told a small group of supporters and activists as his statewide bus tour stopped Wednesday evening in Rolla, a rural college town between St. Louis and Springfield. “She was just furious and attacking in every different direction, which was a little bit of a surprise to us.”

You know, you’ve been spouting this crap for years, and now you are whining about someone telling people what you say? PuhLease!!!

BTW, he also came out in favor of paying women less for the same work.

It’s simple: If you don’t like people calling you out for saying stupid sh%$, then stop saying stupid sh%$.