Yep, Arlo Guthrie has endorsed Paul, a man who thinks the only thing that government should do is protect private property.
That sound you hear is Woody spinning in his grave.
Category: Stupid
The Most Banal Moment of Election 2008
Yes, the good Reverend Gastric Bypass (Huckabee), is criticizing Captain Goodhair (Romney) because he took the skin off his chicken at a KFC before eating it.
While I agree that the skin is the best part, this is silly.
- You are arguing over how someone eats fried chicken.
- It’s not real fried chicken, its KFC.
- Huckabee does not eat fried chicken himself to keep his weight down.
- You are arguing over how someone eats fried chicken.
- It’s not real fried chicken, its KFC.
Dumbasses.
Lame Even By Republican Standards
One of Freddie Thompson’s former campaign staff is calling for a, “boycott of all shows and products affiliated with martial arts thespian Chuck Norris because of his endorsement of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.”
The lamitude* of this snollygoster†, “Darrel Ng, a former traveling press secretary for Thompson” just boggles the mind.
*I know that lamitude is not not a real word.
†But “snollygoster” is a real word.
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot????
Just when I think that I’ve become so jaded and cynical that Bush and His Evil Minions™ are incapable of horrifying me, they prove me wrong.
Paul Wolfowitz has been named by the State Department to sit on an arms control panel.
I guess because that whole WMD in Iraq thing worked out so well.
At Least the Republicans are “Classy”
Roger Stone, who has the distinction of being the youngest of Nixon’s “dirty tricksters”, has founded a 527 organization, Citizens United Not Timid, to oppose Hillary Clinton.
I guess he has to do something when he is not swapping spouses.
Here is their logo, and they are selling a T-shirt:
So very classy.
Iraq’s de-Baathification, Heck of a Job, Bushie
Yes, it appears that the new de-Baathification law that the Iraqi parliament passed, the one that Bush and His Evil Minions™ have been crowing about, isn’t a de-Baathification law, it’s actually an even more aggressive purge of Baath party members, and Sunnis, than the previous law.
And it gets even better, because everyone’s favorite double crossing thief, Achmed Chalabi, is heading the de-Baathification commission.
It’s Official, We are Insane
A number of former defense officials from NATO Countries, including former JCS Chairman, and son of a Waffen SS member, John Shalikashvili, have recommended that NATO should reorganize to allow it to incorporate nuclear first strikes into it’s tactics.
Calling for a major change to Nato’s approach to defending its members and their interests, the authors of the report, which has been handed to Nato and Pentagon chiefs, said the first-strike use of nuclear weapons was a “indispensable instrument”.
I’m sorry, but anyone who says, “The first use of nuclear weapons must remain in the quiver of escalation as the ultimate instrument to prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction,” is simply, and deeply nuts.
The fact that this is not just laughed out of NATO and Pentagon HQ is an indication that something is truly broken about the way we think.
Oh Belgium, I’m Sorry!!!!!
In my post, The World’s Lamest Flash Games I checked out the games on my computer with the sound off, as is my normal want, as I don’t like being surprised by sounds.
I had no idea that the flash games that I posted as windows had that unbelievably tacky music playing.
It has been replaced by links.
I’m sorry.
Orwell Moment of the Day: MLK Memorial Outsourced to Paragon of Human Rights, China
While I understand that the protests of the Vermont congressional delegation (see also here) is largely an issue of local pride and economics for them, the idea that we are outsourcing this to a government that routinely imprisons dissidents, suppresses free speech, and aggressively uses the death penalty boggles the mind.
This isn’t from The Onion. This is a real story.
Happy Martin Luther King Birthday Holiday everyone.
The World’s Lamest Flash Games
Two games, absolutely no entertainment value. They need to add Barbara Gordon as a Librarian.
http://www.library.cmu.edu/Libraries/etc/game1/game1.swf
http://www.library.cmu.edu/Libraries/etc/game2/game2.swf
Corrected so as not to destroy your sanity with that damn music.
MacBook Air: No User Swappable Battery
MacBook Air doesn't have a user-replaceable battery – Engadget
MacBook Air battery replacements: $129, free install! – Engadget
$129 for a battery isn’t bad, but you have to send it in for a replacement.
In real life, people, at least the serious road warriors, have multiple batteries that they swap when one gets low.
Morons.
Obama is Trying to Be the Worst Sort of Democrat, a Phony Republican
And as Harry Truman once said, “Given the choice between a Republican and someone who acts like one, the people will vote for the real Republican every time.”
His talk to Reno Gazette editorial board exemplifies this.
Barack Obama and I are alike in some significant ways.
We are nearly the same age, he was born in 1961, and I was born in 1962, and we both missed the 1960s, we was in Hawaii and Jakarta during the decade, and I was in Fairbanks, Anchorage, and Juneau (though after August 1969, I was in Virginia for a time.
As such, we were in some very real ways separated from the cultural goings on of the 1960s by virtue of geographic separation.
We thus both became politically aware at the same time, though I might have done so earlier, as both my parents were politically involved, and I had a summer without cartoons while my mom watched the Watergate hearing.
For most of my generation, any political awareness came around the time of Jimmy Carter, who was, and is, truth be told, a depressingly sanctimonious downer.*
So there are a lot of people, and I am not one of them, who have some fondness for Reagan, if just because Carter was so depressing.
I remember him running a blatantly racist campaign, and opening up the White House for the personal profit of his friends.
He won by keeping the hostages in Iran until after the election.
In any case, he gave a talk to the Reno Gazette editorial board on Monday, and it was caught on tape for posterity.
In any case, he gave a talk with Here is a transcript of the relevant portion of his talk, (H/T Open Left)
I don’t want to present myself as some sort of singular figure. I think part of what’s different are the times. I do think that for example the 1980 was different. I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. I think they felt like with all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s
This, of course would be the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Medicare, the opening of social welfare programs to black and brown people, and to a large degree the elimination of childhood malnutrition in the United States?
Yep, that’s REALLY excessive.
and government had grown and grown but there wasn’t much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating.
You like how the American people forced the US to withdraw from a wasteful, stupid and useless war?
You mean like how a corrupt and dictatorial President was forced from office because the American people would not tolerate a crook in the White House?
When people like Ronald Reagan refered to the excesses of the 1960s, they mean that they did not want people with your complexion to be able vote in the South, and that Lynching and church bombings were the God given right of the white man.
You think those were excesses?
Well, Ronald Reagan certainly made it explicit that he was running on behalf of people who that that they were.
Or to quote Jane Hamsher of Firedog Lake:
No, Ronald Reagan didn’t appeal to people’s optimism, he appealed to their petty, small minded bigotry and selfishness. Jimmy Carter told people to tighten their energy belts and act for the good of the country; Ronald Reagan told them they could guzzle gas with impunity and do whatever the hell they wanted. He kicked off his 1980 campaign talking about “state’s rights” in Philadelphia, Mississippi — the site of the murder of three civil rights workers in 1964’s Freedom Summer. He thus put up a welcome sign for “Reagan Democrats,” peeling off white voters who were unhappy with the multi-ethnic coalition within the Democratic Party.
One of his first acts was to fire 11,000 air traffic controllers in 1981 — one of the most devastating union busting moves of the past century. And his vision of deregulation didn’t free the country up for entrepreneurship, it opened it up for the wholesale thievery of the savings & loan crisis. He popularized the notion that all government is bad government and in eight short years put in place the architecture for decades of GOP graft and corruption.
There’s enough hagiography of Reagan on the right, I don’t think Democrats really need to go there.
*I also consider him a war criminal, along with Zbigniew Brezinski, for quite literally buying a civil war in Afghanistan just to screw with the Soviets.
Bob Gates: Moron
I guess that Robert Gates is just Don Rumsfeld without the charisma.
He’s criticising NATO forces for not doing a proper job in Afghanistan.
Of course, he would be a bit more convincing if:
- The US had not allowed Osama bin Laden and Mullah Mohammad Omar get away because they were too timid about potential US casualties.
- Bush and His Evil Minions™ hadn’t simply dropped a not-yet pacified south to go after Saddam, who had nothing to do with 911.
- If US tactics in the south weren’t so violent and indiscriminate (particularly the bomb happy USAF), that the British weren’t asking US special forces to get the hell out.
- If US aid policies in Afghanistan weren’t primarily for the benefit of US contractors who were Republican donors.
- If the US wasn’t juxtaposing this incompetence in delivering aid with an aggressive anti-opium program that leaves Afghan farmers with a choice between aiding the Taliban or starving.
- The US wasn’t currently limiting its operations in the east, where Taliban activity is minimal.
- If the US were not committing a smaller proportion of its military to Afghanistan than the NATO allies.
Is there a single competent Republican party Apparatchik in this entire nation?
Cthulhu on a Cracker!!!! This is What a Legislator Thinks is Improtant
We have unemployment rising, homes being foreclosed, Iraq and Afghanistan collapsing, and what does Delegate Lionell Spruill think is important? Truck nuts.
Yep, this man, to my great shame a Democrat, is proposing a bill to ban truck nuts, saying, “It comes to a point where there are certain things you just can’t do. And putting testicles on the back of a truck is just too much. So I am trying to stop it.”
About the only person that this benefits is David Letterman.
Musharraf Fingerprints Increasingly Appear on Bhutto Assassination
First, the Musharraf govenrment is rejecting a U.N. inquiry, on the basis that “No foreign government was involved”, though they have already fingered al Queida, a group of foreign terrorists based, at least in part in Afghanistan, and definitely supported by a foreign group, the Taliban.
Bag News Notes also has an interesting analysis, where they lay the blame at the feet of Condoleeza Rice, who thought that another “election”, like those in Iraq, would show democracy on the march in Pakistan, but then she never followed up, and left Bhutto unprotected.
TSA Detains 5 Year Old
Good for them. How do you know that this kid wasn’t a a Jihadist with a glandular condition?
Seriously though, this does no one any good:
When his mother went to pick him up and hug him and comfort him during the proceedings, she was told not to touch him because he was a national security risk. They also had to frisk her again to make sure the little Dillinger hadn’t passed anything dangerous weapons or materials to his mother when she hugged him.
Morons Unclear on Trademark
The teenage entrepreneur screwing this up I can understand, but the reporter completely screwed the pooch on this one.
A kid makes jewelry called “change rocks”, and Obama has a concert series called “change rocks”.
The kid has no right to do anything with regard to trademark. Quoting the Wiki, “Trademark law is designed to fulfill the public policy objective of consumer protection, by preventing the public from being misled as to the origin or quality of a product or service.”
So if there is no potential consumer confusion, there is no harm, no foul.
Obama can’t sell jewelry, but he could do T-shirts, bumper stickers, etc. My guess is that his concern is about his Google ranking, or an attempt at free publicity.
Don’t care, and neither should Obama. Tough luck, kid.
The Best Slashdot Post Ever
You can read it, in all of its awfulness, here, in a discussion of a professor who bemoans the fact that students are learning Java, as opposed to “real” computer languages.
University should be about people (Score:2, Funny)
by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 08, @03:22AM (#21951018)I’m concerned about the narrowm view of the world IT people and engineers have these days. I think the problem starts at college – There’s a culture that somehow science is more rational and usefull then the humanitities. Lecturers encourage students to joke about arts students, and humilaite them whenever possible. This encourages eliteism, and I for one am sick of it.
Let’s tell it like it is. ‘science’ is just as much about opinion as the humanities. Research simply follows the fad of the day. Take dieticians for example. These men and woman believe that just because they have degree in medical science that they are all knowing. Why, what they recommend one day may kill you the next! (see the DDT story for more information.) Science is 95% opinion then facts, lets face it. What about astrology, the most rediculious of the sciences! But I degress…
Another example is music. We know what sounds good. Everyone agreed that Valves for instance sound great. But knowitall engineers use trensastors with inferious sound quality just to save a few bucks. They argue with numbers. Hey, I don’t want to do maths just to listen to music. I know what I like. You cannot apply objective reasoning to a subject which is intristically subjective. But try telling those recent grads with their useless piece of paper that and they go all
mightier–then-thou.The problem with you technical guys are that you are all so eliteist. Whilst you want to trun collage into a trade school with yore narrow minded views that collage should be a job training centre, Humanities are focused on making you a well rounded person who is actually interesting to be with, not a boringfocused geek. Really, it makes me so mad when people say “oh, he’s doing a humanities degree, that’s easy”. I have to read *3* *books* *a* *week* on average. Not picture books either I assue you. It is a lot of work, but the upshot is improved grammer and spelling skills that are lacking in the technical. As for those that say “you will be working at mcdonalds” , I’m going on to so a PhD in socialolgy where I’ll be line for tenure where I have a much more rewarding job then being a science freak or an engineer. Anyways, all I have to do to be a engineer wold be to get my MSCE and how hard couyld that be? Technical stuff is simply whatever fad the market thinks is hot at the moment, but all great things were done by humanities.
You technical types are far to narrow minded and cynsical. You should learn to enjoy life.
Peace be to god, he transcends all.
Ummmm….Amazing. I’ve marked all the misspellings, and least I think that I did.
Three whole books a week, huh…I’m so impressed.
FWIW, I am a product of two liberal arts majors, my dad did sociology/city planning, and my mom did English, but started in mathematics.
I respect the social sciences.
I just don’t respect this particular social scientist.
Spectacular self-ownage.
This is REALLY Classy
You know, one of the things I prefer about the British is their culture of heckling.
Not only is heckling expected, but politicians are expected to be able to deal with it.
I think that it would result in more substantive campaigns, because the average voter/heckler has the ability to drive the focus, and politicians have to be quick on their feet.
I think it makes it harder for someone to become president just because they are the idiot son of a previous president.
That being said, if America were to adopt this model, we would need remedial education for hecklers, because lordy, this is lame:
Two men were just removed from a high school auditorium where Sen. Hillary Clinton is speaking, after they stood up during her speech, lifted signs and chanted “iron my shirt.”
Seriously, if you are going to do this, spend some time coming up with something that makes her look bad, not something that makes you look bad.
This is just so “high school”.
Freddie Thompson Clown Show
After a surprising 3rd place showing in Iowa, Freddie Thompson has decided to ignore New Hampshire, and move on to South Carolina, which is already firmly in Huckabee’s pocket. As one wag put it, “Thompson Takes New Hampshire for Granite.”