So says Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, as well as a number of news sources.
We are so due for some sort of divine smiting right now.
Category: Weird
Deep Thought
Click for full size
Get your motor runnin’
Head out on the highway
Lookin’ for adventure
And whatever comes our way
No matter who you are, or what you do, you will never be as cool as a tailless iguana tegu* in diapers driving a car.
Don’t even bother to try.
Thanks to Tiempo at the ShortSkoolBus BBS for the picture.
*A lizard of the genus Tupinambis, it can be mistaken for an iguana, but this is really not fair to either reptile.
Dangers of Outsourcing Part 11: Bad Translations
Most Unfortunate
Dotcommie at the by invitation only Stellar Parthenon BBS, is on a listserve for people who have been involved in internet advertising for at over 10 years, and got the following ad.
What he had heard was that the ad copy was outsourced to a copywriter who spoke English as a 2nd language (ESL).
In any case, it does appear to be just a bit, how to put this, inartful.
Nobody Goes There Anymore, It’s Too Crowded
It appears that after a few years of being the government in Gaza, Hamas is getting complaints that they have sold out:
Hamas, the Palestinian faction viewed by many in the West as a nest of terrorists and Islamic hard-liners, is battling a curious new epithet: moderate.
Fifteen months after a punishing Israeli offensive failed to dislodge Hamas from power in the Gaza Strip, rival resistance groups and some former supporters say the organization has become too political, too secular and too soft.
“People in the street say Hamas has changed,” said Abu Ahmed, spokesman for the military wing of Islamic Jihad, a Palestinian armed group in Gaza that complained recently that Hamas had arrested four of its militants as they tried to attack Israeli soldiers near the border. “They’re paying a price for that. People need to know that Hamas is still committed to the resistance.”
You know, when I was in college, I had a number of friends who loved obscure rock bands.
If the band released a record, and it achieved any success, these folks would immediately condemn the band as having “sold out”.
I guess that they were upset because it meant that the band was no longer their secret.
I find this amusing, because this seems to be a very similar phenomenon: success, in this case defined as running the Gaza strip, is “selling out”.
It’s nice to see that some stupidities are universal.
OK, I Don’t Want to Clean That Podium
Click for full size
It reminds me of a scene from the Police Academy movies
I’m just saying.
And, no, it is not photoshopped.
Never Stop Your Enemy from Stepping On His Own Dick
When you’re in Leno’s monologue, YOU ARE COMPLETELY SCREWED
As I have mentioned a number of times, Harry Reid is polling horribly in his bid for reelection.
In fact, his poll numbers are so bad that it appeared that his only hope was that there was a possible teabagger 3rd party candidate.
Well, it looks like the the Republican front runner just threw a life line to the Senate Majority Leader, or more accurately, she threw herself an anvil.
You see, she made a statement about how barter should be an important part of healthcare.
When I first heard this, I assumed that this was someone misspeaking and confusing “barter” and “bargain”.
I was wrong. She really meant barter, as in chickens for MRI’s:
The feathers are flying in the political attacks over Nevada Republican Senate candidate Sue Lowden’s declarations that people could control health care costs through the use of barter.
On Monday, Lowden doubled down on the barter idea. “Let’s change the system and talk about what the possibilities are. I’m telling you that this works,” Lowden said. “You know, before we all started having health care, in the olden days, our grandparents, they would bring a chicken to the doctor. They would say I’ll paint your house.”
(emphasis mine)
So, not only is she eschewing healthcare reform, she is apparently opposed to the very concept of money, the center of our financial system.*
So, she’s not just a Republican, she is an Anarcho syndicalist, opposed to the very concept of money, or she’s a complete moron, or maybe both.
In any case, Senator Reid, it’s better to be lucky than good, and you just got lucky.
*OK, money and greed……†
†……OK, money, greed, and fractional-reserve banking……‡
‡…………OK, money, greed, fractional-reserve banking, and a well defined system of contract law ……………… Oh, never mind.
Signs of the Apocalypse
Starts at 2:05
On Morning Joe, Mark Halperin, a long time hack best known for the phrase, “Matt Drudge rules our world,” feels compelled to call it for what it is when he says, “They are willfully misreading the bill or they are engaged in a cynical attempt to keep the president from achieving something.” (emphasis mine)
Except for the fact that he should have said and not or, he is telling the truth, and when Mark Halperin feels compelled to call bullsh%$, you know that Republican spin has crossed some sort of “Shoe Event Horizon” where the normal punditocracy simply ceases to function.
The first part of the video is Austan Goolsbee ably defending the program (full disclosure, I made a post that he objected to in the comments, see here, and I posted his response here),* but Joe turns to Halperin for a “fair and balanced appraisal, and Halperin calls them full of it too.
H/t Steve Benen.
*I don’t have a problem with his objecting, my family calls me full of it all the time, it sticks in my head because I was stunned that he read my little old blog in his capacity as an economic advisor to the Obama campaign.
George Washington’s Body to be Exhumed by Irate Librarians
Yes, it’s in my anxiety closet too.
Archivists have discovered that George Washington borrowed books from the New York Library when he was President, and now owes the equivalent of $300,000.00 in overdue fines:
Founder of a nation, trouncer of the English, God-fearing family man: all in all, George Washington has enjoyed a pretty decent reputation. Until now, that is.
The hero who crossed the Delaware river may not have been quite so squeaky clean when it came to borrowing library books.
The New York Society Library, the city’s only lender of books at the time of Washington’s presidency, has revealed that the first American president took out two volumes and pointedly failed to return them.
At today’s prices, adjusted for inflation, he would face a late fine of $300,000.
So, Mrs. McGreevey is coming after him.
Apologies to Berkeley Breathed for rearranging the frames friom his horizontal format to a vertical one.
No, This is Not a Joke
The lead SEC attorney in the civil fraud case against Goldman Sachs, aka, “The great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money,”* is one Andrew Matthew Calamari.
I actually went and confirmed it with a Google, and Mr. Calamari is actually the associate regional director for the SEC’s New York office.
No really, click the link, it’s from the SEC.
As Dave Barry would say, “I’m not making this up.”
*Alas, I cannot claim credit for the bon mot describing Goldman Sachs as a vampire squid. This was coined by the great Matt Taibbi, in his article on the massive criminal conspiracy investment firm, The Great American Bubble Machine.
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?!?!?!? The Lib-Dems?
So, following the first televised debate between candidates for Prime Minister in UK history, a confrontation where Liberal-Democrat candidate is generally conceded to have come off best, the party is leading in a number of polls.
Part of the allure of the Lib-Dems is that their policies are objectively, and quite justifiably, punitive towards the banks that created this mess, and they are explicit about the need to downsize the banking sector.
I don’t think that the Lib-Dems will win, there is 100 years of their predecessor of losing elections, and I think that the nature of the constituencies, which are elected in “first past the post” as in the US, make their capturing even 2nd place in the number of seats unlikely.
Still, with 3 weeks to go before the election, it is a surprising development.
Deep Thought
H/t onegoodmove.
What Happens When You Leave a McDonalds® Happy Meal
Click for full size
Which is fresh
And which is a year old
Nonna Joann investigates.
She actually blogged the developments, or lack thereof, over a 1 year period.
I have to agree with her, food is supposed to decompose after being outside for a year.
A Corollary to Saroff’s Rule
Sex, Lies, and Videotape?
You know Saroff’s Rule:
If a financial transaction is complex enough to require that a news organization use a cartoon to explain it, its purpose is to deceive.
Well, now I have to come up with a corollary for puppet shows, because the always entertaining Dylan Ratigan has added this to the mix.
[on edit]If anyone can give me suggestions, it would be appreciated.
It’s kind of like School House Rock, on a bad acid trip.
I really can’t add much………
Max Bialystock Could Make Money from This
It’s clearly the worst play ever written.
You see, the Reykavik City Theatre has announced that it will be performing the full 2,000 page parliamentary report on the island nation’s banking collapse.
It is expected to take 72-120 hours.
You Know that You Are Beyond the Pale When………
When the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan disavow you and yours for your bigotry:
H/t DU, with a 3 cushion shot off the by invitation only Stellar Parthenon BBS.
Our Man in Kabul
It appears that Afghan President Hamid Karzai is mad enough to say to members of parliament that if things don’t go his way, he might join the Taliban:
At one point, Mr. Karzai suggested that he himself would be compelled to join the other side —that is, the Taliban—if the parliament didn’t back his controversial attempt to take control of the country’s electoral watchdog from the United Nations, according to three people who attended the meeting, including an ally of the president.
Mr. Karzai blamed the lawmakers’ resistance to his move on a foreign conspiracy, they said. The Afghan president’s latest remarks came less than 24 hours after he assured U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that he was committed to working with the U.S. That phone call was precipitated by a similar—but less vitriolic–anti-Western diatribe Mr. Karzai delivered earlier last week.
So he’s complaining that the Electoral Complaints Commission is appointed by independent judges and the UN, and that parliament is refusing to reorganize it so that he can appoint its members, and stack future elections.
It should be noted that the commission invalidated almost a million votes during his reelection bid, and found pervasive fraud by him and his allies, so I guess that he does not want a repeat of this.
Still, his statements make him both part of the problem, and probably completely f%$#ing nuts.
When juxtaposed with his ruinously corrupt drug running brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, the head of Kandahar’s provincial council, whose actions are so suspect that US forces have threatened to kill him the next time he is seen meeting with a Taliban representative, it’s really a heady brew.
I Really Want to Know the Whole Back-Story On This
According to the associated article, “As firefighters cleaned up the scene late this morning, Kali Burns, who lives next door, ran up and down the street dressed in a gorilla suit and caught the attention of some firefighters. Burns said his friends dared him to put the costume on, so he did. He said he only wanted to ‘cheer everybody up.'”
I dunno, I think that there is something deeper involved.
You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!
H/t Americablog.
Signs of the Apocalypse, Tom Coburn Edition
Dr. Peter Venkman: Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together… mass hysteria!
Wherein the raving nut job from the Sooner State says thatNancy Pelosi is a nice woman and that you should not believe everything htat you hear on Fox news:
“The intention is not to put anybody in jail,” Coburn said. “That makes for good TV news on Fox, but that isn’t the intention.”
Later, when his audience started to boo at the mention of Pelosi, Coburn stopped them.
“Come on now… how many of you all have met her? She’s a nice person,” Coburn said. “Just because somebody disagrees with you, doesn’t mean they’re not a good person.”
“Don’t catch yourself being biased by Fox News that somebody’s no good,” Coburn added.
Coburn urged audience members to widen their points of view by reading and watching different media outlets, not just the ones they agree with.
(emphasis mine)
This from a man who says that abortion doctors should face the death penalty, and that he, in the course of his duties as an OB/GYN, has performed abortions, so maybe he can hold these rather disparate thoughts in his head because if he is batsh%$ insane.
What is Missing From This Video?
Using a blender to reduce an iPad to iPowder
The answer is after the break, but here is a hint: it involves one Steve Jobs in a redux of a very specific scene from one of Kubrik’s better known films.
Do you know what I am referring to?
Do you have an inkling?
Well, if you do not get the answer, just, “click for more” to see the answer, with appropriate photographic documentation.
Blah, blah, blah!The video, as delightfully perverse as it is, lacks that special something: Steve jobs restrained and forced to watch the liquidation of the most recent vision to spring forth from his metaphorical loins.
I am referring, of course to the brainwashing scene in A Clockwork Orange with Malcolm McDowell.