Everything's hunky-dory

When I heard the news story today about the explosion in Ramadi, I laughed. Which makes me a bad person. But when the U.S. government tries to minimize the reports of a truck bomb killing 18 children on a soccer field by saying, no, we set off the explosion ourselves, and it just wounded 30 people - we're down the rabbit hole.

Further down.

People in Hell want water

If Hillary Clinton gave the fantasy speech outlined by Gary Kamiya in Salon, I just might consider voting for her. But she won't, not in a million years. So I won't. Simple, no?

Quote of the Week

"I love America. Just because I think gay dudes should be allowed to adopt kids and we should all drive hybrid cars doesn’t mean that I don’t love America."

-Liz Lemon (Tina Fey), "30 Rock"

"30 Rock" is one of the best-written shows on TV right now, and definitely the best-written (and funniest) comedy. No surprise, since Tina Fey jumped ship as head writer on SNL to write and star in her own show. Alec Baldwin is also fantastic as GE exec Jack Donaghy, who has a giant photo of a toaster on the wall in his office.

Speaking of offices, "The Office" is brilliant, but I don't think it's a "comedy" in the traditional TV sense. The tone and aims are completely different.

If you haven't seen "30 Rock," give it a chance. I don't want this one to get cancelled.

Democrats Fail to Pass Symbolic, Non-Binding Resolution Declaring Earth Not Flat

This Modern World nails how I feel every time some anti-science nut like Dean Esmay (who also believes passionately that Terri Schiavo could have lept out of her hospital bed if just given a chance, and that HIV is harmless) laughs at Al Gore or writes some variation of this:

Boy, it sure was cold today. And we got 7 inches of snow overnight. Someone call Al Gore!

I think I need to take a break from the browser when every time I open it, my most common emotion is "loathing."

UPDATE: Some high-quality braying from Dean and his flying monkeys about Al Gore's Oscar win last night. Al better watch out - a few more good works, and he might surpass Jimmy Carter as Most Hated Man on Earth for the crapweasels.

How about 'who gives a shit'?

Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi gives voice to anger over a national media that is a lot more concerned with Britney Spears' hairdo and Anna Nicole's "death fridge" than anything that matters in this world. The thing is, just like our government, in this country we have the exact media that we deserve.

Doth protest

A choice comment from a Freeper called "Catholic Canadian," in a discussion about former NBA star Tim Hardaway's statement that he "hates gay people":

"At one point, I tried to be tolerant of gays that I met. I would talk to them as normal individuals. After awhile though, all civilised talk with them decends into lewd and suggestive sexual comments, innuendo, attempts at touching and suggestions that you go back to their place."

Uh huh.

Monkeys with typewriters

The latest salvo in the right wing's war against environmentalism? Hybrid cars are dangerous because they are too quiet, and thus threaten the safety of the blind.

I'm not making this up.

"That's not a real story," says my brother.
"Yes it is! I'll send you the link."
"You must have left something out," he says, incredulous.
"No. It's real," I say.
"Are you sure that isn't an Onion story? Because I would laugh at it if it was in the Onion."

This story is hilarious for many reasons. But the one that leaps to mind is, I can imagine right-wingers trying to come up with a list of reasons why hybrid cars should be banned. But I can't for the life of me imagine them coming up with that one in a million years.

I give up

I'm tired of fighting. So this is to announce that from now on I believe the following:

-The King James Version of the Bible is the inerrant word of God.
-Abortion is murder.
-Global warming is a hoax.
-HIV does not cause AIDS.
-Valerie Plame was not a covert agent.
-Saddam had WMD.
-Saddam helped plan 9/11.
-The minimum wage hurts the poor.
-George W. Bush is a Texas rancher.
-Bill and Hillary Clinton killed Vince Foster.
-Tom Cruise is not gay.
-Gay sex is indistinguishable from rape, incest and bestiality.
-Iraq is not in the middle of a civil war.
-$9 billion missing in Iraq is no big deal.
-George W. Bush is the reason we haven't had a terrorist attack since 9/11.
-Ann Coulter is funny, sexy, and correct.
-Michael Moore is a holocaust denier.
-Hybrid cars are dangerous because they are too quiet.
-Anyone who criticizes the Iraq war or the President is a traitor.
-The more guns we have, the safer we are.

If more revelations come to me, I'll add them. Thanks for your attention.

Pretension

This isn't a pop culture weblog, although pop culture is another of my abiding interests. And I do tend to focus, as some commenters like to point out, on stuff that "angries up my blood," as Grandpa Simpson says. So I couldn't pass up this Entertainment Weekly writeup on ABC's "Lost," which has suffered a major loss in audience (including me) this season:

Nobody is more proud - and more defensive - about Lost than [series star Matthew] Fox. The fall from amazing grace? That's just the headline-hungry media tearing down what the cast and crew built up. The ratings decline? Those were simply hype-intrigued looky-loos who've decided Lost isn't for them and gravitated toward less complicated fare. "Good riddance," says Fox.... And what of the devotees who yearn for those innocent invisible-peanut-butter-flavored beach days? "The people who rag on it that way aren't strong enough fans, really," he says. "Those people are copping out."

Memo to Matthew Fox: fuck you. You're an actor on a television show - a show that started with a handful of intriguing ideas that then proceeded to systematically crap all over them. This show made you a star, and it might not be the best move to be insulting the very people who put you there.

It physically pains me to channel Laura Ingraham, but shut up and act.

Hillary, Hillary, Hillary

I don't much like Hillary Clinton. I think she has all of her husband's bad points and none of the good ones. But I have to say, I would relish like a fine wine her election to President in November 2008 - just to see the massive number of head explosions that would result among the crapweasel right wing as Hillary and Bill saunter back into the White House. It would be like watching all three "Scanners" movies at the same time.

The BMFC initiative

The usual crapweasel suspects on the right are all up in arms about the proposed ballot measure in Washington State that would require married couples to have children within three years, or have their marriages annulled.

After carping for years that marriage is all about children, these doofuses are taken aback with their own "morality" being thrown back in their faces. As usual, though, I don't think the measure's proponents have gone far enough. On my old site, I outlined a similar proposal, something I called the Bureau of Marriage and Family Certification (BMFC).*

Here's the rundown:

1. No marriage allowed where the woman is older than child-bearing age (medical certification required).

2. All engaged couples must sign a Procreation Pledge, agreeing to attempt to conceive for at least the first five years of the marriage.

3. Both marriage partners must be heterosexual, to avoid conflict with Rule 2. Heterosexuality will be authenticated by the BMFC, using investigative techniques, or in difficult cases, medical arousal testing.

4. All new marriages will be monitored by the BMFC for no less than one (1) year, to make sure the union is legitimate and not undertaken for financial or other non-approved reasons, especially including theft of company or government benefits.

5. Divorce will be strictly regulated. All civil divorces will have to be approved by the BMFC, after a 3-5 year evaluation process.


I think this is a good start in forcing the right wing to confront the real consequences of their worldview. Marriage is all about children? Divorce is too easy? People shouldn't get married just to get benefits? Fine. Then write it into law, bitches.

When I lived in Michigan, an ambitious local prosecutor thought his ticket to fame would be prosecuting women for giving birth to crack-addicted babies. Great idea, right? Get tough! But once he started actually throwing poor black mothers in jail, the bloom fell off the rose.

You think abortion is murder? Fine. Then every single doctor who performs an abortion, and every single woman who gets one, should be charged with and convicted of murder. Murder is murder. And the woman doesn't get off the hook because the baby was conceived in a rape. A fetus is a person, full stop. Deal with that reality, and maybe we can talk.

---

*NOTE: I take no responsibility for how people will pronounce this acronym. :-)

Because I miss Molly

A quote from a 1995 Molly Ivins article on Rush Limbaugh, in Mother Jones magazine:

I have a correspondent named Irwin Wingo in Weatherford, Texas. Irwin and some of the leading men of the town are in the habit of meeting about 10 every morning at the Chat'n'Chew Cafe to drink coffee and discuss the state of the world. One of their members is a dittohead, a Limbaugh listener. He came in one day, plopped himself down, and said, "I think Rush is right. Racism in this country is dead. I don't know what the niggers will find to gripe about now."

Godspeed, Molly.

Amen, brother

The whole "Mary Cheney's baby" thing has been fascinating, hasn't it? It's just another layer of frosting on the cake that is Mary Cheney's lesbianism in the first place. How galling it must be for those right-wing crapweasels to have a perverted selfish hedonist smack dab in the middle of that nest of vipers called the Cheney family.

Of course, Lynne and Dick haven't exactly charged to their daughter's defense, and Mary herself has been even worse - taking the right-wing's money, both at Coors and from her own father's campaign, and staying silent when it came to standing up to the elements in her father's party that abhor her very existence.

As usual, other people say it more eloquently than I can - in this case, it's Dan Savage. Preach it, brother!

Screw him

Molly Ivins died just a few days after she revealed that her cancer had come back for a third time. I'm surprised at how much this hurts. I don't have a lot of words at this point, so I'll turn it over to Tbogg commenter D. Sidhe, who responded to Dean Esmay's despicable display of hatred thusly:

Of course I'm sure all of this will just go into the hopper as proof of Dean's little thesis that the left is full of angry people like Molly Ivins. But you know what? Screw him. How dare he demean Molly's anger, her completely legitimate anger, at what he and his boy Bush and the rest of the people like him have done to her--and our--country? Of course she was angry. These jackasses are tearing our entire country apart, and have spent the last six years calling us traitors for even noticing it, who wouldn't be angry about that? Jesus Christ, Dean, if you thought we were destroying the country you loved, wouldn't you be angry? You even seem plenty angry at the moment, to say that kind of thing about a woman who's just died, and you're on top. Do me a favor, and remember how you felt during the Clinton years. Now remember how angry you got when you found a couple of idiots in blogs somewhere saying nasty things when Reagan died, and then go shut the hell up. Damned straight we're angry. We're angry you morons forced an immature little bully on us, and angry you forced a vicious, destructive, pointless war on us, and angry you've made us less safe, not more, and gotten literally uncountable numbers of people killed doing it, and angry as hell you've been treating us like traitors and hysterics for being pissed off about it. You're a nasty little boy who pulls the wings off of flies and laughs when they buzz helplessly around in the dirt, just like your bullying president. Molly knew that from the start. That's why you're glad she's dead, because she knew that and she never stopped saying it. And all of her anger was nothing to what you people have done to us, all of us, as a planet. My biggest regret is she will never get the chance to see Bush impeached, and jailed, like the war criminal he is. And I'm going to work even harder to make sure that happens, because you, and all of the rest of you pricks who are saying evil things about her today, deserve to be dragged out into the light and shown for what you are and what you've done. You've hurt Molly's country, and my country, and our entire world, and if we have to pin it all to your foreheads to make sure you can't do it again in another twenty years, we'll do just that.

I never met Molly. But I miss her so damned bad it aches. And I didn't want to know what the bastards were saying about her, because it hurts. But, you know, I'm glad I know. Because it made me angry, and I'm going to use that anger to help restore the country she loved.