People love it when you lose

South of the border, the midterm election campaign season is finally grinding to a harrowing halt.  Some of the networks have already started their coverage of what’s expected to be a painful rout with majority Democrats getting beaten like a gong by a foaming-at-the-mouth GOP Class of 2010 (some of whom don’t believe in public schools).  Everyone loves a rumble… let the good times roll.

And afterwards, a month of analytic frenzy during which the hovering media will pick at the corpse of the Democratic majority to see if the entrails reveal What Went Wrong. Were the Democrats too liberal?  Too conservative?  Too moderate?  Too insistent on pursuing common ground with a pugnacious opposition whose only goal was uncompromising partisanship and aggressive self-promotion?

It’s the economy, stupid.  Don’t let anyone tell you any different.

If unemployment was at 4.5% and the Dow was at 14000, the Dems would be sailing back into office with maybe even a few extra seats.  Prosperity doesn’t bring out the angry-shouty in people like economic hardship does.  So really, it’s not too surprising that things are breaking badly for the Democrats this election cycle.

What is surprising, even amazing, is how deftly the authors of the economic cataclysm have managed to sidestep any of the material that’s hit the fiscal fan.   A fan that they, after all, were responsible for turning on.  Instead, they’re somehow the ones in the white hats, riding in to the rescue.

You’d almost think they knew this was coming, and it’s why they neglected to get more viable candidates in 2008.

Nah.

?

(*adjusts tinfoil hat*)

US election in a nutshell

Rally to Restore Sanity wins right-wing hearts & minds

Is it possible that conservatives were touched by the harmonious sentiments driving the Rally to Restore Sanity? Do I detect the setting aside of ideological differences and coming together in mutual respect as they disembark the Crazy Train to board the Peace Train?

When swine sprout wings and take to the sky.

Rally to Restore Sanity

All aboard!

Jon Stewart’s closing speech:

I wish I could believe that some on the “other side” would take Stewart’s words to heart, but I fear that USians are in for some interesting times, in the Chinese proverb sense.

A vote of confidence, it’s not

How quickly the the worm turns.  This tweet from last night is just sad:

“Lost cause”:  now there’s a ringing endorsement.

UPDATE: Sore loser gets all sore loser-y:

Ronald McDonald, GOP shill

McWow!

Employees at a McDonald’s in Ohio recently got a Payday Surprise tucked in with their paychecks — a pamphlet from the Big Boss telling them that if they want to keep getting raises and benefits (and maybe paychecks) they better vote GOP:

Along with their recent paychecks, employees received a pamphlet from their employer on company letter head that stated “as the election season is here, we wanted you to know which candidates will help our business grow in the future.” While pointing out that the vote is the employee’s “personal decision,” the pamphlet explicitly states, “if the right people are elected we will be able to continue with raises and benefits at or above our present levels. If others are elected we will not”:

No, really:

Can you say McCorporatocracy?

UPDATE: Can you say “walk it back”?:

In response to inquiries, Paul Siegfried, the owner of Siegfried Enterprises which owns the Canton McDonalds, released a statement confessing to an “error in judgement,” and offered a hedged apology to “those that I have offended.”

“Those that I have offended” — which would be anyone with even a modicum of professional ethics, awareness of elections law and a functioning brain stem.  The full statement is here.  It doesn’t refute any of the statements about raises and benefits being threatened by the election of Democrats — yet another meaningless “I’m sorry you were offended” steaming load of a non-apology from a sleazy shit-eating douchebag who’s probably only sorry he got caught.  I hope his staff all walks off the job on Saturday afternoon.

 

Live & Learn, indelible edition

Certain kinds of conventional wisdom that are just a matter of survival instinct for most people sometimes have to be learned through tragic experience by others.   Among these would be “Never have a disagreement with a friend and then let him give you a tat where you can’t see what he’s doing”. Do I even have to tell you what’s coming?:

A Queensland man faces criminal charges after allegedly tattooing a 40cm-long penis onto his mate’s back.  [...]

Police said the pair had a disagreement before the tattooing.

‘‘The victim wasn’t interested (in a tattoo) at first but he was talked into it and he said he wanted a Yin and Yang symbol with some dragons,’’ Detective Malcolm told the Queensland Times today.  [...]

‘‘When he got home he showed it to the person he lives with and she said: ‘I dont think it’s the tattoo you were after’.’’

Oh, to be a fly on the wall during the proud unveiling of this guy’s awesome yin/yang-dragon tattoo.  Bwahaa!

(via BoingBoing)

A propaganda bridge too far

People might have bought into the “McCain’s Black Baby” story and even the “Saddam’s Weapons of Mass Destruction” story, but Karl Rove might be pushing the propaganda envelope with this.

In the final days of a monstrous election cycle, burnout is rearing its ugly head in some ghastly ways.

Black Bloc to attend Jon Stewart’s rally

Million Moderate March or Million Molotov March?:

Jon Stewart has called for a Rally to Restore Sanity in Washington, DC – later termed the “Million Moderate March”. We say: fuck moderation, let’s dance! Join the Million Molotov March as we party our way through a veritable sea of mediocre leftists on the 30th!

You know us: we’re those angry people in black who hate everything and always ruin perfectly civil protests by wearing bandannas and bringing banners with militant, weird, and sometimes nonsensical messaging. Now’s your time to join the party!

And they must be serious about it because they’re on Twitter, the cornerstone of all bigtime political activity.

(h/t Reason Hit&Run)

 

Will Sarah step up?

In light of all the vicious teaparty rhetoric that lately seems to be escalating into actual violence (including, but not limited to, Monday night’s curbstomping of a young woman by a Rand Paul supporter), Media Matters founder David Brock is calling on Sarah Palin to distance herself from Glenn Beck.  Beck’s spittle-flecked ravings are the source of inspiration for much of the bad craziness and spiraling violence from the frenzied tea party constituency.  While Brock concedes that Beck is probably a hopeless case, as defacto leader of the tea party (and the GOP for that matter) and someone possibly positioning herself to run for President in 2012, Palin probably has more influence over the tea party and could put a leash on the rabid Beckweiler:

However, as one of Beck’s biggest boosters, is a respected leader in the GOP and conservative movement, and Fox’s own star contributor, we think Palin is well positioned to pull Beck back from his current course, to hold him accountable for his reckless words. Palin’s credibility as a leader relies on more than just endorsing candidates and an uncanny knack for making headlines. It requires a moral compass she repeatedly says she possesses to make this country a better, safer place to live for all Americans.

Brock discussed this issue on Lawrence O’Donnell’s show on Tuesday:

Among Palin’s brainless internet gibberish, there’s been no mention of either the Rand Paul nor the Tides Foundation incidents, nor any unequivocal condemnation of violence.

Yet.

UPDATE: Surprise!

Countdown: If the Tea Party wins, America loses

Olbermann had a few choice words tonight for disappointed Democratic voters who might still be planning to sit on their hands next Tuesday:

Bill Maher had it right when he said “There’s a big difference between a disappointing friend and a deadly enemy”.

 

Batshit in America – Curbstomper Edition

Shorter Tim “Curbstomper” Profitt:   “I demand an apology from Lauren Valle for getting her neck in the way of my boot!“

(h/t - JAB)

Rand Paul curbstomp brigade

Teabaggers KKKeep it KKKlassy!  Check out what happened tonight outside a Rand Paul/Jack Conway debate, when a douchebagger teabagger Paul supporter stomped a woman’s head.  That’s right, stomped a woman’s head.

Mark my words, it won’t be long before these brainless cretins kill someone.  And it’ll be the Lamestream Media’s fault.

Hey, ho, way to go, Toronto

WTF?

It was a night of jubilation for Rob Ford, and a night of momentous change for Canada’s largest city.

Good grief.  Our most world-class city has a mayor that looks like Boss Hogg with a bad bleach job.

Seriously…

Separated at birth?

UPDATE: On a more serious philosophical note, I thought this was worth a retweet last night:

DKos Hatemail-a-palooza

It’s that time again!  Taste the KKKrazy:

Why is it that so many of these liberty-loving freedom ferrets want nothing more fervently than to JAIL their political opposition?  I’ll leave you to ponder on that.

And don’t forget to vote!

 

New car caviar 4-star daydream

If it’s Saturday morning, it must be Econ Geek time!

*Sigh*  Yes, I’ll be right upfront about this:  I’m an economic ignoramus. I’m only vaguely cognizant of the basic philosophical differences between Keynesians (government good), Chicagoans (government bad) and Austrians (government?), but that’s about it.  (I myself subscribe to the up-and-coming Chickeynstrian school, haha. Ha.)

But as bad as “economic ignoramus” might sound, it’s actually an improvement from the days when I was an economic moran, so progress is being made.  I do a little day-trading, a fun little hobby that quickly drove home the sombre reality that as a matter of survival it was incumbent upon me to learn more about the vast and sleazy interconnected web of plutocratic conspiracy and criminal insanity that is Finance & Economy.  So I started trying to educate myself by reading commentary from a wide range of sources about the state of the economy today.  Some of it puts me to sleep, and some of it piques my interest.

I found an essay of the interest-piquing kind on the new libertarian blog “the Volunteer“. Those of you who didn’t stop reading as soon as you saw the word “libertarian” should check it out — it’s a thoughtful, scary, and probably, realistic assessment of the economic numbers game.

Aaaaaaand a little background music to enrich the reading experience:

Violent revolution: it’s what’s on the table

Another perfectly sane and rational GOP candidate has surfaced, and while he doesn’t appear to be directly advocating for the violent overthrow of the government, he considers the possibility “on the table”:

Texas GOP congressional candidate Stephen Broden has found himself in the spotlight after suggesting that the government may well need to be overthrown. In an interview this week, Broden was asked if he was actually calling for violence against the government when he told a crowd of Tea Party supporters last year that the “tyrannical” Obama administration might justify a “revolution.” If any government destroys our liberty, Broden replied, “we have a right… to get rid of it by any means necessary.”

You have to wonder if these people were the guinea pigs in some foul secret experiment that subjected them to a lobotomizing process and erased All Memory prior to January 2009.

The Obama administration is way far from perfect, but where were the baggers when George W was pissing all over their liberty and crapping on their beloved Constitution with disgusting policies like the suspension of civil liberties, invasion of privacy, outrageously broad expansion of Executive power, renditioning, torture, etc.?  (Initiatives that for the most part Obama has yet to rescind, I might add.)  Dick “Deficits Don’t Matter” Cheney shows up at a CPAC shindig packed to the rafters with teabagging fools and instead of being greeted with a volley of rotten tomatoes (and maybe some shoes), he’s received like a homecoming hero.  What is wrong with these people??

But I digress.  Which in itself just goes to show you how far down Bad Craziness Boulevard right-wing America has careened, that a candidate can casually talk up violent overthrow of government and it’s become so commonplace that it’s hardly worth the effort of a blog post.  Yeah yeah, violent revolution, 2nd amendment remedies, I’ll take you out, whatever.

 

Friday Floyd

The story of Pompeii, which appears to have been a thriving Roman city until it was destroyed by the sudden volcanic eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79AD, has fascinated me since I first learned about it in grade school.   The lava and ash spewed by Vesuvius froze in tableau a city going about its daily grind: working, playing, sleeping, perusing a little pron, enjoying restaurant meals, relaxing with a beer (or whatever they drank in those days). Like this guy:

At least that’s what it looks like to me

Some Pompeiians also appear to have been running away from the monstrous lava-and-light show on the mountain nearby, but most of them perished, pets and all…

…and the city lay quietly under metres of ash and lava until it was rediscovered over 1500 years later.

In 1972, Pink Floyd put the Pompeii amphitheatre to good use with a concert featuring music from a new album called “Meddle”.  I can’t think of a better backdrop for a song like “Echoes”:

President Obama: It Gets Better

Also, check out the Trevor Project website, it’s amazing.

Feminist bloggers lawyer up

Oh, the ups and downs of those wild and wooly Canadian Blog Awards.

What once seemed like an insurmountable challenge fraught with trauma and tragedy was accomplished in less than 24 hours by a squeaky little wheel and J.Kleiman, the lawblogger who’s running the CBA show this year.

Look!  Lookee!  Oh, look!!!

You can vote for all the categories at the link.

Many thanks to Fern “Squeakywheel” Hill for getting the ball rolling and J.Kleiman for cutting through the bullshit and doing what had to be done.  (Also thanks to Fern Hill for nominating me, truly an unexpected surprise this year. Thank you for being a friend;))

Batshit in America: Most deranged anti-abortion election ad evah!

Not to be left out of the most insane election campaign season in the USA’s history, the adorable crackpots at “Personhood USA“, who think embryos should have passports for that trip down the birth canal, have released an election commercial of such brain-damaged magnitude that it eclipses even their impressively psychotic standards.  Stand back!  Deploy umbrellas before clicking “play”, because the spittle flies right off the screen, and it is copious:

Obama, the President who allowed the most important initiative of his first term, and maybe of his career, to be torn to shreds by anti-choicers in his own caucus, the President who issued an Executive Order banning abortion funding by the Health Care plan, is the “Angel of Death”, awash in “abortion industry blood money” (can’t wait to see who arrives here on that search string).

Which really goes to show how utterly pointless it is to negotiate with these people or even give them an inch.

No point.  None.  Zero, zip, nada.

I fully expect that there will be a significant contingent of teabaggers and terrified teabagger-pretenders in the House and Senate on November 3 (or technically, January 21st), which will be great for comedians and bloggers, but not so great for the country.  But on the upside, it also means that after 2 years of virulent douchebaggery and dumbness from elected teabaggers, Obama will probably trounce his opponent in 2012, even especially if it’s Sarah Palin (oh please, please oh please…).  At which point he should take Bill Maher’s advice about the word  “bipartisanship”:

Here’s a word President Obama should take out of his Teleprompter: Bipartisanship. People only care about that in theory, not in practice. The best thing that happened this year is when Obama finally realized that and said: “Kiss my black ass, we’re going it alone George W. Bush style.”

Operation Rescue promotes Tiller documentary

Operation Rescue, the anti-abortion extremists whose decades-long campaign of harassment, demonization and terror against Dr. George Tiller culminated with his assassination last year, (although they had nothing, nothing to do with it, nothing at all!), is upset, or has hurt feelings or some bullshit.

Old design -- wonder why they changed it

Apparently this sleazy little gang of embryo-infatuated psychotics and born-again dingbats is all fired up about the upcoming MSNBC documentary on Dr. Tiller’s murder.  Yes, that’s upcoming, as in they haven’t even seen it yet because it doesn’t air until Monday night (9pm eastern, be there or be square), but they’re already falling to the fainting couches in the frenzied throes of a collective persecution high.

OR’s head foetishist, Troy Newman, gave an interview for the documentary — because what documentary about Dr. Tiller’s murder would be complete without an interview with his Terrorizer-and-Demonizer-in-Chief? — but OR is clearly already preparing for a good persecution buzz.  The prevailing expectation is that they will be “vilified” by the pro-abort radical Rachel Maddow, to which I say Good: what goes around comes around, see how Dr.Tiller felt for years while you brain-damaged sickos were vilifying him. (The big difference of course is that the Operation Rescue creeps don’t need to worry about some nutcase giving them two behind the ear as a direct result of the vilification.)  Oh yeah, and boo hoo hoo:

“We agreed to do the show — even though we knew they would vilify us — because we had a third story to tell, and that is the story of the tens of thousands of innocent babies killed by abortion during Tiller’s long and checkered abortion career,” said Newman.

OR’s brainless little diatribe winds up with a reminder to tune in to MSNBC at 9pm Monday (check your local listings!).  Can you imagine the tsunami of caps-locked emails storming onto the MSNBC servers at 10pm?  Maybe Rachel will feature some of the “best” ones on the next day’s show!

Operation Rescue’s part in Dr. Tiller’s assassination is an unresolved issue that they’d rather would just stay that way.  Programs like the MSNBC documentary and persistent hammering at the issue by news commentators like Rachel Maddow (and to a lesser degree, tenacious pro-choice bloggers) are the only things that stand between them and a total Get Out Of Jail Free card on the Tiller murder, and free reign to continue their campaign of terror against other doctors.

(h/t Maddowblog)

Discouraged Dems…

A public service announcement:

 

 

Law & Order, Human Garbage Unit

Ripped from the headlines!

***********************************

In the criminal justice system, the people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups of garbage collectors: the police, who take out the human garbage, and the crown attorney, who locks it in the dump.

These are their stories.

***********************************

ZOMFG, Officer Bubbles lawyered up!??:

A Toronto police officer whose stiff upper lip made him an inadvertent YouTube sensation and a symbol of police heavy-handedness at the G20 protests has launched a $1.2-million defamation lawsuit against the website.

Constable Adam Josephs was nicknamed “Officer Bubbles” after a video surfaced of him online admonishing a young protester during the summit for blowing bubbles.

The target of Constable Josephs’s lawsuit isn’t the original video, but a series of cartoons posted on YouTube over the following weeks that depict a policeman resembling the officer engaging in various acts of police abuse of power.

Well after all, even a goddamn werewolf is entitled to legal counsel.

But this is a little silly:  the media is still calling Josephs “Officer Bubbles”, even as they report this story, which tells me that the news is being greeted with guffaws and hoots of derision all around.

I’m not a lawyer, nor do I play one on TV, but I suspect Officer Bubbles’ attorney could have an exceedingly tough row to hoe, given the plaintiff’s own absurd turn as an overly enthusiastic cog in the supersized security machine at the G20 protests.  Police were already looking a little heavyhanded, more so now that so many of the protesters arrested without cause in what amounted to a law enforcement hippie-punching hullabaloo have been cleared. Josephs’ combative response to a little flake who was blowing bubbles at him so aggressively just screams and cries to be satirized. Watching the confrontation on video, I can almost hear the distant call… “Gentlemen! Start your ComicLife!”

Ironically, the latest episode in the Life & Times of Officer Bubbles, Human Garbage Unit, will probably unleash a whole new spate of creativity.  It takes more than a Nuisance Lawsuit to obstruct the flow of the Creative Process.

AFTERTHOUGHT: This lawsuit seems so asinine and foolish, I’m starting to wonder if its real purpose is to “out” the offending cartoonist to Officer Bubbles.  Hmmm…

From the Department of Us & Them

More on this miraculous feat of engineering here.