Whiskey Fire

They Never Make a Scene By Hanging All Over Me In a Crowd

by Ripley

In an effort to boost US keyboard and monitor industry sales, I offer this (via Southern Beale at First Draft):

Behind the locked doors of the chamber that was surrounded by more than one dozen police, Rush Limbaugh watched as his bust for the Capitol’s Hall of Famous Missourians was unveiled on Monday, May 14.

Shortly after the unveiling, however, Gov. Jay Nixon’s administration issued a document raising questions about the House speaker’s authority to handpick whose bust can be placed in the Capitol rotunda.

The unveiling of Limbaugh’s bust was kept secret from all but invited guests until less than an hour before the ceremony.

While Republican lawmakers were invited, Democrats were not and visitors were blocked from entering. All but one of the doors to the House chamber were locked with armed Highway Patrol and Capitol Police patrolling the hallways outside the chamber.

Cowards and crybabies, daddy-o! It's the 21st Century Republican party at their finest.

 

Rip -

 

AMERICA!

AMERICA! DO YOU LOVE IT!

Dennis Prager says that Mitt Romney loves America do, based upon Mitt's exhortations to Liberty College graduates.

It is I suppose cheering that people who believe one class of crazy bullshit are able to set aside their differences with people who believe another class of crazy bullshit in order to hate on gay people. Like, yay.

On Saturday, Mitt Romney delivered a speech to the 6,000 Liberty College graduates.

It was an important speech, not only because it seems to have closed the gap between Romney and evangelical Christians but also because it spelled out major themes in Mitt Romney's understanding of America.

"We all hate gays."

Romney: "You know who you are. And you know whom you will serve. Not all colleges instill that kind of confidence . . . ."

This is a truism. Most American universities seek to graduate men and women who are as committed to secularism as nearly all the members of faculty are. In contrast, at traditional Christian and Jewish schools, the aim is, as Romney said, to produce students who know "whom [they] will serve."

What Romney is asking is this: If one is not morally accountable to God, to whom or what is one morally accountable? Most universities will respond: to one's conscience. But those who adhere to Judeo-Christian values do not trust the conscience alone. What Nazi or Communist mass murderer was not at peace with his conscience? The conscience is as easily manipulated as the heart (the heart being the other guide to behavior among most college graduates).

The fuck...?

Mostly I yell about comma splices. I apologize for Treblinka (?).

Did he just say "if you get a college degree in America, you are as much a dupe as if you were a Nazi, because that's the same thing"?

He did.

This is weird. "Genocide is bad" does not require any motherfucking Seal of Moral Approval. 

Wingnuts Is Weird

If you wish to take issue with my contention that the American right wing is comprised primarily of vengeful baby-brained geeks, I dare you to avoid gawking in fascinated, gape-mouthed revulsion as  Buttmissile spikes an imaginary football and does a ghastly, excessively prancey victory dance because of how good Conservatives are at rocking the Twitter machine.

We are in the early stages of the 2012 campaign season, with a lot of battlespace preparation going on. In the skirmishing so far, one perhaps surprising media advantage has become clear: the right is clobbering the left on Twitter.

Maybe it’s because Twitter puts a premium on brevity and cleverness. I don’t know. But for some reason, it seems to be a natural medium for conservatives.

I don't doubt it...

Buttmissile thinks this class of thing is extremely "clever":

Currently, the White House is promoting #AskMichelle, where loyal Democrats can go to ask the First Lady a question. Only nearly all of the questions have come from conservatives. A sampling:

When you vacation in Hawaii, can you see the rise of the oceans beginning to slow?
What’s up this week for the @BarackObama campaign and “Operation Change the Subject” (to anything except the economy)?
Do you still exchange May Day cards with Bill and Bernadette?
Do you think your daughters should request affirmative actions preferences?
Do you still get Christmas cards from the Rezkos and Blagojeviches?
So who succeeded you at that critical, highly important $300k/year community outreach job at UC hospital?
I have several friends who specialize in relocation. Shall I give them your number so they can help you relocate in January?

I asked Mrs. Obama this question:

Any comment on the Oprah vs. Michelle excerpt from The Amateur in the New York Post this morning?

Clever.

We were talking a few weeks ago about right-wing humor, and here it is: mean-spirited inside jokes about the ridiculous details of paranoid conspiratorial bullshit.

If this is getting "clobbered," well then, getting "clobbered" is a lot like having a gang of shrieking malicious toddlers flick boogers at your ankles. This isn't an electoral "battlefield"; it's a mashup of Barney and Friends and Lord of the Flies.

Don't You Ever Look Back

So, graduation season, and here is a colossal asshole.

Dear Class of 2012:

Allow me to be the first one not to congratulate you.

Well, fuck you right back. Who are you, anyhow? Oh wait -- someone who knows fuck-all about jack shit.

Follow that last link.

Enjoy the Privilege.

The sheer bloody cheek, this pampered snot applauding the cheerfulness of the lower orders in defense of shit.

German Village Bushes and Trees II

Section I: Carmi's Thematic Photographic 195, Part Deux

The famous Hibiscus, which was discovered by Christopher Columbus right here in Columbus in 1492.

Section II: Musical Interlude

HALPING JENNIFER SECTION:

(Posted by ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© and cross-posted at my place. Mouse over pics for captions, and click them for larger versions.)

~

Fat Black Gas Exudes, Boogaloo Too, Preliminaries

It Isn't Quite Ready, It's Only 5:30. One may be forgiven for supposing that nothing good could ever result from the emanation of a Jonah Goldberg "book." But one would be wrong.

As it happens, there exists an entire universe of activities that are "not reading a Jonah Goldberg book," and the overwhelming majority of these activities might be classified as "far preferable to reading a Jonah Goldberg book." And, remarkably, one of these activities includes "productive work."

BELIEVE IT OR NOT.

It's remarkable. The Internet by and large owes its success to its unsurpassed capacity to act as a Huge Distracting Thing, but put a Jonah Goldberg book anywhere near it, and Good Lord, suddenly you'd rather do quadratic equations, or use 1980s vintage encyclopedias to figure out upon what sea Albania verges, the chief features of its topography, and what its principal mineral resource just might constitute.*

You'd almost rather... work.

I know! Wild!

So, Jonah Goldberg could end procrastination as we know it. Huzzah!

But then, here we are.

I mean, in the interests of Having a Real Argument (we'll get to this, interminably), and To Be Fair (same thing), I will concede that the universe of activities preferable to "reading a Jonah Goldberg book" also includes "violently sticking a shrimp fork up your nostril."

And yeah, that often comes in second to working. By a nose. Hahahahaha.

What I mean is, kill me, I am going to read a Jonah Goldberg book.

Like, personally, this is akin to being handed a Sorcerous Object that informs you I open at the close....

Ugh, too geeky.

More butchly, for those about to mock, but are taking their time about it, we excuse you. Have a wee drinky drink, thanks awfully, don't mind if I do...

The colossus crawls. See, while I am procrastinating, I am going to read and review the whole frightful mess; this blog exists for the purpose of performing suchlike unholy enterprises, after all.

But I'm not proposing to buy the fucking thing.

I'm going to wait until it shows up at the local Barnes & Noble, read it there, sneeze on it, and then put it back on the shelf. It hasn't shown up yet. Checked yesterday. When it does, I will duly read n' sneeze.

So, then...

... uh...

... specifically, what, the perceptive reader may axe (and by "perceptive reader" I certainly don't mean you, redsnout), are you, Thers, procrastinating over, precisely, if it is not reading this Jonah Goldberg "book"?

Well, that is a good question, if posed rather rudely, and by the way, it is pronounced "ask," not "axe," you disgusting ill-educated filth-talker, your mother was a saint for not having you drowned at birth as a hopeless ill-spoken misfortunate.

Sorry. Lashing out.

I'm balking at an exploration of the Notices Thus Far, the appalling tedium of which ought to render my hasitency completely explicable.

The trouble I see....

A very heavy load. Oh Sweet Lord, is there ever so much hurting, it is deadly....

There's already so much tedious crap out there -- Goldberg's ponderously stupid disaster of an NPR interview, and the reviews -- where there is much hilarity. The sad git actually links to a glowing notice at something called The New York Journal of Books, which is kind of like bragging about the $4000 Swiss Watch you were shrewd enough to swindle a Bowery street vendor out of for twelve bucks and the rest of your hot dog.

The "New York Journal of Books."

I can't believe that exists, but it does. How can you even satirize these people?

HOW!

Next time you get sick you'll know. Well, it is Jonah Goldberg, the Laziest Man on Earth, whose Martian counterpart, Dropo, is filled with shame at the undignified comparison.

Here is (I shit you not) Jonah responding to even the mildest of criticisms:

I’ll get around to responding to his response when I have a second to catch my breath. I am underwhelmed.

I’m sorry for the quick rapid fire links, but I am quite simply exhausted. Also the Goldberg household is a depressing place at the moment as both my wife and daughter have been felled by terrible colds.

Aram Bakshian is mostly pleased with my effort, but there are few digs in there as well. I’ll take it.

When less exhausted and less pressed for time, I will probably respond.

"Dear National Review. My son Jonah's Very Serious Book just appeared. He is allergic to knowing what is in his books so please don't ask him questions that are hard or he will have hives. He has a Doctor's Note. Please excuse him from phys ed classes and give him a stipend."

BORED NOW. Goldberg wanks like no one else. Holy God.

*"Albania, Albania, you border on the Adriatic/ Your land is mostly mountainous/ Your main export is chrome."

We?

The sociology that one encounters in the NYT lifestyle pages is ironclad and unassailable.

IN the sprawling outskirts of San Jose, Calif., I find myself at the apartment door of Katherine Ziegler, a psychologist and wantologist. Could it be, I wonder, that there is such a thing as a wantologist, someone we can hire to figure out what we want? Have I arrived at some final telling moment in my research on outsourcing intimate parts of our lives, or at the absurdist edge of the market frontier?...

Consider some recent shifts in language. Care of family and friends is increasingly referred to as “lay care.” The act of meeting a romantic partner at a flesh-and-blood gathering rather than online is disparaged by some dating coaches as “dating in the wild.”

Or not.

I submit that while it may be lucrative to write articles based upon the opinions of "life coaches" or "dating coaches," this is all my bum.

Why not just get pissed off!

As Michael J. Sandel, a Harvard professor of government, notes, a prison cell upgrade can be purchased for $82 a day in Santa Ana, Calif., and for $8 solo drivers in Minneapolis can buy access to car pool lanes on public roadways.

Gosh. What an intersting and totally isolated phenomenon.

 

I Am Skeptic (and Disappoint)

If you're not watching "Up with Chris Hayes" start doing so. Immediately. That combined with the follow-on, "Melissa Harris-Perry" are the four most thoughtful, intelligent hours on television. (No, I do not have time to watch all four hours, alas.)

I'm disappointed I missed the entire interview with Jonathan Haidt, who wrote the book "The Righteous Mind" and whom I suspect is filled to the brim with shit. Of course, when you want to broach a subject like this, you quickly find yourself in a weird position because the whole point of the book is that liberals and conservatives are emotional creatures who suspect something to be true, then work to find evidence that their suspicions are true. Which is not entirely unfair. Here's where it is unfair: I think liberals right off the bat have more credibility because they believe things that are unpleasant to believe. For instance, I would much prefer to live in a world without climate change. I'd like not to think about it, worry about it or change my habits to accommodate my beliefs. But when the majority of the scientific community says a thing is true, I err on the side of believing it is. Conservatives do not. 

He also contends that conservatives are better at seeing humans for what they really are. HUGE CAVEAT: I have not read the book, so please take everything I say with a boulder of salt. But apparently he uses Ev-psych to back these contentions up, which you may or may not find disturbing. He also--and here's the interesting/creepy thing--claims to have been a liberal before he wrote this book and now claims the mantle of enlightened centrist. He says we have much to learn from conservatives.

Punchline: He specifies that he means "Burkean conservatives. " Huh? Who, pray tell, are these serious, thoughtful Burkean conservatives? Who the FUCK is he talking about? This is why I can't take bothsidesdoitism seriously; you have to twist yourself up into some pretty obscene head-in-ass pretzels to make it work.

 

--vacuumslayer

That's Right My Name's Yauch

In the 1980s I was a snotty New York City teenager. I grew up, in a lot of ways, since then. But also I didn't.

The Beastie Boys are, or were, only a few years older than I am. Their early stuff is snotty adolescent bravado distilled. Their later stuff is better than that, but still... the same stuff, just more complex.

My time, my place. The Beasties are very NYC, always will be. Everyone ought to have a hot summer of saying "fuck you, man" to a damn sweet beat, a hot summer you can ride to the end of your days. Some Beasties tracks are there for me.

Goodnight, MCA.

 

From Hell's Heart I Grift at Thee

Here are some people in the world for whom I currently feel a spectacular absence of sympathy:

Newt Gingrich's creditors.

But this is -- piquant.

Campaign watchdogs said the size of Gingrich's debt is extraordinary -- and could have been avoided if the candidate and his team had been more disciplined.

Perfect comic premise approaching...

Relief can't come soon enough for the Gingrich campaign's anxious creditors. The campaign owes Moby Dick Airways $1.1 million for travel and charter flights

That's just beautiful.

"Moby Dick Airways." The Newt Gingrich campaign owes them bigtime.

A great white whale harpooned by a great white whale gone mad in pursuit of a great white whale. Well, I'm edified.

REVEALED: MUST CREDIT WHISKEY FIRE

Paul Ryan:

 

WHAT HAPPENED, EDDIE!

 

I like Eddie better. But still.

MAS. Via spoilsport thunder, apparently this resemblance has been noted before. But not, it need hardly been mentioned, in such detail or with such care.

A Quick Note on Marketing

Apparently, some folks are more than a little butthurt about Dems finally learning how to market their agenda to Americans. Yes, the "War on Women" is taking its toll on wingnuts, too.

But I think the phrase "War on Women" is genius, and I hope Dems double down on the strategy of using it. It's simple, it's memorable; that it has the benefit of accurately--if a bit hyperbolically--describing a real injustice is just icing on the cake.

I wish progressives and Democrats took the opportunity to frame debates more often. Nine times out of ten, we fight these fights on wingnut terms.

You know what I'd like to see next? I'd like for Dems and liberals to begin saying things like

"I consider it my patriotic duty to pay taxes. Yes, it's patriotic to pay taxes."

or  

"Taxes pay for a civilized society."

These ideas are simple and easy to articulate; there's no excuse not to Luntz these babies, like, yesterday.

Can you imagine a world where Republicans/wingnuts don't have taxes to bleat about?

 

--vacuumslayer

Big Bunny Is Watching

Other Beesness: From the land of B^4 and N__B, a new bee!

"They use humans as a salt lick," said entomologist John Ascher, who netted the first known specimen of the species in 2010 while strolling in Brooklyn's Prospect Park near his home. "They land on your arm and lap up the sweat."

...

These bees prefer sweaty people—over most animals—because the human diet usually is so salty that their perspiration is saturated with the essential nutrient, experts said.

...

In the end, only DNA testing by sweat bee specialist Jason Gibbs at Cornell University could identify its niche. Last November, they announced the discovery of Lasioglossum gotham, in a peer-reviewed journal called Zootaxa. The newbie joined the growing catalog of easily overlooked wild native bees.

(Posted by ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© and cross-posted at my place. Mouse over pics for captions, and click them for larger versions.)

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Hello Fart

I'm going to read the whole thing -- or at least, I will gaze at it, dumbfounded, and then have some whiskey. So there is no point in not examining the early emanations.

One of the great differences between conservatives and liberals is that conservatives will freely admit that they have an ideology. We’re kind of dorks that way, squabbling over old texts like Dungeons and Dragons geeks, wearing ties with pictures of Adam Smith and Edmund Burke on them.

"Conservatives" have an identity politics. "Conservative thought" equals "necktie nerd derby." Precisely.

But mainstream liberals from Franklin Roosevelt to Barack Obama — and the intellectuals and journalists who love them — often assert that they are simply dispassionate slaves to the facts; they are realists, pragmatists, empiricists. Liberals insist that they live right downtown in the “reality-based community,” and if only their Republican opponents weren’t so blinded by ideology and stupidity, then they could work with them.

Yes: wingnuts are wrong.

And "our Republican opponents" are liars.

And...?

This has been a theme of Obama’s presidency from the start. A couple of days before his inauguration,Obama proclaimed: “What is required is a new declaration of independence, not just in our nation, but in our own lives — from ideology and small thinking, prejudice and bigotry” (an odd pronouncement, given that “bigoted” America had just elected its first black president).

!

All right, that was way dumb, I'm skipping ahead...

Oh fuck it, I'm going to sleep.

Oh Why Not

Whatever. Commentary.

Polls have shown that the effort has not been enough to prevent a precipitous drop in his share of the prospective Jewish vote from the 78 percent he garnered in 2008. However, it will probably help him maintain a comfortable majority of Jewish votes in November as most of this predominantly liberal demographic is prepared to either ignore his past history of conflict with Israel or actually believes in the sincerity of his election-year conversion.

"Polls have shown" nothing of the kind.

But this amuses:

it will probably help him maintain a comfortable majority of Jewish votes in November as most of this predominantly liberal demographic is prepared to either ignore his past history of conflict with Israel

Wow. You're an American liberal Jew, clearly you support Obama's "conflict with Israel"... wait, what?

If this made any sort of sense, it would be, uh, sensical?

 

Strictly Comedy

This is wonderful.

The victimization claiming is comical, omigod yes.

But then, to keep perspective.

Name the teenager who commited suicide because of a profound shame at being, deep down, a Christian.

Go ahead.

Black Ghost Pie

Right Blogs are always perplexing and off-putting, but then they discuss race, and one realizes that they probably shouldn't ever talk about anything.

So, here, something stupid.

The Narrative just took a bullet to the chest.

Perhaps inevitably, the story starts with, yes, a dog:

A pit bull named Big Boi began menacing George and Shellie Zimmerman in the fall of 2009.

The first time the dog ran free and cornered Shellie in their gated community in Sanford, Florida, George called the owner to complain. The second time, Big Boi frightened his mother-in-law’s dog. Zimmerman called Seminole County Animal Services and bought pepper spray. The third time he saw the dog on the loose, he called again. An officer came to the house, county records show. “Don’t use pepper spray,” he told the Zimmermans … “Get a gun.”

The policeman suggested he buy a gun. Do the police tell a lot of people they consider irresponsible and dangerous to buy guns? Probably not.

Given that the whole point of the Martin/Zimmerman mess is to do with the potential irresponsibility of law enforcement officers as regards private citizens shooting other private citizens...

Holy Smokes. Why are you loonballs bragging?

It becomes more ghastly.

The 28-year-old insurance-fraud investigator comes from a deeply Catholic background and was taught in his early years to do right by those less fortunate. He was raised in a racially integrated household and himself has black roots through an Afro-Peruvian great-grandfather – the father of the maternal grandmother who helped raise him.

That sound you hear is the press frantically trying to figure out how to update their ethnic style guides — is Zimmerman now a “black white Hispanic?” Or do we use the Obama standard (ever heard our historic POTUS called a “white black?” no you have not), in which case I guess Zimmerman is just… black.

This is so weird.

The only people in Modern America who would ever say that you are Black because of your "Afro-Peruvian great-grandfather" are the sort of people who seriously speak of crap like "octoroons."These people wear pointy white hats and fuck them.

Fuckitty-fuck-fuck.

FUCK.

That sound you hear is the press frantically trying to figure out how to update their ethnic style guides — is Zimmerman now a “black white Hispanic?” Or do we use the Obama standard (ever heard our historic POTUS called a “white black?” no you have not), in which case I guess Zimmerman is just… black.

OMIGOD.

How could there ever be Black and White Hispanics. Gracious.

And...

 

Right.

It's so silly to talk about race and Hispanics because they all look alike.

!

But then you have the idiocy of "Zimmerman's Afro-Peruvian Great-Ancestor Means He Can't Be a Racist."

That's as persuasive as saying, "I can't be guilty of this homophobic murder, because once I let a fag suck my cock."

Further investigation, see, might be in order.

Like Crucifying Oil Company Executives Would Even Be BAD...

All of Greater Wingnuttia is aghast because the EPA has admitted in a Top Secret Video that it wants to quite literally, and not at all figuratively, crucify all the Job Creators in the fossil fuel industry.

The situation is so grave, why, Senator Daniel Inhofe has taken the unprecedented measure of complaining about it, which he just never does, because Inhofe has a long history of never ever not once making up nonsensical reasons to pretend that wealthy oil company executives are the Top Number One Most Oppressed People Ever (MOPEs).

Of course, you could actually watch the video to see that what the EPA guy was talking about was that since his department is underfunded and understaffed it can't really do its job of protecting the environment. Thus, when they catch a company "breaking the law" (actual quote!), they try to make an example of that company that was "breaking the law," so that other companies won't be tempted to "break the law."

So what Inhofe is complaining about is that the EPA is cruelly doing what it can despite its lack of resources to keep oil companies from breaking the law.

Because if oil companies can't break the law, Inhofe has a cry.

Also whining in this regard would be a blog housed at the Heritage Foundation. The Heritage Foundation has chosen to decorate this blog with head shots of two fine young wingnuts smirking like absolute douchebags. Why have they done this? One cannot say. Strange are the ways of the wingnut mind. Anyhow, wow, what a pair of douchebags.

I Want to Ban Horrible Mustaches

This is perhaps not the dumbest thing to ever emanate from the vicinity of John Stossel's head, but it's certainly up there, somewhere.

I don't suggest that we ignore the experts and eat like pigs. But the scientific question should not overshadow the more fundamental issue. Who should decide what you can eat: you? Or the state? Should government decide what we may eat, any more than it decides where we live or how long our hair will be? The Food Police claim that they just want to help us make informed choices. But that's not all they want to do. They try to get government to force us to make healthy choices.

Meanwhile, the Free Market has done a wonderful job of making sure that poorer Americans have for-shit nutritional choices for cheap food.

But you knew that. Here is the throwaway line that turns Stossel's nonsense into Fun:

It is no coincidence that the push for more food regulation came at a time when Congress obsessed about the rising cost of medical care. When government pays for your health care, it will inevitably be drawn into regulating your personal life. First, politicians promise to pay. Then, they propose to control you.

No shit....

So, "Freedom" means that the government should pay the bill for the irresponsible actions of private corporations at the expense of the health of American citizens.

I trust my democracy more than I trust McDonald's Corp.

Or at least the theoretical democracy that remains unsold.

John Stossel also has a dick mustache.

Fat Black Gas Exudes, Boogaloo

The worst thing about Liberal Fascism: You Have to Be Shitting Me, This Got Published? was that it was incredibly boring.

I remarked on this at the time. Roy had the best explanation for why this might be, namely, that the whole godawful mess was nothing but a mindlessly, interminably sustained regurgitation of hoary self-pleasuring totally new-millenium yet dustily-pedigreed commonplace godawful right-wing American wingnut horseshit.

The one thing the book utterly wasn't, and remains isn't, and will never be, world without end, would be "scholarship." Though it was indeed quite close to genuinely painful, and not comical, watching Goldberg's apparently sincerely held aspirations to the contrary dashed, the poor dope. (It was, in the heel of the windup, comical.)

Goldberg's brand-spacklin'-new Tyranny of Cliche is, rumor has it, his Revenge at having everyone laugh at his stupid first book. Perhaps Dame Rumor is in this regard misinformed; I've been paying less attention to the dummy than I previously used. But his dinky log-roll blog about the book does suggest some resentment, complete with the usual boomerang haymakers.

But this is this class of Incisive Thought that impresses:

For instance, one phrase that drives me crazy that we hear from politicians of all stripes is “Einstein defined insanity as ‘doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

First of all does anyone know if he really said that?

Second, this is absurd. You know a better word for “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”?

“Practice.”

A mean-spirited reader would tell him about (a) Google, and (b) the long, dreadful history of airplane food jokes.

Please don't! It is kinder thus.

But Sweet Fuckme Cheeseus, you can read the Introduction for free. It boldly defies cliche by beginning with a quote from Orwell.

The burden is that Progressives are stupid for thinking that Social Security shouldn't be fucked with, because Thomas Friedman is a dick and that Conservatives are Honest.

Srsly.

And I'll have to read the rest of this shit. I can do no less for my Readers.

SEND WHISKEY NOW.