And you wonder why reporters drink

It's not enough that most of us work long, hard hours for crap wages in a dying industry that is constantly criticized by people who don't know what they are talking about most of the time, or that we are constantly being pushed to lower our professional standards, dumb down coverage or devote time to writing about idiotic crap instead of real news.

People in the news business with those problems are the lucky ones. In a lot of places, writing the truth about what is going on around you, can get you killed.

As depressing as this story is, the comments are downright frightening.

Journalist deaths hit record in 2009: report
Michelle Nichols
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The number of journalists killed around the world in 2009 rose to a record 68 after a massacre in the Philippines, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said on Thursday.The press freedom group said the 2009 tally compared to 42 deaths in 2008 and surpassed the previous record of 67 deaths in 2007 -- when violence was at its worst in Iraq, which had been the deadliest country for journalists for six years.

CC shows us how Canada's Lowest Common Dominatrix (a term coined by PSA) and her Stormfront farm team get their jollies off dead journalists, too. Apparently, having someone look around and tell people when the government or other powerful people are trying to screw them is a terrible, terrible thing to some idiots on the right and shooting the messenger seems sensible to them, mostly because they are batshit crazy. Talk about hating freedom...the mind boggles at some of the comments. I don't want to say that Kate McMillan and her gang of flying monkeys are the worst people in the world--they probably aren't out there setting fire to children on a daily basis or anything-- but they are certainly among the worst people on the internet.

What they fail to understand is that everything they know about the world around them is the result of a reporter doing their job. The only reason they know enough about what goes on in Ottawa or Washington or Afghanistan to criticize the decisions being made is because they saw a reporter on TV telling them about it or read a story in the newspaper. Those on the right that fear the government is going to take their guns or complain that it is wasting their money - where the hell do they think that information comes from? the government? And spare the "the blogs will replace newspapers/radio/TV news" bullshit. No "citizen journalist" is going to spend 50 hours a week, 50 weeks a year sitting through government committee meetings for the thrill of being the first on the internet to report that taxes are going up 1.8% or that the government is looking at establishing a rutabega marketing board.

I'll admit that the press doesn't always do its job as well as it should, but the journalists on that list are not dead because they were lazy or biased or crappy writers. Journalism is one of the few jobs in which people die not because they made a mistake, but because they did their jobs very well.

As people in a democracy get the government they deserve, so too do consumers get the media they deserve in a capitalist free-market. You want to know why the cable networks and news magazines are full of bullshit stories about Michael Jackson's plastic surgery or Paris Hilton's latest panty-flash or reports about water-skiing squirrels? Because that crap sells. Because reading about what the government is doing about the deficit is borrrrrrrring! Because consumers want mind-candy, not difficult to process information that might make them uncomfortable.

"Don't show me starving children in Africa or the government violating the constitution, then I'll feel bad because I'm not doing anything about it, it's depressing. I want good news!"

Nobody really cares that Tiger Woods slept with a bunch of women and fucked up his marriage, we just like to see that rich, successful people have the same problems as the rest of us. Nobody wants their opinion challenged, they want to know they were right all along -- that's why FOX News is making a fortune telling idiots that Obama really is a marxist muslim from Kenya and that illegal aliens are plotting to impregnate their daughters just so they can be forced to get an abortion. They knew it all along!

If you don't like the stories you see in the press because you think they are stupid and pointless, write the editor and tell them to quit publishing trivia. Believe me, the reporter who is sent out to cover the waterskiing squirrel would much rather be doing something that matters. If you don't like the stories you see in the press because you think the reporter hasn't done his job and has messed up the information, write the editor and complain. Make the media do a better job, because an informed electorate is essential in a democracy and the only way for it to be informed is by having a free press that does its job.

Reporters who do their job well are not the problem. Consumers who reward media organizations for not doing their jobs, who demand more eye candy and less real information about important things, are the problem.

And if you are one of the knuckle-dragging blar-har-har nitwits who like to cheer for reporters dying on the job, well, fuck you very much. Thanks for doing all you do to make the world a worse place.

then they came for the hyperbolic and paranoid...

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Highway to Health - Last Tea Party Protest of the Year
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

For those who can't see the clip, it's from the Daily Show on Dec. 16. It's a bit of video from the last Teabagger rally of the year. It features some outstanding examples of total lunacy. We have uber-douchebag and perrenial also-ran candidate for governor of New Jersey Steve Lonegan of "Americans for Prosperity" proclaiming that "we cannot allow the pen to become mightier than the sword," and Rick Scott of Conservatives for Patient Rights demanding ponies that shit gold and to top it all off right-wing talk radio shrieker Laura Ingraham oh-so-very-respectful reinterpretation of Rev. Martin Niemoller's famous amphorism about the Holocaust updated to serve the Republican party and their wealthy masters.

Clearly, for someone who speaks on the radio for a living, Laura has some trouble getting her dim-bulb ideas marshaled into coherent speech. I guess she's learned to speak from watch old Dubya speeches. May she's the one that needs the teleprompter. This is what she is being quoted as saying in full, and since the bit about "property owners being confiscated" isn't in here I can only assume these were prepared remarks distributed ahead of time to various new organizations

“First they came for the rich. And I did not speak out because I was not rich.
Then they came for the property owners, and I did not speak out because I did not own property.
Then they came for the right to bear arms, and I did not speak out because I was not armed.
Then they came for me and denied me my medical care, and there was no one left to speak for me,”

Not that her gibberish is any less offensive for being phrased with proper grammar and diction. Now, the question is this: Does Laura Ingraham really believe that boosting the income tax a few percent for the wealthiest people in the United States is the same as genocide or is she engaged in a cynical piece of blatant manipulation and false equivalency in order to get people to vote and engage in political activism that is against their own best interests? Or is she just trying to stir controversy to get herself mentioned on the news? The bottom line is that she is either a completely ignorant moron, an evil fascist demagogue or an amoral attention whore - not that any of these things are mutually exclusive.

Once again the right hits the bottom of the barrel and keeps on digging.

Bonus blazing stupidity: Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Stupid) bounded on to the stage at the same rally and cheerfully declared the demonstration "The Charge of the Light Brigade" - obviously she's not a student of history. The famous charge was a disaster - a futile attack on the wrong target that got huge numbers of men killed for no reason at all, due to the stupidity and rashness of their commanders. On second thought, maybe Bachmann is smarter than I thought.

so that's how they reproduce

I always thought it involved pods and mitosis, but maybe not.

"Million" "Moran" March

They can't read the health care bill, they can't behave in public meetings - hell, they can't even count - but they sure are angry. And ignorant. And racist.

The 9/12 movement - typical conservatives: A day late and a clue short.

Please America, don't let these modern-day know-nothings bully the rest of you into going along with their pig-ignorant me-firstism. Let them know that elections have consequences and that they lost the election by a huge margin. Most of these geezers will be dead of old age and apoplexy in ten or twenty years anyways if meth addiction, gun accidents and other forms of fatal stupidity don't get them first.

These are the same people who bought into Nixon's "Silent Majority" bullshit and were taught to hate anyone smarter than themselves and obey anyone richer than they were. The same bloodthirsty reactionaries who cheered for the Chicago cops at the Democratic convention in 1968 and for the Ohio Nation Guard at Kent State a couple of years later. The same people who thought that William Calley deserved a medal instead of a court martial. The same people who thought Woodward and Bernstien should have been jailed for treason. The same idiots who still think Bill Clinton lying about getting a blowjob was more important than Iran-Contra. These are the same square-headed, gas-guzzler driving, aerosol-cheeze-eating, rainforest-chopping, gun-hording, smug, "I'm-all-right-Jack" asses who shout "get a job" at homeless people and "If you don't like it here, why don't you move to Russia" at anti-war and human-rights demonstrators.

Well, here's a news flash Mr. and Mrs. Silent Majority: The popular, legitimately nominated candidate of one of America's two main political parties won the election in a legitimate fashion by a sizable margin. He might not be the person you voted for, he may even be a different color than you and think differently from you, but he is still the President, just like the last guy was. It's funny you're getting all upset about government spending now that someone wants to spend the money on getting poor people decent medical care instead of blowing up foreigners for no good reason. You don't like it --too damn bad. "America, love it or leave it" If you chickenshit, hardhearted, crewcut facists don't like it in the land of the free and the home of the brave, why don't you move to Shutthefuckupistan?

Doesn't sound so good when the shoe is on the other foot does it? But you'll notice, despite the amped up feelings on both sides, virtually no one on the left side of the divide is calling the people on the right traitors or questioning their patriotism or issuing "conservative hunting licences" or saying they should all be put to death. A lot of us on the left would love to see George Bush and Dick Cheney and the rest of their junta in jail for war crimes, but I don't recall seeing any of them burned or hung in effigy. I didn't see any guns at the anti-war rallies. We may have called Bush a Nazi, but he was killing tens of thousands of people and wiping his ass with the constitution at the time - actions which the conservative movement mostly applauded I might add - while Obama's great crime is trying to save the U.S. economy from meltdown and fix it so everyone, rich or poor, can go to the doctor if they are sick.

That isn't socialism any more than having a tax-funded fire department or public school system or public roads are socialism. You want to know what socialism is? Having the government build sports stadiums at taxpayer expense. It starts down the road to facism when they do it so that private companies run by their cronies can use the stadium to make a profit. But I digress.

So the LaRouchers, the Glenn Beck fans, the Klansmen, the Paulites, the white pride militiamen, the conservative bloggers, the freepers, the CPAC creeps and the Ayn Rand fan club got together and had they little jambouree in Washington. Good for them. If Osama Bin Laden had crashed a 747 on their little shriekfest and killed them all, the average IQ in the United States would have gone up ten or fifteen points, but it still would have been a tragic waste of human life.

This something the screamers on the right don't get. No one really wishes you ill, no one wants to hurt you and you aren't going to sent to a re-education camp or have homosexuality "shoved down your throat" or be made to pay more taxes unless you are already pretty well off. We just wish you would stop shouting nonsense while grown ups are talking and stop getting in the way while we are trying to clean up your mess.

If you'd calm down and turn off Rush and Beck and Fox News for a couple of weeks and read a book or two about history and politics that were not published by Regnery or recommended by National Review, if you went out and listened to some people who weren't exactly like you, you might even realize that your country could be a pretty wonderful place for everyone in it if you'd pitch in and help out a bit and stop trying to screw people to get a little more crap you don't really need - started thinking more about how you're playing the game and whether you're really having any fun than what the score is and winning at any cost.

Everyone in the United States, no matter how ignorant or bugfuck nuts, has the right to voice their opinion and demonstrate and if nothing else, this outpouring of crazy should at least galvanize the Sensible Majority(tm) to turn off hate radio and change the channel when Glenn Beck comes on. But that isn't enough. Agreeing to disagree is fine between reasonable people on issues that are not life and death. But going along to get along is not working with the militant conservatives. If you give them an inch, they will take your yard, put a chemical waste dump in it and then refuse you health insurance when the chemicals cause cancer and won't let you sue the chemical producers because that would be liberal nazi socialism or something and capitalism rools USA! USA! USA! Blar-har-har-har! --- This cancer on the body politic must be confronted before it poisons public discourse for another few generations. These guys invariably lie or just plain don't know what the hell they are talking about -- they need to be called on their shit constantly.

Everyone is entitled to an opinion, but everyone is also entitled to tell you that your opinion is stupid, meanspirited and totally uniformed and should be ignored if not ridiculed. To put it in terms the teabaggers understand, I bring you one of the most iconic photos of our internet age, the guy I like to think of as Teabagger Zero:

(hat tip to Red Tory, and JJ)

P.S. Austin Cline says a lot of this in a much more eloquent and organized fashion over at the General's

Pop quiz!

Imagine you work as a subcontractor for a bank. The bank wants photos of a bunch of properties on which it holds mortgages to confirm the properties are being kept up and to check the condition of properties on which the mortgage is in default, so off you go in your car with your trusty camera and start snapping away. One homeowner sees you parked in front of his house taking pictures and gets a bit testy. He marches out to the car and wants to know who you are and what the hell you think you're doing taking pictures of his house. Maybe he even gets a bit irate and slaps his hand down on hood of your car. This is not your first day on the job and probably not your first irate homeowner. What do you do?

1. Laugh at him and drive away.
2. Show him your business card, tell him the bank sent you out to take photos of his house and tell him you'll be happy to wait while he calls your office to confirm your story.
3. Stick your .357 magnum in his face before he scratches the paint on your Ford Escort.

Answer key
1. You are an asshole.
2. You are a professional.
3. You are a Republican


h/t to JJ at Unrepentant Old Hippie

Conservatives getting things done for some Canadians

The Toronto Star's Haroon Siddiqui has it exactly right, Stephen Harper is an embarrassment. Part of the problem in the case of Suaad Hagi Mohamud lies with the Canada Border Services Agency, who have done stupid and embarassing things before, but for Harper to say that it is now his top priority to bring this poor woman home after she's been stranded for three months, coming as it does on the heels of all the other cases of Canadians the government has abandoned abroad, is a bit rich. Obviously, the consular services section of the Foreign Affairs Ministry needs a shake up too, but the problem starts at the top.
It used to be that if one fell afoul of the law overseas (which is not the same thing as committing a crime) and could contact the embassy, consular affairs and the Canadian government would be there for you - finding lawyers, making sure you were not mistreated, protecting you. Now, the government seems to be saying that when you leave the country, the country leaves you - you're on your own and they don't really want you back.
As one of the 9% of Canadians who is outside Canada at the moment, this is a worrisome thing. Especially since I live in a country with a history of xenophobia and a legal system with no presumption of innocence or even right to a lawyer while in police custody.
And it isn't just the unwillingness of the Canadian government to stand up for its citizens like accused child soldier Omar Khadr who are unlawfully being held prisoner by a foreign governerment or the withdrawl of consular services - there are other changes indicative of this distaste for Canadians the Conservative don't feel are Canadian enough.
Both my children and my brother's kids were born in foriegn countries, but can claim Canadian
citizenship is they wish by virtue of the citizenship of their parents. But unless my grandchildren are born in Canada, they will no have that same option. A recent change in the law means that my children are not Canadian enough to pass on citizenship to their own kids should they be born outside the country.
Another comparitively recent change in law means that since I have been out of the country for five years, I can no longer vote in any election in Canada.

I suppose its a matter of self preservation for the Conservatives. After all, anyone who has been exposed to the world outside their provincial little town or who has a stake in multiculturalism isn't likely to vote for Stephen Harper and his gang of isolationist ignoramuses.

Update: Haroon Siddiqui flays another strip off the Conservative carcass and brings up another example of the abandonment of Canadians who aren't in Canada at the moment. So much for Stephen Harper's boast of Canada "returning" to the world stage.

The government also forced a court battle over Ron Smith, the Canadian on death row in Montana, whom it didn't want to help. The Federal Court ordered it to.
Since we abolished the death penalty, governments routinely used to urge
clemency. Not the Tories.
They have also quietly put the brakes on the transfer of Canadian prisoners from abroad to serve out their terms in Canada. Stockwell Day and now Peter Van Loan, as public safety ministers, have been rejecting official recommendations for such transfers. They've done so in about 50 cases, invoking national security or claiming that the person in question "poses a danger to Canada."
Gar Pardy, the retired head of the consular section of the foreign ministry, says that "previous governments used to treat everyone the same. Once all the legal procedures were complete with a Canadian case abroad, we'd ask for transfer and I do not remember a single case of ministerial rejection. Now it's routinely rejected."
Why? "There's no rationality. You can't put a finger on it. With Stockwell Day, it may be a case of ideology or Old Testament righteousness."

"Ideology or Old Testament righteous" you say? To-may-to, to-mah-to. And neither one has anything to do with helping Canadians.

But can they stop Godzilla?

There a general election at the end of the month here in Japan so the parties are busy running around trying to show how on top of things they are and how they have every possible contingency covered in their little policy books. Naturally, the papers have been full of policy stuff for weeks, much of it pretty vague and dry, but I did find this little nugget of awesome at the bottom of a very long article on defense policy in today's Daily Yomiuri:

One of the major policies proposed by New Party Nippon is to reorganize the SDF and launch a study to establish an organization--tentatively called "The Thunderbird Squad"--geared toward international assistance.

Sadly, the article did not elaborate or reveal whether New Party Nippon is favor of granting the Tracy family Japanese citizenship.

Sure, they are good at international rescue, but can they handle Godzilla?

Maybe they would be better off following the example of the last elected Japanese Prime Minister Junichro Koizumi and Calling Elvis.

The mustache that walked like a man

John Bolton: Yosemite Sam in a suit or Ned Flander's evil twin -We provide the cartoon picture, you decide.

Teh paranoid right

This would be hilarious if it weren't for the fact that a significant portion of the American (and probably Canadian as well) electorate believe this sort of paranoid bullshit.

Stay classy conservatives!

Oh those witty conservatives, with their clever slogans on t-shirts - what a zany bunch!

I think people should be allowed to wear whatever idiotic shit they want to wear, even stuff like this that is calculated to offend.

But while my most offensive T-shirt merely mocks mass superstition and identifies me as a blasphemous non-believer with no respect for the deeply held beliefs of others (guilty!) this bit of warm weather fashion on the left puts forth the hi-larious notion that wearer enjoys taking shackled, helpless human beings and repeatedly almost drowning them just for shits and giggles. Ha ha ha!

I don't wear my sacrilegious shirt to churches or anything like that and I full expect to be called a heathen by any religious people I happen to run across - I deserve it. If you bring a bucket of KFC and wear snakeskin boots, leather pants and a mink coat to a PETA meeting, chances are pretty good that you'll get told off - that's kind of the point. Wearing a shirt that says "I'd rather be burning kittens" to an ASPCA fundraiser or an "Impeach Bush" shirt to a GOP rally is a provocative act. You do it to annoy cat fanciers or republicans and to identify yourself as someone who opposes what they stand for.

So conservatives, go ahead and order yourself a pile of "I'd rather be waterboarding" shirts - wear them everywhere you go! Let your pro-torture freak flag fly! Go right ahead and identify yourself as an enemy of the human race, it's bound to really piss off those pesky annoying people who dislike pointless cruelty.

Alternatively, you could just skip a step and have "I am an enormous douche bag" tattooed on your forehead, because that is what the rest of the world is going to see when you wear that shirt.

It's spelled T-U-C-K-E-R, but it's pronounced "Fail"

Everyone's least favorite bowtie model and smarmy right-wing media douche bag Tucker Carlson has decided that, despite having utterly failed on PBS, CNN and MSNBC to do anything but prove himself a loathable loser, the internet community desperately needs another pathetic, fact-free clearing house for the screeching of the neo-nazi, paint-chip-eating fraternity brother wing of the right that aren't already on Red State or Big Hollywood. Ah well, on the bright side, think how much easier this will make things for people like Tbogg, Roy Edroso and the General. This won't be low-hanging fruit, this will be apples that jump off the tree and into the basket, peel and slice themselves and climb between layer of pastry, demanding to be baked.

And yes, Tucker is still a dick.

I don't think that word means what you think it means

Universities are supposed to places of ideas, centers of higher education and free marketplaces of ideas. Students are there to have their minds expanded and to learn about the world around them. Then there's Liberty University, whose directors really need to look up the word "Liberty" in a dictionary. 

Liberty University has revoked its recognition of the campus Democratic Party club, saying “we are unable to lend support to a club whose parent organization stands against the moral principles held by” the university.

“It kind of happened out of nowhere,” said Brian Diaz, president of LU’s student Democratic Party organization, which LU formally recognized in October.

Diaz said he was notified of the school’s decision May 15 in an e-mail from Mark Hine, vice president of student affairs.

According to the e-mail, the club must stop using the university’s name, holding meetings on campus, or advertising events. Violators could incur one or more reprimands under the school’s Liberty Way conduct code, and anyone who accumulates 30 reprimands is subject to expulsion.

Hine said late Thursday that the university could not sanction an official club that supported Democratic candidates.

“We are in no way attempting to stifle free speech.”

Imagine the screeching that would result if a liberal college refused to allow a "Young Republicans" chapter on campus, and rightfully so. I'm sure David Horowitz will get right on this.

A tip of the Fez to Dammit Janet, which has the story

"Going, going, Galt" or "How can we miss you if you won't go away"

The Amish have the right idea: When someone's antisocial behaviour is so extreme as to become intolerable, they should not be allowed to be part of society and should be shunned.

I'd like to see all these "Go Galt" teabagging "I'll keep my guns, my money and my freedom, you keep the change" chowderheads either put up or shut up. They want to go Galt? Fine, I say we don't even send a bill for the protection of the social contract they've enjoyed so far in life. But from now on, they get a regular bill for the breathable air and drinkable municipal water and product safety protection and every road is a toll road for them. No taxes for you John Galts, you don't want your money subsidizing shiftless layabouts like those pointy-headed academics in states universities or those faceless bureacrats in the oppressive state civil service. You are all independent free agents -- we get it, you can pay your own way without The Man to hold you back.You have resigned your membership in society.

So, you don't get the special members rates from the hospitals and fire departments and other parts of society either anymore. In fact, some of the services we offer members, such as use of hospital surgical facilities and oil refineries are so much in demand, that we are going to have to restrict them to use by members only. Good luck building your own CAT scan machine, though I'm sure you can find some doctors willing to treat you at several times the regular rates. You have private medical insurance, so you don't need society and the state. Of course, if the insurance company doesn't live up to its end of the contract, I'm sure you can talk them round. After all a contract is legally binding on both parties and failure to live up to the terms of the contract nullifies that contract, so you could take or business elsewhere, I'm sure the company will miss you terribly. If only there was some way to force them to hold up their end of the bargin, some big stick you could wield against them, like the court system or a government licencing agency, but that's just the machinery of the oppressor.

Oh, and if I see any non-members of the public on public property, I'm calling the cops - who can do whatever they want with them since they are no longer members of society and have no rights. In fact, maybe I'll just shoot them or run them over in my car - what are they going to do, have me arrested? sue me? The police and the law and the courts are part of the apparatus of the state. They are here to serve and protect members of society. You decided not to be a member of the club called society, remember?

You want to withdraw from society - fine with us. But if I were you, Mr. and Ms. Rugged Individualist, I'd stock up on on no-doze, because all those guns won't help you if you're asleep when we decide we want your stuff, or for that matter, feel like it might be fun to hunt you for sport. You wanted the government off your back, remember? Woooolverines, baby! Welcome to Lord of the Flies, starring you as Piggy.

As a very powerful man once said "you're either with us, or you're with the enemy" - If the Galters want to leave society, fine, don't let the door hit you on the ass on your way out, but don't expect society to have anything to do with you. You're independent, remember?

What's that phrase so beloved by the righties that they've shouted it at any protester since the Vietnam era? "America - Love it or leave it" 

Well, guess what teabaggers? You had your eight years to cut taxes on the rich and "run the government like a business" and we all saw how that worked out. You lost the election, it wasn't even close. Now, either suck it up, pay your (reduced if you make less than $250,000 a year) taxes and play by the rules - or get the fuck out. Maybe you can all get together and convince Richard Mellon Scaife that in exchange for your services in keeping his tax rate down, he should buy you an island somewhere for you to live out your Randian fantasies while you slowly starve in your own filth.

But in the meantime, quit your tiresome fucking whining. Yes, members of society have the right to free speech, no matter how insufferably stupid their speeches are and since you haven't actually "gone Galt" just yet you still have that right, so I'm not advocating the government shut down your little tea parties or anything like that - though you might go a little easier on the talk of violent, armed insurrection against the gubmint, since I'm pretty sure that is treason. I'm just exercising my free speech rights to tell you to quit your mindless yammering about "going Galt" and shit or get off the pot. 

You want to go Galt? So go already! Who's stopping you? Shit, I'll even volunteer to help you pack.

Dear conservatives: Just breathe thru your nose

The things I find funniest about the "tea parties" of angry incoherent right-wing nuts this week are numerous - here's a very short list.

1. Very few of the people showing up to these things look like the types to be making enough that the tax increase on the top 5% of income earners will effect them.

2. Most of them don't seem to know what exactly they are protesting or what they want done. They don't like the bailouts - fine, neither does anyone else - but are we supposed to do, just let the banking system collapse?

3. For something that is pretty transparently put together by Steve Forbes, Richard Mellon Scaife and Rupert Murdoch and the rest of the billionaire wingnuts to help push for a flat"fair tax" system, you'd have thought they could get someone other than Beavis and Butthead to come up with the theme and name of the "protest movement."

4. The identification of Fox News as the "teabagging Network" -- nice to see them admit to the description of them we've been using for years.

5. Even though the meaning of the term has been point out to them - ad infinitum - conservatives are determined to show us damned sniggering liberals just what conservatism means: That just because an idea is stupid, it doesn't mean you don't stick with no matter what.

I have seen more intelligent cacti

Republicans - because we needed a name for people who are dumber than houseplants. I just hope someone remembers to water Betty Brown occasionally, it must get dry in Texas.

Brown suggested that Asian-Americans should find a way to make their names more accessible.

“Rather than everyone here having to learn Chinese — I understand it’s a rather difficult language — do you think that it would behoove you and your citizens to adopt a name that we could deal with more readily here?” Brown said.

Brown later told Ko: “Can’t you see that this is something that would make it a lot easier for you and the people who are poll workers if you could adopt a name just for identification purposes that’s easier for Americans to deal with?”

Yes, Betty, because Asian names like Ko, Sato, Hu and Singh are much much more difficult than say Tatigliano, Satterthwaite, Papadopolis, Rogazinski, Medvedev or Gonzales. I'll admit that some Asian names are a mouthful  - Indonesian, Thai and Sri Lankan names in particular tend to be longer and more complex compared to short, blunt Anglo-Saxon monikers like Brown and Wood - but that isn't really the point here. Brown isn't suggesting that all names should be anglicized, just Asian names. 

But it isn't about race. 

Sure it's not. Nothing is ever about race with the Republicans and the conservatives, except when they get shoved back from the trough, then its all about discrimination against poor, persecuted middle-aged, wealthy, white men.

Pot calling the kettle blonde

GOP catfight! Meghan "my daddy could have been president" McCain vs. Ann "the man" Coulter & Laura "Coulter for Dummies" Ingraham and assorted conservatard bloggers.  McCain calls Coulter "offensive, radical, insulting, and confusing all at the same time"  -- it's blood off a wolverine's muzzle to Coulter, but Laura Ingram gets all "Oh no, you din't!" and "Do you think that anyone would be talking to you if you weren’t kind of cute and you weren’t the daughter of John McCain?” not stopping to think that "kind of cute and/or the offspring of someone connected" pretty much describes every conservative pudit out there. Hilarity ensues as even stupider (yes, that is possible) bloggers join the fray.

Somebody pop more corn!

Tonight, on a very special episode...

CC talks to a conservative who may or may not be Patticakes Ross. Unquestionably the funniest thing I've read this year.

Really, how dumb are they?

You know, for people who claim to hate marxism and communism so much, and think it is so vile, who consider it worse or at least on par with Nazism, it is amazing to me how readily the conservatives will slap the commie label on anyone who disagrees with them.

Don't they understand that every time they call a candidate who wants to raise taxes on the wealthy a few percent a communist, it denigrates all those who died at the hands of real communists like Stalin and Mao in jus the same way that calling the police raid on the Waco compound a holocaust denigrates the memories of the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis?

Don't they get that having the government oversee a public medical insurance plan is not a precursor to Pol Pot's killing fields?

Are they so thick that they don't understand that a university or other large organization telling employees it is unacceptable behaviour to use racist epithets, fondle or ogle other employees or otherwise act like a jackass at work is not the same thing as sending people to labour camps because they wear eyeglasses or went to university?

Can they not understand that requiring multimillionaires to contribute a few more dollars to keeping people made jobless by their greed-driven wheeling and dealing from starving to death while they freeze in the street is not the same as the state seizing the means of production and sending the wealthy to labour camps?

Can they not understand the difference between requiring publicly funded facilities such as schools and courts to refrain from being seen to embrace or favor one religion above another, or to insisting that science be taught in science classes and myth, legend and philosophy be taught in other courses is not the same as burning churches?

And before anyone starts accusing me of attacking strawmen, go have a look at this, or this or this or some of the gems the Sadlynauts gathered election night (and they were only joking about sending Gary Ruppert to a labour camp, at least I think they were only joking). Or the dicussions in the comments over at Treason-in-Defense-Of-Slavery Yankee of which guns would be best used to defend one's home against the coming roving masses of swarthy anarchists and gulag press gangs they deem the inevitable result of the Obama victory.

If you have a strong enough stomache go wade through the toxic crazy at Atlas Shrugs, where Pam Gellar attempts to explain that Barack Obama is literally the actual secret love child of Malcom X.

Or look at some of John McCain's remarks to the effect that because Obama wants to increase the tax rate by 3 % on people with an income of more than $250,000 and freeze or cut the tax rate for the other 95% of American citizens he is engaged in a Marxist class war to redistribute the wealth just like Mao and Stalin.

Have they at long last no shame?

American Idiots

 

I'm sure some clever conservative will point out that this is from Al-Jazeera and so therefore it is biased, but what cannot be denied or deflected is that these are the people who are attending the McCain-Palin rallies and voting Republican: the misinformed, the bigoted,  the religious zealots and elderly people stuck in the distant past--- in other words, pretty much the same as the Republican candidates. 

A message from Stephen Harper's biggest fan

While it is hard to believe something this long could be written in crayon, it is even harder to believe that brain-dead, half-assed, prarie National Review wannabe paragon of conservative intellectual thought - the Western Standard -- would publish this magnum dopus by Adam Yoshida (seen at the left, just one step away from becoming one of these guys) in the midst of an election in which they want to make their guy look less scary to centerist voters.

"Do too much, rather than too little. Don’t shift these things around. Burn them down and salt the Earth. A future Liberal government won’t have the guts, the time, the wherewithal, or the money to recreate them all at once. Sell the land and the buildings. Shred the records. Disperse the staff. It’s easier to destroy than it is to create. A Tory government on a rampage could destroy in a couple of months what it took four decades to create – and what it would take another forty to recreate."

Reassuring isn't it? He burbles on about the need to triple the size of the Canadian Forces, get rid of the CBC, build a couple of aircraft carriers and crank up the Canadian military-industrial complex (no really, he calls it that)

PSA does a proper eviceration. One might think that this would be the craziest thing Adam has ever written and it just somehow slipped through the editing process at the Western Standard. Sadly, no.