Another C***servative 'Doh!'

Conservatives really ain't that smart. They yell and hate like champions but the old thought process remains an enigma to most of them. So it was when the WH released its visitor list and the wingnut herd stampeded at the news that Obama had been entertaining some dubious types.

Some dickweed at Townhall posted a few of the worsts:

George Soros - 4 times
Bill Ayers - 2 times
Jeremiah Wright - 1 time
Micheal Moore - 8 times
Micheal Jordan - 5 times
Unions Boss Richard Trumka - 8 times
Union Boss Andy Stern - 21 times
Alan Greenspan - 8 times

The comments section went into uproar. First up:

"Trumka is bad enough but understandable ... this election had consequences. Wm. Ayers however? Known individual that particpated in urban terror? In our White House? Obama is just dumb. As if this won't be used against him at the next campaign."

There seems to be some kind of new rule in effect these days. Whenever a wingnut accuses someone of being dumb, they will be proven to be waaaay dumber. Just in case any apoplectic wingnuts are interested, 'Bill Ayers', 'Jeremiah Wright' and 'Michael Jordan' were unrelated people with the same names. Altogether now..."Doh!"

Wingnuts Winning in NY

The Palin crazies have won the first battle in their bid for electoral supremacy.

Instead of allowing a Democrat win by splitting the conservative vote in New York's 23rd Congressional District, Republican candidate Dede Scozzafava has pulled out - thus allowing Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman a clear run.

So MC Steele's GOP can't beat it's breakaway nutjobs and now we're faced with the prospect of a bona fide teabagger in Congress?

Let's hope Democratic candidate Bill Owens can prevail and avert the beginnings of a catastrophe. He was only a point behind Hoffman at 35% of likely voters with Scozzafava on 20%. So it will be interesting to see whether the trad Republicans of upstate NY will go wingnut or vote for sanity - however much the idea of supporting a dem might be anathema. Watch that space...

Happy Halloween...

...from the Internet's favorite fat spiderman.

Dumb Invention Alert

The great thing about really stupid inventions is that they usually work but their practicality is massively outweighed by their embarrassment factor.

Like the Snuggy, the Laptop Burka is one such 'WTF? product'. Sure, it's perfectly valid to invent something to reduce screen glare. But by the time you've unfurled your Laptop Burka and made yourself look like a retarded a**hole, wouldn't it have been easier to just go indoors?

Schwarzenegger's Subliminal Cuss-out

Although Schwarzenegger's press secretary said it was simply a "weird coincidence", it's quite clear what the governor's implied message was when he vetoed a recent bill by San Francisco assemblyman Tom Ammiano. To get the gist, just read the first letter of each line vertically.

Ammiano had no doubt irked Schwarzenegger previously when he called the governor a liar and shouted from the audience for him to "kiss my gay ass" when Schwarzenegger unexpectedly showed up at a Democratic Party dinner earlier this month.

Fox News Digs New Low

A Fox poll from October 29th asks "Who do you think is more determined to win the war in Afghanistan - President Obama or the leadership of the Taliban and al Qaeda?"

I'd like to say something witty and vituperative but I can't. Fox really are an affront to decency, honesty and humanity. And that ain't too funny.

Strom Thurmond's Conservative Sex Offender Showcase

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Republican Preeverts: They're Back!

With all the fuss about the GOP falling apart like a big clown car and being torn apart by nutjobs, it's somehow reassuring to see at least one Republican upholding core values. Said Rick Sanchez:

"Get this -- a police report obtained by the Associated Press is saying that [Roland Corning (R-SC)] was questioned by an officer after speeding away from a cemetery with a stripper in his car, and with a bag of sex toys. And with some Viagra, Corning, I should tell you, is 66 years old. According to the police: the stripper, 18 years old. She works, by the way, at an establishment known as the Platinum Gentleman's Club."

Sex toys, teenage strippers, Viagra... now we're talking!

Senator Man Child (R-TX)

It's not that comforting to conclude you have a child representing your interests in the Senate. But is there any other reasonable description for John Cornyn (R-TX)?

When asked by a Fox PAC talking head this morning whether "anything had changed with regard to death panels" in the new healthcare bill, Cornyn replied:

"Well we haven't been able to read the bill in its entirety, because it's 2,000 pages long. That's certainly something we'll be focusing on."

Two things: this 'tard is whining about having to read 2,000 pages because, apparently, it's just too hard. Plus he intends to focus on an entirely non-existent issue when he does get around to blowing the dust off his reading glasses. Great to see our own Senator Cretin doing such sterling work.

Princess Lieberman's New Bitch Fit

From smooching Bush to backing John McCain for president, nothing seems out-of-bounds in Princess Lieberman's continuing campaign to draw attention to herself. "It's all about me, me me!" She squealed again yesterday when warning the Dems she'd side with the GOP in filibustering health care reform.

WTF is wrong with this 67-year-old man-brat? I guess he must be buoyed by polls showing that the voters of Connecticut will back Lieberman however much of a giant douche he becomes. That and the generous allowance the health insurers throw her to keep her fully stocked with Barbies and Hannah Montana Blu-Rays.

But an estimated 45,000 people a year are dying as a result of health insurance company abuse and 1.5 million families are losing their homes for the same reason. And Princess Lieberman thinks her pathetic ego is more deserving of attention?

Ted Kennedy gets brain cancer and this pointless f*** is still in fine fettle? The world, as they say, is not a fair place.

GOP Acorning AARP

In what could well turn out to be a move tantamount to a suicide bid, the all-powerful GOP hate machine is now going after the AARP for its backing of 'Obamacare'.

Does anyone in the GOP even see a problem with attacking America's geezer union when most of their support comes from embittered over 55s? Are they banking on the 8% of 18-29-year-olds who support them instead? Or maybe they're going for other Republican strongholds like the dizzying 7% of Latinos or the magnificent 4% of black folks who still approve?

The party of 'no' is rapidly becoming the party of 'who..?'. And while I can't help smiling about that, there is still a nagging worry that when one party in our two-party system implodes it could really f*** with democracy.

Conservative Lookalikes #7

Left: ? Right: Charles Krauthammer (I challenge you to find anything in nature that even begins to resemble this...)

Conservative Lookalikes #6

Left: Joe Scarborough, right: Beaker

Powerful Stupid

Is this the logical conclusion of the conservative dumbing-down process? Are all campaign ads now to be pitched at a Pre-K level? The Awl calls this "the dumbest campaign ad of all time... This ad is not just stupid, it is powerful stupid. Please do enjoy."

Difficult Truths

Now I'd like to ask that liberal passengers fasten their seat belts and remain seated... it's about to get turbulent as I try to articulate some difficult truths without choking. OK, ready?

Even as a liberal who hates conservatism and everything the Republican party stands for, I am worried by what's going on today and I wish conservatives would nut up and get their act together. We really do need them to turn off Limbaugh and re-grow brains. Because, hard as it is to admit, Democracy needs them.

I think Obama is hip to this even if we aren't. I think his attempts to uphold bipartisanship and inclusion often frustrate Democrats because the hard truth is that he's not representing Democrats, he's representing Democracy. (In olden times, when politics still had gravitas and looked less like crack whores wrestling in a dumpster, this would have been recognized as duty.)

To use a dumb NBA metaphor, Team GOP are currently limping around the court like angry fat guys - totally outclassed, totally outmanoeuvred - just yelling and fouling whenever they see an opportunity. But Team DNC star player Obama still throws the occasional soft pass here and there (can anyone say 'healthcare reform'?) to keep them in the game. Why? Because 'the game' needs to keep on going because the game itself is what constitutes Democracy. And the game can never be won, it can only be played well.

As much as the idea may appeal to authoritarian conservatives who hate Democracy anyway, it's not a zero-sum game. A political Armageddon where the forces of 'good' finally vanquish the forces of 'evil' once and for all would be a f***ing disaster. We would no longer be living in a Democracy, it would be Fascism.

(Please note: Most of what I've said here contradicts a lot of other things I've said here. But, what the hell... I might change my mind tomorrow.)

Random Picture of the Day

The idea of Black & WTF is pretty simple. The content has to be black and white and weird.

Cretin Round-up

Caught two of the critters... and they're both Glenn Beck.

First, Beck Tweets about Nancy Pelosi's Communist/Socialist/Maoist/Rastafarian plans to ban Fox News. Oops... Pelosi banning Fox was actually a joke by a wingnut blogger that Beck mistook for news.

Second, Beck does a rant about how Net Neutrality is a Marxist plot to destroy free speech. Even for a cretin like Beck, how does this logical contradiction even begin to make sense? "We intend to destroy your freedom of speech by... err... protecting and enabling it."

Healthcare Reform

Now the Senate's passed a bill containing a public option? And Obama's pleased? The Dems have got over their fixation with Olympia Snowe?

I guess I can be happy until it all changes again in ten minutes.

Driving While Mexican

There's a new variation on the old 'driving while black' moving violation. It turns out Dallas police have been ticketing drivers for not speaking English - on at least 39 occasions during the past three years.

The case that broke the other 'not speaking English' tickets occurred when Ernestina Mondragon was "stopped for making an illegal U-turn by an officer who cited her for three violations: disregarding a traffic control device, failure to present a driver's license and "non-English speaking driver.""

I'm sure this will start up more nativist arguments about immigrants learning English. Mostly by barely-intelligible rednecks who should consider themselves lucky they weren't cited too.

Racist Judge Still Judgin'

Keith Bardwell Still Has a Job. Somehow.

It's been 42 years since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that state bans on interracial marriage were unconstitutional.

It's been 20 days since this racist piece of s*** broke the law. Yet he's still a judge. Hello..?

RNC Facebook Now Purged of Racism. Sort of...

One of the pictures now purged from the RNC Facebook page.

The Republicans just removed a number of offensive user-posted pictures from its Facebook page. One picture referred to poor kids in India as 'scab-eating mouth breathers', another showed John Kerry being shot in the head and another showed Obama eating fried chicken with the caption 'miscegenation (i.e., mixed-race marriage) is a crime.'

No-one's claiming the pictures were posted or endorsed by the RNC. But there is widespread puzzlement why it took them an entire week to delete them - and then only after they realized they were about to become a news story.

A comment on the Discussion Board says:

"This Facebook page has just pulled all member-posted photos, probably due to news stories about to break about some racist photos that were here for a week before being deleted... Up until this morning, there were a bunch of photos in a gallery, posted by members. Some of them were pretty blatantly racist in nature."

If you give the RNC the benefit of the doubt, it could be that the photos were planted by mischievous liberal trolls. But why would it then take a week to clean them up? Maybe they didn't throw the s*** themselves, but it sure found a convenient sewer to land in.

Larry King's Tweets

Larry King has 1,349,633 followers on his Twitter page who, I'm guessing, must wait with baited breath for such venerable musings as:

"I think restaurants should have scratch-n-sniff menus."
"What ever happened to station wagons?"
"When a stop light turns yellow, do you speed up or slow down?"
"Have you ever heard of a famous harpist?"

Is it old age or does Larry King just like to get really, really high?

Conservative Lookalikes #5

Left: Glenn Beck, right: SpongeBob SquarePants (OK, I lied... now I'm done.)

Obama to Tell All on UFOs?

Filmmaker RJ Thomas made a straight-to DVD parody documentary called 'The Top Secret UFO Project' back in 2006. Out of the many crank contacts he inevitably received, one stood out - an anonymous tip-off that said Obama is planning to reveal what the government knows on the subject.

"A caller left a message on Mr. Thomas' voice mail on October 13th. In a deep and mysterious voice, the caller said, "We are not alone. On November 17th, President Obama will acknowledge about the aliens."

"He put a big pause in-between the two sentences." Mr. Thomas said. "I don't know if it is just the way he talks or he was doing it for dramatic effect.""

Heck, I've seen a UFO (it flew, it was unidentified), but I still find it hard to get too steamed up about them. But the idea of the government 'fessing up on the subject is intriguing. Would we all stop taking authority seriously if we knew our governments were not the biggest game in town? Would the churches empty and the Pope file for bankruptcy? And, most importantly, could we ask them to quit probing our hillbillies? It's undignified and it hurts their feelings.

Stay tuned...

Conservative Lookalikes #4

Left: Joe Lieberman, right: Dr Zauis (OK, I think I'm done with making these for today...)

Conservative Lookalikes #3

Left: John Boehner, right: George Hamilton

Conservative Lookalikes #2

Left: Ann Coulter, right: David Lee Roth

Conservative Lookalikes #1

Left: Newt Gingrich, right: Lego Man (blogadilla.com)

Random Picture of the Day

United Nations Under-Secretary-General Kiyo Akasaka and Tinkerbell.

"In a ceremony on Sunday, October 25, the United Nations named Disney’s Tinker Bell “Honorary Ambassador of Green” for “living consistently in harmony with the environment.” The ceremony took place at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City."

First The Good News...

For those of us fretting over Obama's non-committal stance on the public healthcare option, there's good news from the WH:

"The White House wants everyone to know President Obama "completely supports" the Senate leadership as a final bill emerges this week.""

But like every other bit of good news from the Obama admin, this 'yay moment' feels like we're being offered a hot meal when starving only to find out the cook hawked up a big green lugy in it. WH support comes with this gargantuan caveat attached:

"The public option would effectively be just another insurance plan offered on the open market. It would likely be administered by a private insurance provider, charging premiums and copayments like any other policy."

Gee, thanks.

The Biggest Loser

How about the "father [who] missed the birth of his first son after being arrested for groping a nurse on the way to the delivery room"?

As far as loser-ish behavior goes, this would be hard to top.

Afghan Militants Catch Up With American Wingnuts. What took You Guys..?

Kabul, 2009? Nope. Redondo Beach, 2008.

Hadn't heard of any Obama effigy burnings abroad before. But now Afghan students have been lighting up after rumors of Koran desecration by US troops.

""Muslims were disrespected!" Zabiullah Khalil, an engineering student, said. "The foreigners shot the Koran, and then they burned it. They should be tried for this."

U.S. military officials denied any copies of Islam's holy book were desecrated and accused members of the Taliban of spreading the story to provoke animosity against the West."

It's easy to think of Afghanistan as some kind of unenlightened third world s***hole stuck in the neolithic era. But at least they're not burning Obama in effigy because he's black. You have to look a little closer to home for that kind of thing...

OH resident displays Obama hanging in effigy, admits racism (Fairfield, OH, 10-17-08)

Obama effigy found on U. of Kentucky campus (Lexington, KY, 10-29-08)

Obama effigy found hanging from campus tree (Newberg, OR, 9-24-08)

What's my point? Not really sure, but I wonder if our wingnuts would be proud or embarrassed that they're more than a year ahead of those 'radical Muslims'. Hell, Abdul, we been desecratin' Obama effigies round here since 2008... what took you guys so long?

Bill O'Reilly v. SpongeBob SquarePants

Bill O'Reilly has crowned himself 'The Cable King' for pulling in more than three million viewers but:

"On the other hand, coming in with about a million more viewers during the same time frame is SpongeBob SquarePants. Does this make SpongeBob the 'Cable Emperor'?

It’s additionally worth noting that if O’Reilly pulls in a little more than a million viewers, this means that roughly 99 percent of the population is not watching his show."

Perhaps that's why Roger Ailes' RNC PAC is so desperate to portray itself as a news channel. Without the cover of being 'news', they'd just be the less popular alternative to Cartoon Network.

Random Picture of the Day Too...

Has anyone ever been more determined to get a family photo taken? More at failblog.org.

Separation of Church and Football

Have to admit I find it hard to be offended by Florida Gators' Tim Tebow's biblical eye blacking. Even as a big ol' lefty who has nothing but scorn for the religious right and organized religion in general, I see nothing wrong with Tebow doing his thing.

Isaiah 40:31 says "but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint." It's probably the nearest thing the Bible has to a pregame pep speech. So what's the big deal?

Of course, I'd have more sympathy for the wingnuts sticking up for Tebow if, like me, they would be similarly unconcerned by a Muslim player quoting verses from the Koran. Can't really see that happening though.

Famous Last Words (Nearly)

I once got my ass kicked in the 80s for admitting I liked The Smiths and I've always admired Morrisey's sarcastic jangly pop. So it was sad to hear he'd collapsed on stage. But I couldn't help thinking "Good evening... probably" would have made for some classic last words if he hadn't recovered.

Craigslist. A Love Story.

From Best of Craigslist

Random Picture of the Day Also...

What's not to love about The Museum of Bad Art? It's like the National Gallery except everything in it is really, really bad. Where else could you see the Mona Lisa with stubble painted through night vision goggles?

Republicans For Rape

The site's funny. The inspiration not so much...

Top Ten Annoying Things About The Internet

Just an idle rant protesting the things that make me mad while I'm browsing the Web. If you have any peeves I missed, please let me know.

The back-button disabler. I hate dumbasses who override my back button so their site stubbornly pops up again when I'm trying to get back to whatever I was looking at before. Like I'm trying to leave your crappy site, but you think you can persuade me to stay by hijacking my browser? That's like WalMart locking you in until you buy something. F*** you!

Pop-unders. This weasely work around for the pop-up blocker is sad and pathetic being as the only attention pop-unders ever get from me are the wasted seconds it takes to click them away when quitting my browser. Pop-ups are like obnoxious sales guys but pop-unders are more like those survey people you see in the mall who only ever get to say "Excuse me..." before you walk straight past them.

Flash intros. Like Radiohead or Bill Clinton, these animated diversions were cool during the late 90s/early 00s. Now they're just annoying. Anything that gives you an option to skip it shouldn't exist in the first place. Like it should say 'Click here to skip intro if you're not a big loser for whom time has no meaning'.

The over-enhanced blog page. I hate lunkheads who fill their blogs with so many widgets and add-ons that their page takes 4 days to open or just crashes my browser while I'm waiting for an unresponsive script to load.

MySpace. This post-apocalyptic, virus-ridden Mad Max wasteland of the web is responsible for killing more PCs than Bill Gates. What started as a neat idea, has grown exponentially more valuable the more crappy it gets (currently worth $500 million to $1.2 billion). The free market? Go figure.

LinkedIn. I Google the person I haven't spoken to in years because I lost their contact details, find them on 'free-to-join' LinkedIn, then get told I need to 'upgrade my account' (i.e., pay) to actually contact them. F*** you, LinkedIn and your carny style bait-and-switch!

The 'Are You Sure You Want To Close This Window?' Java pop-up. This irritating tactic, a more advanced version of the back button kidnap routine, tries to stop me quitting some redirect page I didn't even ask for (usually to do with online poker or mail-order brides) by giving me the option of clicking 'OK' or 'Cancel'. Irritatingly, both buttons do the exact same thing - nothing.

The 'Sign up now' to do anything site. I already have to remember 15,000 freaking passwords and usernames and now you want me to start yet another account just to read a story in the NYT or see Verne Troyer getting head? F*** you!

The talking sales rep. That Flash movie of the animated talking person on your home page might be impressive from a tech standpoint, but all it does is creep me out. It also sends me diving for the mute button when I'm trying to listen to iTunes while browsing and some booming robo-voice cuts in to 'welcome me' to some site or other.

The 'You've won something' gif. This migraine-inducing relic of the 90s sucks majorly. How am I supposed to read anything with that obnoxious gif constantly blinking in my peripheral vision?

Random Picture of the Day

A picture of the motorized La-Z-Boy that guy in Minnesota scored a DWI while driving. The National Hot Rod Association sticker is a nice touch. Related: Honorary Redneck