The ship is in ship-shape shape.

I watched a bit of the ridiculous Specter townhall and wasn't surprised that senator tool tweeted this bullshit shortly after the meeting...

"1000 people came to tell me what was on their minds and I have a message to take back to DC loud and clear."

So Specter thinks the folks we ought to listen to when it comes to the very complicated issue of health care in America are the children throwing a tantrum supported by organized opposition from insurance lobbyists? The "message" he's taking back came from DC to begin with. Moron.

I was afraid this would be a product of the townhall rioting. Blue Dogs and other pro-insurance industry congressmen are going to use the right-wing primal scream as cover to torpedo the public option and kill reform.

I think it would be a good time to kill the townhalls. Nothing good has come of them.

You're a mean father, you'll never give me anything I want! And I won't go to school till I have it!

You have one of those unruly 8-year old children for which Ritalin may be a good idea. The child is disrespectful of the rules of the house, insists that everything goes their way and has no respect for your things. Just recently the little monkey broke your heart and your grandmother's china set playing frisbee in the house.

Having had enough you put your foot down and send the child to his room for a time out.

He stomps up the stairs, slamming his bedroom door. Now you're forced to listen to him kick his feet against the wall of his room as he screams "I hate you!" and "I wish I'd never been born!"

Resigned to tough love you go back to your newspaper. Your only worry is that out of the corner of your eye you can see your husband glancing up the stairs and fidgeting. It's clear he's wavering even over this relatively minor form of discipline. You suspect that at any moment he'll run up the stairs, fling open the door of your son's room and tell the little monster "we didn't mean it." He is the weakest link.

To the bottom of your soul you know that if you give in to the tantrum you'll only reinforce the bad behaviour and make it worse. You'll probably also force a situation in the future where the discipline is going to have to be much, much worse to be effective. Perhaps you'll even need to get out THE BELT.

It's a terrible situation to be in made worse because your husband doesn't have your back and just wants to be liked.


(If you haven't guessed the situation above is pretty analogous to the health care debate as it stands now. The child is the political right, the time out would be the election, the tantrum would be the industry sponsored townhall riots and the wavering husband would be Obama/ Reid. )

Good? He is not good, he's terrible, he's the worst.. there is not any man like him anywhere in the world!

Poor conservatives. It's almost like the universe has it out for them. Jindal says volcano monitoring is a waste and a big ol' volcano erupts right in the middle of the republicanist state with the republicanist governor in the country. DHS releases a report warning that right wing violence may ensue out of frustration at the election, the righty talking heads go apeshit and just a few months later a wave of right wing terrorism sweeps the land.

They just can't catch a break. Reality keeps tieng them up, stuffing a gimp ball in their mouth and shoving them roughly into a chest.

Yet, like happy little troopers they aren't going to let the fact that they live in a world built wholly of delusion constructed out of the combined imagination of people like Malkin, Beck, Rand (*) or Goldberg. They're the energizer bunnies of bullshit.

Triumph of the Will indeed.

The current Champions of Asshattery have to be Sarah Palin and her legions of mouth-breathing followers who are taking the art of manufactured outrage to 11.

It's clear to any sentient being (and most of the non-sentient elements listed on the periodic table for that matter) that David Letterman's joke about Palin's daughter was aimed at Bristol Palin, not the 14-year old nobody outside of Eastern Crazy Wingnutia has ever heard of. This is the same adult Bristol Palin that's spent the last few months dancing around on my teevee babbling about not engaging in any acts of depravity before you were ready. Once you're old enough; deprave away! I know I like to deprave every chance I get.

Just a few remarks culled from the legions of Big Thinkers defending Palin-

Palin is dead-on. Letterman is expired. NBC is garbage. This backsliding American culture keeps lowering the morality bar lower and lower. Palin and others who stand up to the fall should be praised. - American

CBS should fire lettermen, i will avoid there sponsors,criminal action should be taken and letterman should be listed as a child porn person.he should have to register as a sex offender. - Chad

Letterman is a moronic pig. No matter what I think about Palin, Letterman is pathetic and will do anything for attention. The disgusting thing is that democrats just love him and as long as he's spitting over the fence, they don't care who he offends. - Richard

I know, I know. You're probably reading those comments and thinking to yourselves the same thing I'm thinking - "I'm hungry. I wonder how long that sandwich has been in the fridge at work and will my coworker miss it if I snag the the thing?"

You also might be having some of the other same things going through your mind as I did after regarding those comments. Why does the mainstream media cover this nonsense? Who are the pond scum that are on Letterman's case and why am I developing that eye tic that's making me look like Clouseau's Chief Inspector Dreyfus?

When you were young did you ever play a board game with a friend that didn't like losing so they just made up new rules as the game went along? Didn't it make YOU feel crazy? That's how I feel when I turn on the television or read the newspaper these days.

You know who the sanest among us are? People like liberality or Fran who pretty much dropped blogging about politics. They've made a wise, healthy decision not to abide crazy.

Good on 'em.

Rhett, don't. I shall faint.

Just because the photo makes me happy...


BTW: these are the vary same troops who the right expects to join them in their threatened anti-tax, teabagger revolt against Obama and the federal government. Good luck with that.

We'll have to outwit the fiend with our superior intelligence.

When I read the comments of the raving wingnut segment of the net about the Obama Blago and birth certificate "scandals," I can't help but think of the wisdom of Jack Handey who in his prescient genius had this to say:

"I can still recall old Mister Barnslow getting out every morning and nailing a fresh load of tadpoles to that old board of his. Then he'd spin it round and round, like a wheel of fortune, and no matter where it stopped he'd yell out, "Tadpoles! Tadpoles is a winner!" We all thought he was crazy. But then we had some growing up to do."

We may think the wingnut right is crazy, but then we have a lot of growing up to do.

But entertain if you will the unlikely idea that the average reader of Michelle Malkin, Matt Drudge, Reason or any other host of conservative blogs IS a few donuts short of a dozen. What does it say that our major news media not only entertain the ideas of these people but spend hours and hours building hypotheticals based upon their ranting under the guise of asking "honest" questions? What does it say about us if we continue to put up with it?

Should the people who dress up like Teddy Roosevelt and spend their days digging the Panama Canal in the basement really be the people setting the agenda of our national discourse?

Call ME crazy but I don't feel that those people who are really one step away from being caught in a butterfly net and stuffed in a rubber room should expect to have their opinions given sober consideration by the rest of us.

Perhaps I'm being too mean. Maybe it's just wrong of me to ascribe insanity to political positions that differ from my own. Personally, I think I'm being generous.

Because if they're not crazy then they're just really, really stupid. If it were up to them I'm sure they'd pick crazy.

If you ask me they already have.


(Bonus Jack Handeyism: "We tend to scoff at the beliefs of the ancients. But we can't scoff at them personally, to their faces, and this is what annoys me.")

Go away! 'Batin'!

True stories that read like Onion articles--

Cafe serves up coffee with conservative flavor.

From the moment customers enter the front door, the Conservative Cafe is serving up caffeinated doctrine.

Ann Coulter books sit stacked by the fireplace, and a picture of Ronald Reagan hangs on the wall. Fox News plays on all the televisions, and stock market quotes scroll along an electronic ticker above the cash register.

Behind the counter, owner Dave Beckham smiles proudly in a khaki T-shirt that reads "Zip It, Hippie." The shirt is for sale at the Crown Point, Ind., cafe, along with ones that say "Peace through Superior Firepower."

"It's a change from the traditional liberal bastion coffeehouses," Beckham says. "No one is going to bad-mouth America in here."

Because nothing is more American than expresso. Stuff that in your cup with a half-naked mermaid on it and drink it, liberals!

He didn't like piped-in folk music, specialty drinks with faux-Italian names or patrons who frittered the hours away on laptops or listening to iPods. The atmosphere, he said, seemed an affront to Midwestern values he learned growing up in northwest Indiana.

Who wants customers actually hanging around your establishment? Customers are for left-leaning, pinko coffee houses.

"Coffee shouldn't be about sitting in a cafe for 12 hours," Beckham says. "Coffee gets us through our workday. It's what we drink before we make steel for the rest of the country or head out into the fields."

To be fair we buy the steel from other countries but we get the point.

"We're trying to push back against the media and those in Europe who are anti-America," he said. "And it feels good to do it."

The Italians are our enemies.

Crown Point resident Matthew McPhee is one of them. He doesn't feel comfortable in trendier coffeehouses, where he sometimes doesn't recognize the music and often doesn't agree with the political conversations. He prefers the Conservative Cafe, where red-white-and-blue bunting hangs outside the brick building and patrons can buy T-shirts that read, "Silly liberal. . . . Paychecks are for Workers."

Exactly. You go into a Starbucks these days and you hear wacky new music from bands like the Rolling Stones or James Brown. Stuff that only the kids are listening to.

The decor may poke fun at liberals, but Beckham says they're welcome in his establishment. In the first few weeks after opening, for example, he extended his operating hours to accommodate an ideologically mixed group of "Hannity & Colmes" fans, who wanted to watch the show and debate the topics.

So much wrong with his assumptions here. He assumes "Hannity & Colmes" has fans. He also assumes said fans actually "debate" the issues discussed rather than blankly stare at the screen as drool slowly makes it's way down their chins.

"Conservative doesn't mean you belong to a certain political party," McCall says. "It's a way of thinking. It goes beyond politics."

"Thinking" is a generous term to use with regard to conservatives.

Ramrod, wreckage and ruin, still the same Kirby York.

If you're like me and enjoy a good chuckle at the inanity of right-winger raving but the fast pace of summer vacation is keeping you from being able to keep up with the actual words separating the froth and spittle then this post is for you.

First up we have these Fox News fans taking up the McCain campaign's whiny lament that the New York Times wouldn't print McCain's response to Obama's recent foreign policy op ed in that paper. I'm as stunned as they are. McCain's editorial which began "Barack Hussein Obama is a terrorist-loving ruffian who won't get off my lawn" is usually the sort of thing that looks right at home in the Times.

The best response to this outrage in my opinion? It would have to be Kathy wingnuttery--

This is what happens when news information is controlled by liberalsocialists.Instead of engaging another point of view, they shut down anyone who doesn’t fittheir social and political agendas. Besides, hardly anybody reads NYT anymore.NYT is going bankrupt. There are many other media outlets that McCain can tap into and grab bigger audience.

Of course that's closely followed by Frieda's fine assessment of the situation--

Like this is new. The American public has known of the complete bias for a longtime. We don’t even get a chance to hear all of Sen. McCain’s speeches or town
hall meetings. And we would like to.

If you're going to pretend that you're some man on the street and really aren't on the McCain campaign payroll you really should avoid using obvious tells that scream "shill." Nobody, but nobody wants to "hear all of Sen. McCain's speeches." That includes his most ardent supporters.

Along those lines "The Dark Knight" came out this weekend and, for those of you living under a rock, I'm told it did quite well. Not everybody is a fan of Heath Ledger's incredible portrayal of the Joker or the film's mediations on our post 9/11 society.

Take the commenter igroveman over at Slash Films who took issue with a review that site did of the movie which noted the political themes. No really; take him. I don't want the guy.

igroveman Says:
July 20th, 2008 at 9:47 am

Very “moralistic” of you in the third paragraph, but it’s very unpatriotic and sounds somewhat blind to refer to “atrocities and miscarriages of justice around the world” as if they are something our country is doing.

Give it some background by first looking up the word “atrocity” in the dictionary, then the encyclopedia as you gain a history of this word and realize it actually does depend on context, motive, and goals.

What’s so amazing to me is how our country had one of the biggest atrocities committed against it, but rather than stand by our country, all our weak-kneed country-men can do is wax keen on imaginary dictatorships and so-called injustices.

This is even sillier against the backdrop of any comic story, including Batman, which accepts and even encourages the idea that absolute retribution enacted through violence is well desired, and even oftentimes absolutely necessary.

More Americans need to put their mouths where their heart is, or their mind where the mouth is, so their heart can change.

Igroveman knows that people have their mouth and eyes mixed up, or their eyes with their mouth or something and that needs to change. Personally I think igrove has his head and his ass mixed up, or at least conjoined. This is why the more conservative among us shouldn't do art. They just don't get it.

Of course who can blame them for being unable to understand fictional works when their own leaders have trouble with reality? Take this new McCain ad which blames high gas prices on Barack Obama. Not the democratic party. Not liberal economic policies. Arguments that are breathtakingly stupid in their own right but at least have one foot on the ground. Nope. The reason we're paying $4.25+ a gallon at the pump is because of the nefarious plotting of a first-term Senator from Illinois.

The Ad: (Narrator:) Gas prices -- four dollars, five dollars, no end in sight, because some in Washington are still saying no to drilling in America. No to independence from foreign oil. Who can you thank for rising prices at the pump?

(Chant:) Obama, Obama.

(Narrator:) One man knows we must now drill more in America and rescue our family budgets. Don't hope for more energy, vote for it. McCain.

You know your ad has to be bloody stupid when Howard "the putz" Kurtz calls you on how much bullshit is contained in same.

If you think that Mick Jagger will still be doing the whole rock star thing at age fifty, well, then, you are sorely, sorely mistaken.

Oh for God's sakes.

Gavin over at Sadly, No! catches wingnuts blowing smoke out of their asses for the umteenth bazillion time over the 75,000 person count of people who went to see Barack Obama speak in Portland last weekend.

Apparently those people were there to see the rock band The Decembrists instead.

Question: Didn’t 75,000 people show up to hear him in Oregon?
Answer: Not really. A free rock concert preceded his appearance, News Busters reported. Oops.

I didn't make it to last Sunday's rally but I did make it a similar rally for John Kerry at the exact same location in 2004. The Kerry rally was on a weekday and drew only 50,000 people.

Kerry was accompanied by actor Leonardo DiCaprio and Jon Bon Jovi who sang "Livin on a Prayer" acoustically. I've always suspected that the majority of those people at that rally were actually there to see DiCaprio or Bon Jovi rather than the guy they hoped would replace George Bush. Now these conservatives sleuths have confirmed my suspicion.

(50,000 fans of "Titanic.")

(These Coast Guard guys kept yelling "I'm king of the world!" at DeCaprio.)

(Bridge trolls dig Bon Jovi.)

(Secret Service Snipers had Bon Jovi t-shirts on.)

(Even John Kerry was there to see Bon Jovi.)

All that hate's gonna burn you up, kid.

Via Atrios- A remake of Red Dawn?

With Islamo-Arabs Fascists in place of Russians and Cubans?

Randal reminded me that Hollywood already made that movie. It was called "Invasion U.S.A."

I suppose it's lost on the wingnuts cheering for this that if the al-Qaeda had an actual army to invade the United States they wouldn't need to fly planes into skyscrapers and otherwise engage in guerilla tactics.

I'll let you in on a little secret- I'm keeping my finger's crossed this movie gets made. Having their goofy New York gets invaded by Arabs fantasies writ large in a big screen Hollywood film won't exactly help their cause. It'll highlight how stupid it is.

I've always thought a good lashing with a buggy whip would benefit you immensely.

I was looking around for something light/ funny to post on a Friday afternoon and unfortunately ran across the opposite in this cartoon posted by Wild Bill over at "Passionate America" (what a novel idea for a website - an angry conservative.)

Wouldn't it be great if we didn't have to ride airplanes with Muslims and people in wheelchairs? We wouldn't have to go through security checkpoints or anything. All the terrorists would be relegated to "Multicultural Airlines" so we could fly in peace.

With our own kind.

Unless, of course, the terrorists look like this guy...

(Above - Timothy McVeigh, Wingnut Christian Honky Terrorist)