DougDisneyland

Vacation, had to get away...

2011-11-26T13:38:00.001-08:00

We had a much-needed vacation to Long Beach. I know what you're thinking, the beach in November? Are you insane? Despite your misgivings it was none the less awesome...

During the all-too brief respites between angry Pacific storm fronts, we strolled the beach...

The peninsula has a great beachfront trail system...

Occasionally the weather was spectacular...

I discovered that beach art comes in many forms...

I don't really know why we're so drawn to the beach, we just are, we're not going to try and fight it...

It really is the World's longest beach, honestly, the Chamber of Commerce swears it is...

These seagull tracks are fresh...

A flock of Sandpiper followed us up the beach...

Feathered sentinels we should have heeded, they foreshadowed an intense squall that soaked us through...

Long Beach was amazing but now on to Depoe Bay...

High tide at Depoe Bay...

What can you say, but wow...

The room with one hell of a view...

The Oregon coast is actually more spectacular when the weather sucks...

A little, little park in Depoe Bay you'll miss if you're driving...

The Devil's Punch Bowl...

Whatchoo lookin at?

Intrepid November surfers on Beverly beach...

Something tells me they're not as cute and cuddly as they appear...

Great trip, it's too bad we have to return to that other, shall we say, less tranquil reality...

If You're Not Angry, You're Not Paying Attention...

2011-11-04T06:14:00.000-07:00

If you can watch this and not be really, really pissed off, then you need to reduce your dosage...

Climategate non-scandal Debunked by Koch-funded Study, then promptly ignored by the MSM...

2011-10-28T08:30:00.000-07:00

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Weathering Fights

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A Moment of Geek...

2011-10-26T06:53:00.000-07:00

Sorry Folks, The Rapture has been Indefinitely Postponed...

2011-10-21T07:30:00.000-07:00

Do us all a favor Harold, from now on, just shut the fuck up...

A Friendly Message to the So-called 53%...

2011-10-13T08:34:00.000-07:00

Fact: Everyone in this country pays taxes, the people who don't make enough to pay federal income tax still pay payroll taxes, property taxes (even if they rent), sales taxes, user fees, and tolls.

Fact: People with low incomes actually pay a much higher percentage of their total income in taxes. So get off your high horse and stop acting like a sociopathic douche, paying federal income taxes doesn't make you superior to the Americans who don't, but it does seem to make some of you self-righteous dicks...

Fact: Your silly little *pull yourself up by your own boot straps* rugged individual mentality doesn't bear any resemblance to reality. Your struggle to the top didn't happen in a fucking vacuum. Your ability to get anywhere in our society is a direct result of the labors and sacrifices of every American who came before you, most likely your own parents...

Fact: In striking similarity to conservative opinion regarding anthropogenic climate change, most of what conservatives state as fact about economic matters is also complete bullshit...

Fact: As demonstrated by the above chart, you can stop blaming Obama for our current clusterfuck, because it was actually caused by the idiot you voted for - twice!

Finally that friendly message to the people who call themselves the 53 percent. It's great that you make enough money to pay federal income taxes, don't fall over patting yourself on the back. However you're overlooking the fact that unless you were born into wealth it takes multiple jobs, or acquiring nearly insurmountable levels of debt, or both, just to get to where you are. Yet you're somehow deluded enough to believe that you're living the American dream...

That's the fact Jack, oh and by the way, have you ever heard about a thing called Stockholm syndrome? Look it up, and while you're at it stop blaming the fucking victims...

Main Stream Media Cognitive Dissonance...

2011-10-12T08:47:00.000-07:00

Because You Have to be Asleep to Believe It...

2011-10-10T17:25:00.000-07:00

A little game of Compare and Contrast...

2011-10-06T18:38:00.000-07:00

The Daily Show
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I am the Ninety-Nine Percent...

2011-10-04T18:05:00.000-07:00

No seriously, cousins I have never met are the rich ones. I can only get a free pass to the bemusement park in my brain that manifests itself here.

I am a lab technician, I like what I do even though the pay is so-so. I haven't had a raise in over five years, even though I get good performance reviews and the company has turned around. How do you ask for a raise when you're grateful just to have a job?

My wife and I are struggling mightily to put our kids through college. We struggle now so they're not tens of thousands of dollars in debt when they finish. That is a form of indentured servitude.The kids both work full-time because we couldn't come even close to paying for everything without their help.

We are just trying to give our kids the same thing our parents managed to easily accomplish with only one household income. Sadly we need four incomes to accomplish the same thing. My how times have changed...

We are the ninety-nine percent. I'm guessing that you are too...

Time to Join the Movement...

2011-10-03T18:31:00.000-07:00

The segment never aired...quelle surprise!

Are you Surprised to Learn that America Ranks 18th in Education?

2011-09-28T12:00:00.000-07:00

The jokes write themselves...

More Sad News: 50% of Americans Do Not Believe in Reality...

2011-09-22T17:25:00.000-07:00

I made up that number. But hey, it's probably not too far from the truth. Turns out that most of the sheeple in the flock will readily eat whatever they're fed, even if it's shit...

The Republican Party: Where Denial Runs Deep and Runs Wide...

2011-09-15T09:28:00.000-07:00

Sweet fucking Jeebus...do you want to know what is wrong with America? I'll tell you what, it's our own fucking brain-dead citizenry. Seriously, sometimes when I read the "carefully crafted" opinions of these knuckle-dragging troglodytes, I don't know whether to laugh or to cry.

Take for example this letter to the editor of the Times entitled, "Why scold America". This person actually states that they were appalled by what in my opinion was light criticism of our post-9/11 actions on the world stage. They go on to erroneously state that our military has prevented all major attacks on the U.S. since September 11th, 2001. This is just factually incorrect on so many levels it's frightening. For one, it depends on your definition of the word - major, and frankly I don't think the victims care whether an attack is considered major or minor, they're dead all the same.

The truth that nobody seems to ever mention (amongst all the rampant fear mongering) is that al Qaeda was rendered operationally irrelevant within a few days of our Afghan invasion. They are incapable of launching any more major attacks on U.S. soil. Every attack since 9/11 has been minor in comparison to 9/11. If you don't believe me consider this, if they were capable of a major attack, it would have already happened.

Secondly, the vast majority, if not all, potential attacks on U.S. soil were prevented by law enforcement, and if you closely examine the vast majority of those plots, you will discover that they were actually planned and financed by agent provocateurs inserted into domestic groups. We are essentially creating terror cells to arrest. In reality our military has not stopped a single domestic attack, including 9/11. Instead they have become the primary target for attacks abroad. Which is precisely what bin Laden intended in the first place.

Then this person claims that the so-called Arab Spring happened as a result of our spreading freedom around the world via robotic death sortie. They go on to claim that our long-time ally Egypt was a "terrorist-led" nation whose dictator was overthrown because of our indirect actions. When in fact we initially supported the status quo before seeing where this whole thing was going. The writer conveniently excludes Tunisia from the list, a decidedly non-terrorist state where the revolts actually began. Maybe that is because the writer, like a lot of idiot America assume that all Muslim states support terrorism, or some such nonsense.

This belief is not only laughable, but shows an deep ignorance of events that occur outside their narrow worldview. This also epitomizes the patronizing and condescending attitude that drives the belief in American exceptionalism. This person seems to believe wholeheartedly in the American version of White Man's Burden advocated by the neoconservative movement and implemented by the Bush administration. It is the tragic and frighteningly ethnocentric belief that only enlightened white folk are capable of bringing freedom and civilization to the little brown peoples of the world...

The most ironic part of this bizarre misinterpretation of world events, is that al Qaeda also believes that they are the inspiration for the Arab Spring. So which is it? The answer is of course, neither. The Arab Spring happened in spite of outside interference. It occurred spontaneously as the people of those countries got sick of their leaders and decided that they would take a stand against (in the case of Egypt) decades of American subsidized oppression.

Why is it that delusional American fucktards have this overweening desire to send off a letter to the editor and put their ignorance on full display? Are they paid? In some cases the answer is - yes. Regardless of the motivation these revisionist historical beliefs have assembled a cult-like following of devotees.

If you don't believe me, witness the reactions of the partisan audience to Congressman Ron Paul's statements during the most recent Republican debate. Congressman Paul tried to explain to the audience the stated motivation for the September 11th attacks. The audience was either unwilling or unable to accept the truth, they were so enraged by any implication that America shares culpability for the attacks, that they proceeded to hurl catcalls of self-righteous indignation at the Congressman. Fortunately for Paul eggs, rotten vegetables, and rope were all confiscated at the door...

Finally I ask you which tired cliche fits this situation best? Ignorance is bliss, or is it, denial ain't just a river in Egypt? I report, you decide.

It's Time to Bring Sustainability to Our Unsustainable Economic System...

2011-09-08T07:51:00.000-07:00

A Friendly Reminder of What Obama has Accomplished...

2011-08-25T07:08:00.000-07:00

I know at times I've been wavering between being hyper-critical or greatly disappointed by the current administration. But in comparison to the fucking Bush debacle, President Obama has actually accomplished a hell of a lot, even considering the insane counter-productive intransigence of the regressive neo-anarchists currently occupying the (G)reedy (O)ld (P)rick party.

Apparently everyone could use a reminder of what this administration has achieved in the last three years...

Rick Perry: Ignorant Tool or Lying Sack of Shit?

2011-08-18T08:12:00.000-07:00

I find it disturbingly ironic, yet all too predictable, that the current field of potential GOP presidential candidates desperately want to dismantle all the environmental regulations instituted since GOP President Richard Nixon created the EPA. With the exception of maybe two of the potential candidates (one of whom doesn't stand a chance in hell of getting nominated anyway), the entire GOP field doesn't even believe in the overwhelming amount of research that indicates climate change is anthropogenic, some even go so far as to say it is a total fabrication, to which I say, tell that to the Arctic ice cap you ignorant fucking dumbshits...

At least Mittens Romney, the current GOP frontrunner, does believe that climate change is anthropogenic in nature, yet on the stump he displays this bizarre gaping hole in what is otherwise the only logical approach to combating climate change. He and every other GOP candidate are running on a platform of stripping the EPA of its ability to regulate the industries that emit the greenhouse gases responsible for that change.

But by far the most frightening fucktard on the current list is newcomer Texas Governor Rick Perry. Not only does he believe that climate change isn't actually happening, but he is convinced that scientists from around the world, studying in multiple different disciplines, are all involved in a massive conspiracy to socially engineer our society. According to Rick, literally thousands of scientists have fabricated results merely to ensure a steady flow of financing to their research. Maybe he believes this because he assumes that everyone in the world's scientific community is as duplicitous and unethical as he appears to be.

Of course Ricky-Bobby is referring to the so-called climate-gate non-scandal that was only a scandal if you watch Faux News or read World Nut Daily. He fails to mention that all the scientists involved were exonerated in no less that four independent inquiries in two different countries, but forget those facts and go with him here, Rick knows that atmospheric science, and science in general, is nothing more than a highly lucrative business that produces more millionaires than even the oil industry. Obviously science is conducted by people with a liberal bias (after all, they attended fancy liberally-biased colleges with all that there fancy book learnin'). According to Rick, scientists want nothing less than the destruction of America or some such patently ridiculous bullshit...

The world can no longer abide giving these fools political power. Let us look forward, not backward as the entire GOP field would have us do...

Teabagger Motto: Light a Match Just to Watch it Burn...

2011-08-12T09:12:00.001-07:00

Welcome to Machine, Courtesy of Citizens United...

2011-08-11T07:02:00.000-07:00

In case you are like most American's and you've been in a pharmaceutically-induced stupor for the last few years, you may not have noticed that the U.S. Supreme Court decided to sell our electoral system to the highest bidder. A recent example of this fire sale is the Wisconsin State Senate recall elections where as much as 30 million dollars was spent by mysterious unseen forces - on six fucking State Senate races! Do you know what this means? It means we have finally achieved banana republic status...

Just Ignore the Fact that the Facts about Climate Change Aren't in Dispute...

2011-08-04T08:56:00.000-07:00

Oh for fuck's sake. While the folks at Murdoch's Ministry of Truth are still claiming that the science behind anthropogenic climate change is in dispute. (Here's a clue, there is no dispute outside of the American Petroleum Institute.) Meanwhile, the unrelenting reality of a quickly melting Arctic smacks these ignorant fucktard's right in their smug faces. Why they choose to target a fucking cartoon character I don't really know, maybe it's because they both appeal to the same intellectual demographic. All I know is that they purposefully disseminate propaganda to confuse the idiot sheeple who believe this bullshit bears any resemblance to being fair and/or balanced...

The Darkest Depths of Mordor...

2011-07-29T06:39:00.000-07:00

Oh Johnny, you could've been a contender. Do you finally regret picking the tundra grifter? After all, Sharon Angle and Christine O'Donnell wouldn't have made it past a primary if Bible Spice hadn't paved the way for semi-literate dumbshits to be taken seriously as candidates...

We're from the Government and We're here to help...

2011-07-28T06:58:00.000-07:00

Social Security Reform Bill Encourages Americans To Live Faster, Die Younger

Driven by Hate...

2011-07-26T07:28:00.000-07:00

"Nothing fools people as much as extreme passion" Joseph Hall

Admittedly I don't know much, but I do know that our world is chock-full of bat-shit crazy people, and again we have witnessed horrible acts of terror perpetrated against innocents by these bat-shit crazy people, and again it is in the name of religion.

So while I may not know shit, I do know that religious extremists from all of the Abrahamic faiths have one thing in common, and that is their insane hatred of all pluralistic secular societies. I find it especially ironic that the people who love to hate always seem to cast liberals as the enemy...

Just so you know I don't give a fuck if you are a suicide-bomber or an abortion doctor killer, a conservative radio demagogue or the crazed heavily-armed fucktards driven to action by them - your first step should be admitting that you're a right-wing reactionary and an asshole. Whether you know it or not, you all appear to have the same goal in mind, that being dead liberals.

I saw a particularly absurd graphic on some whack-job site the other day. It said, "Liberals kill liberty dead". I guess we should just set aside the fact that the founding fathers called themselves liberal, and that the words liberal and liberty come from the same root word. In case you were wondering, the word liberal is derived from the Latin liberalis, which means "of freedom". But just ignore that inconvenient fact and keep believing that it's the liberals who are stealing your precious freedumbs.

I'm going to go ahead and generalize that all religious and political extremists (they're usually intertwined anyway) are nothing more than easily interchangeable douche-bags who might hate less if they got laid more. Why can't these people just fucking let it go, live and let live? Why does extreme faith always lead to pissing contests with a body count?

A Major Victory Against Anti-Pastafarian Discrimination...

2011-07-14T08:30:00.000-07:00

Praise his noodly appendage! A brave Austrian man has won an important battle against ~~decades~~ at least some period of state-sanctioned religious discrimination. This might possibly lead to official recognition of the one true faith by the Austrian government, which may very well lead to other European governments following suit.

Now that the Austrian's have decided that Pastafarians are not insane, it is an exciting time to be a true-believer. The next step in our agenda has to be getting FSM Church members elected to local school boards across America. If Christians want to teach religious tenets in science class, then we should insure that our non-dogma is taught in every comparative religion class.

I am confident that when the universal truths of the mighty noodly one are presented to America's impressionable youth, they will come to understand that Pastafarianism is vastly superior to any silly sun-worshipping apocalyptic zombie-cult or whatever. I predict spontaneous conversions to the Church by the pant-load.

After all, how are you going to keep the kids living their empty lives of contradictory tenets and arbitrarily imposed deprivations once they've found out that Pastafarian heaven has a beer volcano? Just ask yourself this, is paradise really paradise without stripper factories?

rAmen!

The Sad News: Complete Fucking Idiots Make up One Quarter of U.S. Population...

2011-07-02T07:53:00.000-07:00

A recent poll determined that twenty-six percent of Americans didn't know what country we fucking gained independence from on the fourth of fucking July! (Here's a clue Morans, the sun never sat on their empire.) What is left to fucking say except USA-USA-USA-USA-USA! America rules, now let's go blow some shit up!

Have a happy Fourth of July everybody...

Why We Suck...

2011-06-22T07:39:00.000-07:00

Oh for fuck's sake...how sad that the majority of these women believe that objective facts are somehow on an equal footing with subjective myth. I'm sorry folks, but there aren't always two sides to every story. If this the future of America, we're fucking toast...

I Am So Fucking Sick of Politics...

2011-06-15T17:28:00.000-07:00

Sweet Jeebus on a stick! I have grown so very weary of the fucked-up mess our country has become. Even a political junkie like me has reached rock bottom. I am trying to wean myself from the steady diet of a seemingly nihilistic strain of conservatism, and an utterly spineless liberalism.

One of the more interesting aspect of our current situation has to be the heavily repeated narrative that the Obama administration has already failed. You hear him portrayed as such by pundits all across the so-called *liberal media* spectrum. So much so that the President's perceived failure was the main topic of the first Republican debate, and since the Republican's are completely out of ideas, I'm guessing you will hear that failure narrative repeated more frequently in the lead up to the next election.

I find it fascinating that the President is being castigated on a seemingly hourly basis by his political enemies for the exact same policies his predecessor was lionized for. He has been in the cross-hairs of the opposition since before he was elected, both literally and figuratively. There was never even a honeymoon period with the right-wing. From the beginning it was all aboard the demonization and derision crazy train straight on to Batshitcrazytown, which I think is somewhere in Arizona, possibly Florida...

All that nonsense aside, the fact remains that this administration has not lived up to its promise to bring the kind of change that would save what's left of the New Deal from the clutches of an rigidly ideological and increasingly dogmatic conservative movement bent on destroying it. Let alone the hope that someone could reverse the last thirty years of insane trade and regulatory policies that have gutted the American middle class.We are regaled to little true leadership and virtually nothing getting through Congress to stem America's slide into developing nation status.

I fear that if the economy continues its decline, there will be a conservative backlash that could erase all of the progress this nation has seen in the last seventy years. Just look at what is happening in the states that have Republican administrations - Social services gone, schools hallowed out, public employee collective bargaining rights eliminated, selling off public lands to development, defunding Planned Parenthood and limiting abortion rights, and that's just scratching the surface. Just imagine that agenda on a national level. You can see it in the House already, my question is exactly how many jobs were created by defunding Planned Parenthood and NPR?

That said, I still have issues with many very troubling Obama policies. What's the deal with going after whistle blowers? What the fuck is the deal with the FBI investigating peace activists? Robotic death sorties? Violating the War Powers Act? What The Fuck? This is the exact same shit I was complaining about during the Bush debacle! Go back and read, I shit you not. As the saying goes, the more things change the more they stay the same...

People Kinda Suck...

2011-06-07T07:01:00.000-07:00

Seriously, you guys are total assholes! This ~~inconsiderate~~ ~~bitch~~ person was innocently trying to find a seat in a darkened theater, which is like, totally hard. Of course looking for a seat in a dark theater usually means that the movie has already started, which attests to the fact that this person started her evening by arriving late, thus automatically being rude to her fellow moviegoers.

Maybe the theater Gestapo was being unfair, maybe she was using her phone to illuminate that piece of popcorn she dropped the first time management warned her about texting...

First let me say that this is the kind of stupid bullshit that keeps me out of theaters, but I would have to support a theater that has the balls to give selfish fucktards the boot. I'm sure everyone has experienced one of *those people* in a public setting, they are folks who feel entitled to treat a theater (or any public place) like it's their fucking living room...

I extend a hearty bravo to the ownership and staff of the Alamo Drafthouse, but have to say that I blame all of this on Sarah Palin. (Although in actuality cell phones are at fault, but ignore that fact and go with me here) The tundra-grifter has redefined belligerently arrogant ignorance as one of the most important rights our Constitution bestows. Bible Spice has taught a generation of Americans that it is their inalienable right to be wrong about everything, and that they are entitled to be immature, petty, and confrontational, when somebody has the temerity to call you on it...

Nuff Said...

2011-06-03T10:48:00.000-07:00

Oh for fuck's sake...

Food for Thought...

2011-05-30T09:59:00.000-07:00

I Hate to Say it, but...

2011-05-22T08:34:00.000-07:00

I told you so...

Oh Yeah I Almost forgot...Judgement Day is Saturday...

2011-05-20T17:05:00.000-07:00

Specifically @ 6PM PST

Only Two Days till Doomsday!

2011-05-19T07:11:00.000-07:00

What I really want to know is this - if Jeebus does show up, do I still have to buy my wife a birthday present?
But seriously, since his fan club is made up almost entirely of sanctimonious assholes, I'll make this one time exception and say, I would love to be proven wrong...

You're Welcome...

2011-05-05T09:40:00.000-07:00

President Bush Reacts to Osama Bin Laden's Death with Will Ferrell from Will Ferrell

...and why exactly are we still in Afghanistan?

2011-05-04T08:42:00.000-07:00

Yes of course, by all means let us celebrate. Let us not waste our precious time worrying about the ramifications of extra-judicial assassinations, illegal foreign incursions, extraordinary renditions or fruitless torture. Avert your eyes from the continuation of illegal domestic surveillance and airport genital-groping theater. Let us not sully our beautiful minds with stray thoughts of collateral damage or permanently displaced peoples. Don't even bother contemplating the wisdom of totally unnecessary, never-ending military occupations. Let us instead focus on how the ends justify the means regardless of how corrosive those means are to the soul of America...

Give credit where credit is due. According to the wingnut pundits in pineapple upside-down world, while attempting to restore dignity to the White House true American hero George W. Bush used Doc Brown's flux capacitor to travel back to the future and successfully kill bin Laden two years after he left office. Apparently Bush used that same device to make lecherous ne'er-do-well Bill Clinton responsible for failing to stop 9/11. Also readily apparent is the success of Bush-era enhanced interrogation techniques regardless of their legality. After all, the rule of law is only for people not easily frightened by their own shadows.

But seriously, if anything, the assassination of bin Laden is a repudiation of Bush's policies and a repudiation of the continuing need for a large occupational force in Afghanistan. I'm truly sorry, but I have to inform you that it was the Bush administration's overweening incompetence that led to the abandonment of Afghanistan. They abandoned the hunt for bin Laden in a vainglorious attempt to achieve the neoconservative wet dream that was the Iraq invasion. That is the primary reason Afghanistan is as fucked-up as it is.

It is time to acknowledge that no one can fix Afghanistan. We could easily operate special ops and robotic death sorties till our empire's end without having to field a hundred-thousand troops and twice as many corporate mercenaries. We need to acknowledge that al-Qaeda has long been virtually non-existent in Afghanistan, and that we need to negotiate a cease-fire with the non-terrorist, nationalist Taliban. Let us try to put an end to the Afghan civil conflict we find ourselves mired in and start getting the fuck out now...

Time to Shut the Fuck Up Trump...

2011-04-28T09:25:00.000-07:00

Celebutard/Man-sized piece of human excrement/Novelty presidential candidate Donald Trump has humbly taken credit for making the President (yet again) produce his birth certificate. In fact he enthusiastically takes credit for the dubious accomplishment of being completely and dickishly wrong about pretty much everything. Although I must say that Trump jumping on to this bandwagon of afterbirther insipidness has become one of the more sadly distressing, yet thoroughly entertaining, political spectacles in the recent history of our formerly great nation...

A few have come to realize that the corporate media is nothing more than a fucking 24/7 cavalcade of human misery. That might be due to the fact that real investigative journalism is no longer being conducted at any of the major media outlets. What we have in its place is infotainment posing as news, the infotainment department doesn't do research, they don't even bother to question the veracity of what slimy attention-whores like Trump secrete all over the masses. What is truly sad is watching millionaire meat puppets smile and nod when these fucking drama queens spout ridiculous falsehoods. It becomes painfully obvious that their corporate string-pullers want this blatant disinformation disseminated across our public airwaves.

Trump could just disagree with the policies of the Obama administration in a respectful manner. He could do this easily without making himself look like a gullible fucktard who covets these unsubstantiated whack-job conspiracy theories like he covets his next trophy wife. Sadly though, if he was indeed respectful he wouldn't be able to simultaneously hold the attention of the fearful (R)egressive base and the allegedly liberally-biased media. I place the blame squarely at the foot of a horribly irresponsible corporate media, they allow people like this far more than equal time to spew their thinly-veiled racist dog-whistle bullshit. Although the Trumpster should give it a try, he might find that being a thoughtful critic of the President might have more appeal to the few remaining rational folks in the grand old white man's party, with an added bonus that the rest of America would be less ashamed of breathing the same air.

This has never been about a fucking birth certificate, this has always been about pathetic attempts to use unfounded fears to demean and delegitimize Barack Obama, this started long before he was elected and will continue through however long he holds office. Perhaps if the (R)egressive party had any legitimate contenders for the nation's highest office, instead of the overflowing clown car of rubber room escapees, maybe, just maybe, this kind of idiotic partisan douchebaggery would be unnecessary...

Happy Zombie Jeebus Day!

2011-04-24T09:26:00.000-07:00

To Laugh Or To Cry?

2011-04-23T07:50:00.000-07:00

Both...

Ignorance is Strength...

2011-04-22T06:37:00.000-07:00

Be afraid, be very afraid...

Just More of the Same Conservative Hypocrisy...

2011-04-20T08:02:00.000-07:00

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

As the people of Benton Harbor, Michigan have discovered, when you allow the (R)egressive party to take over your state's government, it doesn't mean that they intend to privatize just a few government services. It actually means that an unelected corporate mercenary has been given the authority to dissolve your town's duly elected government and sell off any public lands to the highest bidder.

This is a blatantly undemocratic move perpetrated by people who despise small *d* democracy.

I'm sorry but if you support what amounts to economic martial law, the war on terror, the war on drugs, or the war on a woman's right to choose what she does with her own body, then you are not a fucking proponent of small government, you're just a fucking hypocrite...

Give Me Obsolete Light Bulbs Or Give Me Death!

2011-03-31T17:31:00.000-07:00

The South Carolina State Legislature is actually debating exempting the state from the Federal law phasing out the manufacture of the highly inefficient legacy design incandescent light bulbs. It seems truly bizarre to me that the residents of South Carolina would approve of their lawmakers uselessly wasting time and taxpayer money during a time of budget shortfalls. What's next, the state exempting itself from all federal regulation? I think they tried that once before, and I don't recall that working out well.

Frankly this is somewhere between quixotic idiocy and spiteful political posturing. Every light bulb manufacturer in the country has seen a fifty percent decrease in the sale of incandescent bulbs over the last ten years, so in this case, it's not the market's invisible hand giving the state legislature a back room hand-job. It's the Luddites in the (R)egressive party's delusional belief that being able to conspicuously waste money and energy is somehow an integral part of their precious fucking freedumbs. Seriously, anyone who is dumb enough to believe the legislature is taking a righteous stand against the so-called nanny state, is also stock-piling ammo for the day when the black helicopters of the New World Order come to take them to their local FEMA concentration camp...

Sure, there is a bigger up-front cost to LED's or CFL's, but the longer bulb-life and energy efficiency will save money in the long run. I really don't buy the whole, I don't like the color of the light. bullshit meme being spewed. This debate should only be about saving fucking money and energy, which is something you'd think these budget-obsessed cut-everything-and-torch-the-place Republican douche-bags would understand. Just imagine if every public building in South Carolina used LED lighting, they would save a considerable amount of taxpayer money, something I'm sure never even crossed their tiny little minds...

They Were Running a Special: Charge Two Wars, get the Third One Free...

2011-03-24T09:07:00.000-07:00

The Daily Show - America at Not-War - Obama's Communication Gap
Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

The transformation of our current president into just another corporate tool is nearing completion. His foreign policy is virtually indistinguishable from that of his predecessor. Before you think I'm just another dickish Obama loather, I will tell you that I voted for the man. I believe his domestic policies are doing more for our citizenry than his opponents ever would have, and his reactions to events on the world stage appear to be far less knee-jerk than the grampa with anger management issues. However, I can't say there is much real difference between the foreign policy positions of either man.

The president has sojourned from alleged idealist to cynical technocrat in short order. That journey happened because the office of the presidency has become nothing less than a puppet theater, a gilded figurehead for the machinations of the oligarchs who own the military-industrial-banking-media revolving-door plutocratic-kleptocracy we laughingly call a republic. The President ran on a platform that repudiated the excesses of the Bush maladministration, yet he has maintained most of the failed policies of the Bush era and in some cases he has one-upped Bush. Our attack on Libya is nothing more than the Bush doctrine with active, as opposed to retroactive, U.N. support.

Our actions in Libya are as unconstitutional as our actions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam, or Korea. All of those conflicts had something in common, Congress never passed the declaration of war required by the Constitution. Although some supporters of the president cite the 1973 War Powers Act, which gives the president limited power to use military force without Congressional approval, I believe that act to be unconstitutional as well, and a gross rationalization for the abuses and unconstitutional aggregation of power by the executive branch of our government over the last fifty years. Others cite the U.N. charter that requires action by member states when civilians need protection from their own government. Again, I take issue with the demonstrably arbitrary application of Chapter VII of that charter.

If the U.N. is going to take military action in Libya to maintain peace and prevent civilian causalities, why wasn't there intervention in Sudan, or Rwanda, or Myanmar, or China after the Tiananmen Square massacre? Why are American allies (Yemen and Bahrain) allowed to massacre peaceful protesters, but Colonel Qaddafi is not given that same latitude? Our treatment of iron-fisted despots is hypocritical and incoherent at best. It is that unequal treatment that makes our involvement in Libya not only seem unwise, but arbitrary as well...

Geekfest 2011 a.k.a. the Emerald City Comicon!

2011-03-16T18:41:00.000-07:00

I somehow convinced my wife to attend Geekfest with me this year.

What a great idea, I should have thought of it sooner, she's great at waiting in long lines. Coincidentally this is my 666th post here on DougDisneyland, therefore the most evil...

Sergio Aragones is super cool, he drew a little Batman on my copy of Sergio Aragones Destroys DC...

Geof Darrow is also very nice, he drew a cool Carl in my copy of his seminal masterpiece Hard Boiled...

Who's this guy? I'm not sure, but I think he might be Frank Quitely's minder...

I gave my camera to my friend Phil who got some great shots (thanks Phil!) although this isn't one of them...

There were lots of great creators this year, I got signatures from more than a dozen including such luminaries as Marv Wolfman, Terry and Rachel Dodson, Matt Fraction, Dustin Nguyen, J.B. Jones, and Ron Marz...

The cosplayers were out in force this year...

These people will never forgive George Lucas for feeding Boba Fett to the Sarlacc...

This awesome Deadpool costume wins best in show...

Is Halo really a Marine recruiting tool? I report, you decide...

Some folks have way too much time and disposable income...

Phil was trying to capture the fact that women who are not paid spokesmodels actually attend Geekfest...

Sometimes it's hard to tell the comic geeks from the BDSM enthusiasts...

WTF?

The rarest of all breeds - Trekker girls...

Even the Furries showed up, but their leader Pedobear didn't make an appearance...

A cosplayer with comics? Quelle surprise!

Is this guy Sauron? Prove it, show us the cock-ring of power...

We ended our day drinking in a German Pub. We were forced to do this because of the huge gaping flaw in the otherwise awesome Emerald City Comicon - No fucking Beer Garden! Other than that Geekfest 2011 was a whole lot of fun. Next year we are going to go more than one day, and we are definitely getting a room downtown...

Rand Paul: Still Searching for the Toilet that Can Handle His Load of Shit...

2011-03-12T17:17:00.000-08:00

I may not know much but I can assure you that Senator Rand Paul (R)Aynrandia is a nothing but a tool. I say that because there are no rational explanations for his childish *mommy state* screed during a Senate committee on Energy and Natural Resources. It seems that even though Senator Paul considers himself a staunch conservative, actual conservation is not one of his legislative priorities. Paul gives a hyperbole-ridden rant about being forced to purchase a low-flow toilet (I assume by some jackbooted EPA thug). Unfortunately the toilet is seemingly incapable of adequately flushing the copious amounts of shit produced by the Rand family. If this is indeed the case, and not some ham-fisted display of political theater. My first bit of advice to the Senator would be to increase his daily consumption of fiber...

What is the most galling part of this adolescent tirade is his idiotic comparison of a woman's reproductive rights to the purchase of a fucking light bulb or a toilet that can handle this load of shit. His disingenuous attempt to equate his freedumb to buy whatever useless consumer product his donors manufacture, with a woman's right to choose, is almost as comical as it is insulting. Until the bi-partisan legislation demanding these energy innovations was passed by Congress during the Bush administration, consumer's had little if any choice. Their choice was between living in the dark or using those shitty, energy inefficient products produced by an industry uninterested in producing products that were durable or efficient.

The intent of this legislation was to force multiple industries into responding to an impending national energy crisis. History has demonstrated that in the absence of government sanction, businesses do whatever is most profitable without considering the greater interests of the public, including externalizing the costs of environmental degradation onto the taxpayer. I know it's a lot to ask that corporations operating in the United States act in the public interest and not just the short-term interests of shareholders.

As an American and a consumer, Senator Paul should want to change his buying habits for three reasons, 1) American energy independence, 2) Environmental conservation, and 3) The universal desire of all Americans to save money!

If anything this common-sense energy efficiency legislation has increased options to the consumer. Not only are incandescent bulbs still available, but now they are designed to last longer and use less energy. I'm not really sure what sharing his paranoid libertarian fantasies was suppose to accomplish in this hearing, other than making him look like a douche-y ideologue, but if Senator Paul was really interested in protecting liberty he should be trying to have the Patriot Act abolished. Not pathetically clinging to obsolete nineteenth century technology...

Congress Wants to let the Invisible Hand give Our Environment the Reacharound...

2011-03-09T12:39:00.000-08:00

“Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge’.” - Isaac Asimov

Gutting the EPA is what passes for rational self-interest with the 'returning us to the gilded age' crowd currently controlling our Congress. After all history couldn't possibly teach us what might go wrong if we let unregulated markets determine the treatment of our shared environment...

The Siren Song of the NeoCon...

2011-03-08T17:22:00.000-08:00

Just imagine how much more fucked-up things could be if the crank from Arizona and the Snowbilly grifter were running things. I mean seriously, if you judged by what Grampy McSame has been shaking his fist at, we would already be bombing Libya, and if you think bombing another Muslim nation is a good idea you should have your feeding tube removed...

"Then They Came for the Trade Unionists"...

2011-03-04T06:39:00.000-08:00

The founding fathers intended the press to act as our government's fourth estate. However, keeping the citizenry informed is not in the vested interests of the oligarchs who own the allegedly *liberal* main-stream media. I do believe that George Orwell would be proud to know that this modern equivalent of bread and circuses directly employs the framing and narrative creation from his prescient novel 1984. We currently reside in a world where war is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength...

Generals using PsyOps on Senators - No One Seems to Care...

2011-02-25T06:54:00.000-08:00

Does the U.S. Military engage in the blatantly illegal act of propagandizing our own citizenry based solely on the whims of senior brass? According to an Army whistle-blower they do, and seriously if you think this is the first time this has happened, you're fucking delusional. Army Lt. Colonel Michael Holmes told reporters that he was reprimanded for refusing to comply with the illegal orders given by his superior General William Caldwell.

This is one of the many examples of why our military is suppose to be under strict civilian control. The job of our military is not to make foreign policy decisions. Generals do not get to decide which war to fight or for how long. If that were the case we would still be fighting in Vietnam, after all we were just a couple of battles and a few hundred thousand causalities shy of a glorious Pyrrhic victory there.

The American public should be outraged by this news and demand that this general be held to account. Unfortunately that would take some small modicum of interest on the part of the American public in our ongoing actions in Afghanistan. But since the majority of Americans are doing nothing more than sitting on their couch anxiously awaiting an appearance by also-ran Christine O'Donnell on this season's Dancing with the Stars, I don't see that happening anytime soon...

Sundae Bloody Sundae...

2011-02-24T07:20:00.000-08:00

I bet you didn't know that ice cream sodas, comic books, heavy metal music, and video games had something in common? Well they do, that being the sanctimonious assholes who appoint themselves arbiters of morality...and I bet you didn't know that Robot Chicken was capable of anything even remotely educational...

Class War Over - Economic Royalists Celebrate Return of Feudal System...

2011-02-23T08:15:00.000-08:00

"Only little people pay taxes." Leona Helmsly

Do you still think we have anything resembling a Constitutionally-limited, democratically-elected representative republic in America? Sorry, we actually have a wholly-owned plutocracy that enables a multi-national corporate plutonomy. Welcome to America's Gilded Age Part 2 The Sequel...

Anthrax Attacks Remain Unsolved, No One Seems to Care...

2011-02-17T16:12:00.000-08:00

I find it interesting how stories that I deem significant are often neglected or ignored by the corporate media. One such case involves an unsolved terrorist attack on American citizens, including members of the U.S. Congress. That story involved deadly weapons of mass destruction in the form of weaponized anthrax spores. These spores could only have been created by experts, and judging by the genetic markers in the recovered samples, could only have been created by scientists employed by the U.S. military.

Sorry, to me that is a big fucking story and it has been seriously neglected by our media for the better part of a decade, yet the majority of Americans don't remember or simply don't care. Apparently we can wage multiple wars to avenge one act of terrorism, but when that terrorism is home-grown and not motivated by Islam, we just flush our lust for vengeance down the collective memory hole...

The Federal Bureau of Investigation announced that they had a suspect and were in the process of charging that individual when the suspect all-too-conveniently committed suicide. End of story, right? The FBI found their perp, and the perp killed himself to avoid prosecution, it was a neat and tidy ending straight out of a some terribly cliched teevee police procedural, the only thing lacking was a hand-written confession conveniently found pinned to the body. But unfortunately for the FBI, the science used was faulty. Their conclusions were based on assumptions, rather than solid forensic evidence, and there was no death-bed confession. The FBI's case was almost entirely circumstantial, and if prosecuted would likely have ended in acquittal.

That leaves us with a case of domestic terrorism that the FBI considers closed, but in reality has never been solved. Whether that is purposeful or not, I do not know. What I do know is that there is more to this case than meets the eye...

UPDATE 7/19/11: Evidence implicating Irvins is even weaker than first stated.

Iraq: Oh What a Tangled Web We Weave...

2011-02-15T08:43:00.000-08:00

For those of you just joining us in what I like to refer to as objective reality. I have a sad tale about a liar named Curveball and how his lies resulted in the unnecessary deaths of untold hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians and almost forty-five hundred Americans.

Were the justifications for our invasion and continued occupation of Iraq completely contrived? The answer is most assuredly yes. However the tool named Curveball is not entirely to blame for the Iraq fiasco. That is because the lies this asshole told to the world were thoroughly discredited before they were used to justify our vainglorious invasion. This information was knowingly used as propaganda by the Bush administration to convince American's of the necessity of the war. Every member of that administration who consciously participated in the dissemination of this propaganda should be tried as a war criminal.

Will that ever happen? Let's put it to you this way, when you still have a large percentage of the American populace believing some ridiculous bullshit story about how mortal enemies Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden planned 9/11 in a mobile biological weapons lab conveniently hidden in the Syrian desert. Then no, there will never be any fucking accountability...

Want to Imporove American Education? Save Your Bullshit for Church...

2011-02-08T10:03:00.000-08:00

"Fundamentalism means never having to say 'I'm wrong.'"
- unknown

While I often have a good guffaw watching my fellow countrymen attend those teatarded pep rallies that provide a safe place to go all colonial-cosplay, raise their Gadsden freak-flag, patriotic pom poms and cheer in unison about the general awesomeness that is America. Not as amusing are those of us stuck in the reality-based community who are less concerned with jingoistic flag-waving and more concerned with how far behind our less-than-awesome educational system has left both the cosplayers and the next generation of Americans.

I have bad news for anyone who believes America was always at the top of the heap in education. The stark reality is we were never on top. American children have always ranked well below their peers in educational outcomes. The current stats are mind-numbing, we rank 19th in scientific literacy, 24th in mathematical ability, 12th in reading ability, 26th in problem-solving ability, and most disturbing are recent polls that indicate only 39 percent of Americans accept evolution as fact.

I place most of the blame squarely on the parents, because I believe if you have involved parents, you have better educational outcomes. But certainly some of the blame falls on the teachers. The problem isn't the usual scapegoats of unions or underfunding, but the fact that a significant percentage of science teachers are not teaching our children anything resembling actual science. A recent survey revealed that on the national level only 28 percent of all biology teachers follow the recommended biology curriculum which emphasizes evolution as the unifying theme of all biology. Shockingly another 13 percent of all teachers actively advocate the totally non-scientific nonsense known as creationism, or even worse, the pseudo-scientific bullshit known as intelligent design. While the remainder of our nation's educators bravely fence-sit on the subject just enough to avoid teaching our kids anything...

In the case of ~~idiots~~ religious fundamentalists illegally teaching ~~idiocy~~ creationism in our public schools, I blame both the parents and the teachers. But I reserve the majority of my scorn for the institution that tells these parents and teachers that it is okay to waste our children's time and taxpayer money teaching mythology instead of science. Of course I am speaking of that scourge of freethinkers worldwide - organized religion. Sadly for America's children and our collective future there are communities all across *Real America* where religious orthodoxy trumps our Constitution, and magical-thinking outweighs empirical evidence...

Fucking Bill O'Reilly - How does it Work?

2011-02-03T07:50:00.000-08:00

Uh oh, we went and made Papa Bear angry with our stubborn insistence that he knows a helluva lot less than your average fifth grader. In this video Bill reveals that his ignorance of astrophysics goes well beyond the orbit of our moon, in fact it stretches out into the vast reaches of the cosmos. At one point Bill asks why Mars doesn't have a moon, which is a rather odd question coming from an adult who allegedly has a degree from Harvard. But the ignorant fucktard is partially correct, Mars doesn't have one moon, it has two..

As I have said before, Bill O'Reilly personifies the deadly combination of arrogance and ignorance. So let us boil this controversy down to Bill's main argument, which appears to be that we "pinheads" cannot explain how Earth's moon, or sun, or whatever got there in the first place. To which I respond - yes I can. Sadly Bill cannot. In fact Bill can't even explain why he can't tell the the difference between a falafel and a loofah, or how either item assists in the sexual harassment of subordinates.

When dealing with folks like Bill the first thing you have to do is set aside the sheer inanity of his nanny-nanny-do-do debating style, as well as his reliance on totally specious arguments. Bill wants us to totally dismiss the fact that there is a logical scientific hypothesis for the formation of the moon. That is because Bill doesn't give a fuck about logical scientific explanations, and frankly why would he want to sully his beautiful mind with complex mathematics and that burdensome scientific method crap, when the simple explanation is right there in his good book?

Bill's final argument is that it takes more faith for me to believe in scientific conclusions based on empirical observation and experimentation than it does for him to believe his overly simplistic *God did it* explanation. Let me get this straight Bill, acknowledging that our understanding and advancement of science has enabled the creation of our modern technological society, vastly improved the lives of all of humanity, and allowed you to distribute this tripe via the internet, that takes more faith than it takes for you to believe that the main character from a book written by Bronze Age goat-fuckers is responsible for everything in the universe.

Well now, how can you argue with that kind of rock solid Juggalogic?

Are We a Nation of Hypocrites?

2011-02-02T07:30:00.000-08:00

What does the word freedom mean to America's leadership? Apparently it means whatever is the opposite of democracy. America operates under the pretense of spreading democracy and freedom around the world, but in reality we fully support multiple dictatorial regimes across the globe out of economic interests.

Most of these regimes brutally repress their people and deny them any semblance of the freedom we enjoy. We feign support for self-determination and democracy, while actively suppressing those yearning to have the freedoms we take for granted everyday. America projects a smug, self-serving earnestness in regards to the universality of freedom, but regularly deny it to others in the name of global economic stability.

What is occurring in Egypt right now is a monumentally historic shift and I'm afraid that our leadership is on the wrong side of history, although recent signs indicate a shift from earlier positions.

Especially disturbing is the response from the only true democracy in the region - Israel. They fully back the tyrant Mubarak and not the aspiration's of the Egyptian people. How can a democratic nation in good conscience not fully support the democratic aspirations of others? As is the case with our own government, the answer is - they cannot. Which proves two things:

We are a nation of fucking hypocrites and so are the Israeli's.
Our foreign policy is based on nothing more than our own self-interest, and when our self-interest conflicts with our stated ideals, our idealism is left for dead in a dank corner of an Egyptian torture cell.

More disturbing than our wallowing in our own hypocrisy is the fact that this momentous occasion is being exploited by corporate media-enabled fearmongers to gin up support for their pet conflicts. I speak of the world's worst diplomat, proponent of the porn-stache, and supporter of all things related to the immediate bombing of Iran - John Bolton.

John, please, just shut the fuck up!

On the Lighter Side...

2011-01-28T17:54:00.000-08:00

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2011-01-27T12:02:00.000-08:00

If You Commit a Political Crime in the Forest Does Anyone Hear the Sound?

2011-01-26T17:13:00.000-08:00

Here's how the corporate news-cycle works; a big story breaks, the story is reported (or not) to varying degrees, then it is quickly buried under an even bigger story by an infotainment industry that is always looking for what's next with the barest minimum of reflection. Seldom does any big story get what could be called in-depth analysis, most of the time the social relevance of these big stories is never probed, often because the media wastes so much time beating to death pointless diversions such as, "Some say politician *X* doesn't display the proper amount of patriotism by wearing a flag lapel pin?"

One such big story comes to my mind, that being the recent revelation of crimes committed by the Bush administration. Granted these crimes are fairly tame by the standards set under the ~~boy-King's~~ previous occupant's maladministration, when you're busy waging illegal wars, subverting the electoral process is kid's stuff in comparison. But none the less the Bush administration demonstrably violated the Hatch Act by illegally turning the Office of Political Affairs into RNC central. Does it really surprise anyone that Dubya's pimp Karl Rove broke the law in the process of getting Republicans elected? Who would guess that someone who also politicized the Justice Department (by filling it with political hacks from Falwell's Lynchburg diploma mill) would be capable of such a thing?

The reason this big story is such a non-story? That's because no one will ever be held to account for these crimes, unless a Republican administration goes after the Obama administration (who until recently was doing the same thing with the OPA). That's right folks, unlike the rest of us, politicians can break the law with impunity. So just write this off, along with the torture, and the rendition, and the indefinite detention, and the war crimes...

Father Coughlin Memorial Ugly American Award - 2010

2011-01-18T10:39:00.000-08:00

Everyone has been asking whom from the legions of the American Wingnutterati will receive 2010's prestigious Father Coughlin Memorial Ugly American Award. Of course I'm kidding, actually no one asked, and really no one gives a fuck, but will the fact that no one gives two shits stop me from presenting this coveted accolade to our nation's most deserving? The answer is most assuredly - no!

To remind those who just tuned-in or were just released from a filthy Tijuana jail cell with a sore rectum and no memory of how you arrived in Mexico. The Father Coughlin Memorial Ugly American Award is given to the person, pundit, or politician who most embodies the whack-job lunacy and hate-speech of that Nazi-blowing Catholic Priest: Father Charles Coughlin. Previous award recipients have included such luminaries of bile spewing as tranny-for-Jeebus: mAnn Coulter, the Quitter from Twitter: Sarah Palin, and everyone's least favorite Vice President and literal man-without-a-human-heart: Dick Cheney.

This year's award goes to someone who has the reach of the late priest and fully embodies his seething animus and bouts of histrionic hyperbole. That person is none other than Faux News' resident revisionist historian/messianic wannabe - Glenn Beck. Beck's influence on the basal ganglia of our nation's low-information-voters is legendary. His horde of brain-dead devotees is truly impressive in both physical girth and inability to distinguish reality from the steaming pile of bullshit that is Glenn Beck. When Glenn is not busy trying to convince us that Jeebus was a gun-toting conservative who would have gladly been crucified to prevent health care reform from passing, he spends the rest of his time trying to convince us that the very deist writers of our Constitution were a bunch of tongue-speaking revivalists.

Beck is the epitome of all that is wrong with the current direction of the news/infotainment industry. Corporate media outlets no longer care about informing the public. Their main objective is to attract viewers and generate advertising revenue. In this type of environment objective truth not only takes a back seat to the musings of any assclown who can fill the bleachers, but it is left thumbing for a ride in the seedy part of town.

The most disturbing thing about Beck is his influence on the unhinged. Richard Poplawski, and Byron Williams are just two recent graduates of Beck University, these people were quite literally directed to action by Beck's maniacal rantings, which of course he denies outright. The rise of the crazy is happening because Beck has taken what was once fringe conspiracy theories and made them part of the mainstream. The New World Order, FEMA concentration camps, black helicopters, and the Amero were once strictly the purview of obscure radio nut-jobs like Alex Jones. But the ever-resourceful Beck-ster has one-upped everyone on the rabid right by somehow turning his complete psycho bullshit into legitimate political discourse. This makes the violent actions of his fanatics not only more likely, but sadly inevitable...

Sarah Palin: Sociopathy in Red Lipstick...

2011-01-12T12:07:00.000-08:00

Who is the real victim of the massacre in Tucson? Apparently it wasn't U.S.Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords or any of the people shot that day, it's actually none other than America's favorite half-term half-wit - Sarah Palin. She released a too-long-by-at-least-seven-minutes video that can only be described as a the pathetic rationalizations of a narcissist/megalomaniac whose delusions of grandeur make her believe she is delivering the State of the Union address. It was especially ironic to see the soft glow of that liberal crutch (the teleprompter) reflected in her glasses, perhaps this diatribe didn't contain enough stale buzz words that she could easily write on the palm of her hand...

In typically pathological Palin fashion she refuses to accept any, even the slightest tangential responsibility for this tragedy, or even to apologize because it is the right thing to do. She will never apologize for anything because Sarah (like most sociopaths) is never wrong. The tundra grifter totally refuses to acknowledge that her demagoguery has been filled with allusions to violence, even going so far as to claim that cross-hairs on a map of targeted members of Congress were actually surveyor marks. These acts are correctly referred to as stochastic terrorism. She further injects totally inappropriate language into her non-apology, referring to any media criticism of her actions incorrectly as Blood Libel, but this is hardly the first time Sarah has demonstrated her overweening ignorance. It seems that instead of retreating from this controversy, Sister Sarah has merely reloaded her bile cannon...

A lot has been made of the politics of this heinous act committed by an obviously deranged individual. Regardless of the alleged political leanings of the individual responsible, the fact remains that this was an overtly political act and this action did not happen in a vacuum. The right is busy trying to blame this on liberals so that you will forget the political agitation they have fostered over the last two-plus years. They scream that someone, somewhere once called George Bush a fascist which somehow is tantamount to armed nut-jobs trying to kill liberals. All the while conveniently forgetting that they frequently referred to Barack Obama as a fascist, a socialist, a communist, an illegitimate foreign usurper, and a crypto-Muslim educated in a Madrassa who pals around with terrorists, and that was all before he was even elected.

The pundits on the right also claim that since the perpetrator listed Marx's Communist Manifesto and Hitler's Mein Kampf as his favorite books, therefore he must be a liberal. Using that kind of seriously flawed logic it is also safe to assume that the perpetrator is an opium-smoking pedophile because he also listed Alice in Wonderland among his favorite reads. What the folks on the right are desperately trying to created is a false equivalence between left and right, and by creating this false equivalence narrative in the media what they are really attempting to do is forge a new reality. This includes revising history to such a degree that Hitler and Stalin are no longer the prototypical rightist autocrats who ruled rival authoritarian oligarchies, but leftist political allies. What they really want is a reality in which they can continue their pattern of demonizing and dehumanizing their political enemies without fear of political consequences...

...and Sarah, it's time to come down from your cross, the rest of us could really use the wood...

The Irony of Lunacy...

2011-01-11T07:24:00.000-08:00

The reasons for America's precipitous descent into failed-state territory can be demonstrated by watching just about any of the fucktarded opinators on the 24-7 alternate reality factory that is Faux News. But by far the man with that potentially brain-deadly combination of self-righteous smugness and total fucking ignorance is Bill O'Reilly. As of late Bill has been toiling in the long bat-shit insane shadow of Faux's resident whack-job messianic conspiracy theorist - Glenn Beck. So Bill has had to up the ante on the stupid in an attempt to bridge the ratings gap.

How exactly does someone outshine Glenn Beck you ask? By claiming that an atheist he was debating couldn't explain why the tides function. Bill didn't actually give the atheist a chance to give a rational scientific explanation, and the atheist seemed reasonably flustered by Bill's non-sequitur-ridden debating style. But remember that in Billo's world you must forget about crazy shit like the Sun and the Moon and gravity and instead focus on perceived slights to your intellect. You see the tides are a truly miraculous phenomenon caused by the mighty hand of God. As Bill sees it, tides come and tides go without any miscommunication, and no one in the world could possibly explain why. With the possible exception of any elementary school science class...

Are you Crying? There's No Crying in Congress!

2011-01-06T09:21:00.000-08:00

This just in! Proof positive that irony is not dead, Weeper of the House John Boehner (R) Tropical Tan taps Representative Michele Bachmann (R) Bat-Shit Crazyland for coveted post on the House Intelligence Committee. This is just in the nick of time as she desperately needs some for her upcoming Presidential run...

Between that tragedy and the inconsolable tears of the unnaturally hued House leader (who apparently has zero control over his emotions), we are in for at least two years of similar zany antics and even zanier legislation. So buckle your seat belts sports fans because it's going to be a bumpy ride...

Countdown to Rapture!

2011-01-04T07:56:00.000-08:00

Call me an idealist, but I have always felt that everyone should start a New Year with a sense of optimism. After all life is filled with promise, mostly the promise that the ride will be gratifying, and while it can be depressing at times, the ride is always entertaining, that is, if you can steer it towards the abundant pockets of buffoonery that are scattered throughout our otherwise banal existence...

Case in point, not to be outdone by those dirty pagan Mayans some Christian nut-jobs laughingly paid their hard-earned money for billboards to inform the rest of us to look busy because Jeebus is coming before 2012 and that means the end is nigh. These folks represent everything that is wrong with religion, especially the millennial death-cult strains so prevalent in Christianity. I believe that the Abrahamic faiths (especially Christianity and Islam) create an inherently pessimistic worldview, and this negative worldview makes their adherents hate their own lives so much that they pray for death. In the case of the billboard people, they are literally praying for the immediate destruction of all of humanity. Despite the fact that their Bible clearly states in Matthew 24:36, "But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone." Even with that clearly stated these folks have decided that they know, just like numerous false prophets before them. What these people fail to acknowledge is the implicit religious heresy of their hackneyed predictions, or the utter ridiculousness of relying on the always delusional and often misinterpreted ramblings of a first century fatalist to steer the course of their lives.

So mark your calendars folks! May 21st will be here in the proverbial blink of their G-D's great celestial eye. Be prepared for May 22nd when I will be laughing derisively at the idiot fucktards who have no problem publicly humiliating themselves in the name of their absent buddy Jeebus...

Don't Count On Next Year Being Any Better...

2010-12-29T10:03:00.000-08:00

A big thanks to the ever-brilliant Tom Tomorrow...

2010: It Can't End Soon Enough...

2010-12-28T07:28:00.000-08:00

I could come up with a list myself, but why bother...

The First Casualty in the War on Christmas...

2010-12-21T07:49:00.000-08:00

Just when I thought that Americans couldn't possibly get any dumber I find this little gem on Wonkette. My faith in the ever-increasing stupidity of humankind has been tested with the repeal of Don't ask Don't tell. But this little skit has once again renewed my faith in the inanity of humanity. I must admit I enjoyed watching this sadly misguided, yet very earnest pastor tell us that repeatedly shooting Santa in the face with a shotgun was lots of fun, but that this act of senseless violence was really just satire, or something like that. After all, they are Texas pacifists, that's a pacifist who just happen to own a weapon capable of blowing really large holes in everyone's favorite jolly elf...

I'm not sure what in this fiesta of vacuousness is more ironic, is it the fact that Santa withstood their fusillade of righteous shellfire. Or is it *peaceful* folks taking their impotent rage out on a character that they acknowledge to be fictional, as if non-existent Santa was the force responsible for the crass commercialization of the holiday and not rampant avarice driven by their fellow Christians. Maybe it's the blatant religious intolerance displayed by their cheesy home-doctored *Coexist* t-shirts. Either way I'm sure these are all things that Jeebus would have done, although I have heard that videos featuring a bunch of sanctimonious redneck assholes vainly trying to knock over a pinata with a shotgun actually make the baby Jeebus cry - with laughter...

Then I read a Gallup poll that virtually guarantees America's impending future as a neo-feudal society...Happy Solstice folks!

What's worse? Fox News Lying to Their Audience or Their Audience being Gullible Dupes?

2010-12-16T07:30:00.000-08:00

Recently leaked memos from deep within the bowels of ~~Hell~~ Fox News have revealed a deliberate campaign to obfuscate the legitimacy of the science behind climate change predictions, and to do so for purely partisan political purposes. Now I know this comes as no great surprise to anyone with an attention span longer than that of a common housefly, but this revelation might be surprising to the millions of doddering depends-wearers who subsist on a regular diet of this blatant bullshit.

The greatest irony is that these calculated misrepresentations are being reported as fact by a *news* organization that repeatedly claims to be "fair and balanced". I ask you Fox viewers, how is deliberately distorting reality either fair and/or balanced? Isn't it bad enough that Fox is nothing more than a televised PAC for the Republican party, do they really have to engage in what can only be described as a concerted anti-intellectual/anti-science propaganda campaign?

The question remains, why does Fox News find it necessary to intentionally hide the truth of climate change from their audience and why have they cast science as a partisan issue? There are two possible reasons for this in my mind. One possible reason could be that science is hard. Maybe the data is so unfathomable to their feeble little minds that they deliberately cast doubt on it to make their audience feel better about being ignorant dumbfucks. That is certainly a possibility, but probably not the case. The more likely scenario is that Fox News is just a rich multi-national corporate shill for rich multi-national corporations that generate untold billions from the dirty energy industries primarily responsible for our rapidly changing climate.

In keeping with the impending Idiocracy we are rapidly hurdling towards, Rupert and Roger should change their slogan to - Fox News: It has what plants crave...

Everything is fine, but we'll need another ten years...

2010-12-15T07:54:00.000-08:00

Am I the only one who sees the frightening parallels between Afghanistan and Vietnam? I know I'm not, but since no one in the corporate media appears to have even an ounce of historical awareness, those parallels are never discussed. Maybe that is because most Americans couldn't locate Afghanistan on a world map, so why even bother having that kind of discussion when no one really gives a fuck anyway, aren't things already depressing enough around here?

It looks like the Obama administration has taken over the Bush-era duty of stage-managing the never-ending conflict in Afghanistan into something that is acceptable to an always-compliant American audience. But the question remains after ten long pointless years: Are we accomplishing anything of substance in Afghanistan? the short answer is, absolutely fucking not. There isn't anything to accomplish, Despite our best efforts Afghanistan will always remain a corrupt narco-state that will never achieve even a modicum of the stability necessary to form a functioning civil society. What follows is the question that every American should be asking of our leaders: If glorious victory isn't even an option, why in the fuck are we still there? The official response is, no one has a good answer to that question. Mostly because there was never a good reason to occupy Afghanistan in the first place, other than to quench our insatiable lust for revenge after the 9/11 attacks...

Despite what is really happening in Afghanistan the administration will release a report that speaks of progress. Of course they don't mention that this so-called progress is based on the goal post relocation techniques perfected by LBJ and Tricky Dick over forty years ago and used heavily by the previous Commander-in-Chief to sell that other lost cause (Iraq) to the tragically gullible American populace...

Why isn't the American public asking these simple questions? I don't know. My question to every American is this - How many Americans have to die before we realize Afghanistan is an absolutely meaningless endeavor?

Fox News keeps Beating a Dead Horse...

2010-12-09T08:33:00.000-08:00

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

The Gretch Who Saved the War on Christmas

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor & Satire Blog

The Daily Show on Facebook

Oh Gretchen, didn't you know that faux outrage makes the Baby Jeebus cry...

Can We Still Hope for Change?

2010-12-08T07:25:00.000-08:00

Is this really what my hope for change has become? Constantly compromising to the detriment of our citizenry with a despised yet entrenched minority party? Sorry that is not change we can believe in. It is just a continuation of the Clintonian/DLC third-way politics that are selling out what's left of the American middle class to the interests of our landed gentry.

Roughly twenty percent of registered voters decided the last mid-term elections. That election was not the mandate portrayed by the corporate-media punditocracy, in fact it is nothing more than our national political apathy on full display. The majority believe that since nothing ever changes regardless of which party is in charge, why bother to even vote?

This is the new normal - politicians who are nothing but corporate shills, an economy driven from speculative bubble to speculative bubble by investor-class assholes looking to make an easy buck regardless of the consequences. A permanent underclass of the unemployed, the underemployed, and the uninsured. A crumbling infrastructure. Endless unnecessary military occupations that drain our treasury, but no politician is willing to stop because war is the only profitable manufacturing business left in America, and a corporate-controlled media that puts such a glossy sheen on the propaganda that everyone truly believes that using the same deregulate and trickle-down policies that got us here, are the only thing that could possibly save us...

My support for the President is certainly waning, it has been slowly eroding on a daily basis. I have found it difficult watching Obama turn into just another plutocrat for the plutonomy. President Obama does not support anything even close to a progressive agenda, and I don't think he ever did, and if I hear anymore bullshit in the so-called *liberal* corporate media about him actually pursuing a progressive agenda I am going to fucking lose it.

So far his agenda has been nothing but a continuation of bad Bush-era policies, and an almost total capitulation to a Republican party that destroyed the American economy, and created a perpetual state of war with the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, and three undeclared wars in Somalia, Yemen, and Pakistan...

So what's a guy to do? I'm certainly not going to vote for Sarah Palin or any other regressive nut-job. If I vote for the Green Party candidate in 2012, does that mean Sarah Palin gets elected? Maybe...At this point either way gets us to the same place, in other words, we're kinda fucked...

The Best Congress Money Can Buy...

2010-12-02T08:22:00.000-08:00

I hate to say I told you so, but I told you so. The consequences of a Republican majority in the House are already being felt, even though they don't actually take control until January. The first order of business for the new majority - eliminate the four-year-old Select Committee on Global Warming...

Obviously proactively mitigating the anthropogenic causes of climate change, promoting energy independence, and creating millions of new clean energy jobs is a completely unnecessary endeavor for the Republican-controlled Congress to engage in. Screw what the scientists say, only Jeebus' daddy can destroy the Earth, so doing anything at all is obviously a complete waste of time and taxpayer money. That is, according to the man-sized carrot and his brain-dead compadres.

Although the committee was only used by the willfully ignorant House Republicans to falsely perpetuate the tragic partisan-driven myth that climate change is not actually occurring. This committee was never the unnecessary redundancy that these fucktarded regressives want to portray it as. The loss of this committee represents nothing more than the final victory of our plutonomic corporate overlords, with the help of their latest acquisition - The Best Congress Money Can Buy.

As Robert F. Kennedy Jr. noted, this action is, “not just a catastrophe for global warming but it’s a catastrophe for national security".

The Best way to avoid Black Friday - Flee the Country...

2010-11-26T17:53:00.000-08:00

It's good to know that childish humor is universal...

It finally decided to snow in downtown, but we didn't care, you can walk to everything you need...

The snowfall actually set records for the lower mainland. Which makes me think that all that Great White North crap you hear about is a myth they perpetuate to keep the crazy Americans away...

Debbie said, "Let's ride the SkyTrain!" So off we went on an afternoon adventure into the unknown...

Riding the SkyTrain makes me wonder why in the fuck doesn't Seattle have a system like this? Is it sheer inertia? All I can say is that Vancouver doesn't come to a screeching halt after a few flakes fall, in fact there was none of the gridlock that cripples Seattle at all, it's almost as if they are prepared for this kind of shit, or something...

The SkyTrain whizzing past the MetroTown mall...

The SkyTrain station at Burrard...

The city was gorgeous under a layer of freshly fallen snow...

What is a perfect snack on a cold-late-fall-not-quite-winter day? Why it is that Canadian delicacy - Poutine! It is simply the best food product ever conceived. An artery-hardening mixture of fries, cheese curds and beef gravy that is simply put - the food of the Gods...

The first place we tried Poutine! was Fritz European Fry House and they were fucking amazing! Judging by the hours posted on the door, Poutine! is the standard fare of drunks stumbling out of the local clubs at closing...

The snow quickly melted and we returned to normal November weather in the lower mainland, that being the constant soul-crushing drizzle I love so much. We tried more Poutine! at a place in Pacific Centre called New York Fries, which were also very good, but it's kind of ironically named because the chain isn't from New York, and has no locations in America. Which is a fucking shame because Poutine! is the shit...

Sadly, our trip is soon coming to an end. But we've had a truly fantastic time escaping the insanity of banal Thanksgiving fare, insufferable relatives, and the rampant consumerism that is America...

That's Life in the Big City...

2010-11-24T11:33:00.000-08:00

We are spending an entire week in glorious downtown Vancouver, indulging in urban living and absorbing some Canadian culture eh?

We keep going back to Granville Island, mostly because it's so unbelievably cool...

Fuckin' eh? Is that a carrot or a martial aid?

A bounty of the bountiful or something like that...

The market is a refuge of color on a such an early winter's day...

Fritters the size of your hand...

Vancouver has a plethora of amazing outdoor sculpture...

This installation by Chinese sculptor Yue Minjun is called appropriately enough A-maze-ing Laughter...

This piece conveys my feelings about missing out on the great snow-acalypse of Seattle 2010 - Ha Ha!

When they were handing out picturesque settings Vancouver got the lions share...

The Chinatown district is always a must-see...

We traded last year's constant downpour for ass-freezing cold...

The Dr. Sun-Yat Sen Park was lovely even though it was frozen solid...

Debbie and I are both ~~Horse's asses~~...I mean we were both born in the year of the Horse...

We continue to luck-out with spectacular weather on our trips, let us hope our luck doesn't run out soon...

Downtown from Jericho Beach Park in the Kitsalano area south of the city...

Westward view of the Salish Sea on a gloriously crisp day...

The day ended as beautifully as it began, this has been a truly fantastic trip so far and fortunately it's not over yet - Fuck yeah!

O Yeah Canada!

2010-11-20T18:50:00.000-08:00

We are on vacation again, why? That's simple, we fucking need a vacation to keep hold of our already tenuous grip on sanity, plus it is our eighth wedding anniversary.(Happy Anniversary Baby!) This time we went to my favorite city on Earth - Vancouver, in beautiful British Columbia. This morning we woke up to snow covered rooftops and scattered flurries...

After buying my wife a winter jacket because she forgot hers at home, we walked to the Aquabus which takes you across False Creek to Granville Island. The great thing about Vancouver is the close proximity of great shopping virtually everywhere in the city.

False Creek and the Granville street bridge.

Debbie all bundled up in her new winter jacket...

There was enough snow for some avant garde snow sculptures or whatever the fuck this thing was...

The craziest sight so far - a lady I'll call the pigeon whisperer...

The public market on Granville Island is awesome, the sights, the smells, the buskers. really very cool and worth the trip...

Great produce, incredible selection, and every vendor had something I have difficulty finding back home - celery root!

Under sail on False Creek? Really? Maybe the police boat following them didn't think it was a good idea...

Fast Indian food! We really need this in America, fuck fucking hamburgers...

The Aquabus is really the best way to get to Granville Island from downtown, no driving, no parking, no worries. Our first day in Vancouver was spectacular, let us hope the rest is relatively snow free.

More Truth in Advertising...

2010-11-18T07:22:00.000-08:00

Anatomy of a Greenwash from Paul Scheer

Why would you bother investing millions in renewables when phony PR campaigns are so much more effective?

Does it Surprise You to Learn that Rush Limbaugh is a Racist Asshole?

2010-11-16T19:52:00.000-08:00

That bloated hate-radio shock-jock isn't even bothering with the dog whistle shit anymore, he just skips ahead to the blatant racism that is sweet cunt-ry music to the ears of his audience of cracker fucktards. Go ahead Rush, just say the *N* word, say it over and over again like your pal Dr. Laura. Your audience is already composed of trailer park denizens steeped in the culture of hate, so what do you have to lose? It would be freeing. You and your audience wouldn't have to pretend to be anything other than what you truly are - pathetic racist assholes.

The truly vile photo-shop featured above was on Rush's website with a transcript from his show where he implies that Obama is a street-hustling gangsta. He refers to the President as a "juvenile delinquent" who is "no more than graffiti". Wow, project much Rush? Who does Rush think will be remembered in the history books two hundred years from now? I hate to tell him this because it will be a blow to his enormous ego, but it won't be Rush Limbaugh. Regardless of the success or failure of the Obama administration, Barack Obama will be remembered as President of the Untied States of America, while Rush won't even be remembered as the sad demagogic clown who couldn't sodomize an underage Dominican boy without chemical assistance. Rush won't even be a spoge stain on the bathroom wall of history. At best he will end up being regaled to obscure historical footnote, like that other radio hate merchant before him Father Charles Coughlin.

Let's examine what the hillbilly heroin hypocrite has done for his country in his less-than-illustrious life. An enormous zit on his ass allowed him to dodge military service during Vietnam. He's a junior college dropout who claims intellectual superiority over all of academia. He owes his career in radio to nepotism. He has been married four times and is childless, which clearly demonstrates his commitment to the family values that conservatives so adore. He rails against drug use and demands long term incarceration for drug users, yet his own out-of-control abuse of illegally obtained Oxycontin caused him temporary deafness. But I'm guessing that he meant harsh penalties for users of common street drugs, not harsh penalties for having your maid doctor-shopping for prescription drugs...

I have to conclude that this man-sized douche-bag is the epitome of arrested development. He is nothing but a selfish petulant over-indulged man-child with moobs so large he has to wear a sports bra. I'm also pretty sure the irony of calling anyone else a juvenile delinquent is totally lost on him. I'm also guessing that Rush's old adage about respecting the office of the Presidency during wartime only applies when it's someone he voted for...

Their Mistake? Trying to have a Rational Discussion about Garbage...

2010-11-10T07:54:00.000-08:00

"When ideology prevents rational discussion of a really mundane topic, trash, there is no perspective. Everything is suspect, which paralyzes us."
- Fountain Hills Councilwoman Ginny Dickey

Leave it to Arizona, which has apparently become the new wingnut promised land. The Fountain Hills town council, in the typically banal small-town council type of decision, decided to contract with a waste company to provide pick-up and curbside recycling for the entire town. Previously individual homeowners had to contract for pick-up from multiple garbage contractors, none of which provided curbside recycling.

Sounds good so far. After all curbside recycling is a great service, I'm sure most of us wouldn't think of it as being controversial in any way, and frankly I take for granted that all Americans share an understanding of the importance of recycling. We have been doing it in Washington for decades and we even recycle food and yard waste, but I suppose that ethic probably ends at the limits of most large cities.

What I just don't get is the mentality of this angry mob of anti-government zealots. They are protesting what I believe to be a just another necessary community asset, like the police or the fire department. It just doesn't make any logical sense to be against recycling for what seems to be totally irrational ideological reasons...

Instead what we witness from these super-patriots is the typically myopic self-defeating teatarded arguments that don't even make economic sense. It will probably be less expensive to the individual homeowners for the entire town to contract with one company, plus they get the added benefit of a recycling service that they previously did not have. Recycling is a good thing, it reduces what goes into our landfills and saves buttloads of energy in the manufacturing process. Recycling is the totally sane and logical thing to do. But no, saving money and being ecologically sustainable is apparently a bad thing.

Sadly these people think recycling is just some fucking socialist plot being thrust upon their rugged individualism. Recycling directly threatens their right to keep derelict vehicles and old appliances strewn about their property. I thought I heard something about their freedumbs being trampled on by libtard elitist social engineers, and that global warming is a myth also, too, and that it is their right to be selfish wasteful assholes who won't recycle because recycling is some gay hippie shit, and I ain't paying for no communistical crap like that, this here's Amurika, we have the freedumb to wallow in our own filth...

It's Tuesday folks, time to put the white trash on the curb...

Do the 112th Congress and The Walking Dead have Something in Common?

2010-11-03T08:10:00.000-07:00

Well, what can I say. Last night's election results were disappointing, but not entirely unexpected. Actually I expected far more Democratic electoral losses than what actually occurred, but I expected the worst because Americans are really, really fucking gullible. Although apparently not gullible enough to elect that silly dumbfuck Christine O'Donnell, or that crazed Second Amendment solution lady from Nevada, even though Harry Reid sucks hairy nut-sack...

What did America accomplish by electing this bizarre melange of people who for some reason desperately want to run the government they claim to despise, and people who suffer from a tragic case of ideological priapism? The answer is - absolutely nothing. What we will now have is total legislative gridlock. If you thought the Congress was inept and entrenched before this election, you ain't seen nothing yet. We have just gone from the namby-pamby watered-down form of Democratic corporatism to the full-on no-apologies Republican plutocracy. The Republicans will try to cut every program that actually benefits Americans, but will never cut a dime from the bloated and unnecessary portions of a defense budget that make up half of all discretionary spending...

Which brings me to a review of my new favorite show on the teevee machine: The Walking Dead. Instead of watching the entrail eviscerating horrors of the big business that masquerades as politics in America, I watched the premiere of a totally awesome must-see AMC series based on the Robert Kirkman/Tony Moore Image comic. What in the fuck does that have to do with politics you ask? Stick with me here, this crazy-cool show is dominated by flesh-eating zombies mindlessly wandering the apocalyptic landscape of a totally devastated America, and now, so is the 112th Congress...

Fuck Politics - I'm on Vacation...

2010-11-01T17:19:00.000-07:00

We got away for a couple of days, back to my all-time favorite place - the beach. This time it was Seaside, but frankly it doesn't matter which beach, any will suffice...

We had a room with a view and an awesome view at that...

We were celebrating my parents forty-ninth wedding anniversary, which is a pretty remarkable feat in this day and age. I'm fairly sure neither has plotted the others demise, which makes their many years together even more remarkable...

I didn't care what the weather was going to be like, I just wanted to be away from work for a couple of days. So when the clouds parted for an entire day, I was pleasantly surprised by how fucking lucky we were to have picked this particular weekend...

We picnicked at a lovely beach outside of Tillamook called Cape Lookout...

Then we stopped at Cannon Beach on the way back, mostly to take pictures...

The ocean was awe-inspiring and made for some great photos...

I should really be talking about tomorrow's election, but after having such a great weekend, I didn't want to fuck-up my beach buzz with the total downer that is American politics, so I'll leave you with something good about America - sunsets at the beach...

Guess What? The Justifications for the Iraq Invasion were Complete Bullshit...

2010-10-25T18:12:00.000-07:00

In today's episode of the No-Shit Sherlock Show we have former Joint Chiefs Chairman General Hugh Shelton saying that Bush administration officials (specifically Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz) pushed for war with Iraq to the point of insubordination. He also goes on to point out that the Iraq war was based on nothing. There was absolutely no evidence of either a link between Iraq and al Qaeda, or evidence of weapons of mass destruction. The reasons for invasion were completely contrived...

General Shelton also points out that President Bush was convinced of the need to invade Iraq by the members of his cabinet, who were just coincidentally members of the Neoconservative Project for the New American Century.(including Vice President Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and a sizable contingent of his cabinet) An organization that had been advocating regime change in Iraq for many years. So what we had was a brain-dead chief executive giving birth to the illegal and immoral policy of preemptive war based on the delusional neocon myth that American military power could somehow remake the Middle East...

I have known from the get-go that our reasons for invading Iraq were total fucking bullshit. My question is this: Will this information convince the remaining Bush apologists and those who sleepwalked through the Bush administration that our country has committed a horrific war crime that needs to be punished? To paraphrase Bill Maher, people don't care about it because it's not on Dancing with the Stars...

Palin's exceedingly tragic display of Constitutional Ignorance: Round Two

2010-10-21T12:05:00.000-07:00

The Quitter from Twitter ~~twated~~ sorry, tweeted another ludicrous defense of the indefensible, and in doing so again revealed her overweening ignorance of our Constitution. This time it was to defend Juan Williams blatant bigotry and fear-mongering of all Muslims. (Note to Juan: don't preface sentences with, I'm not a bigot - but) First she defended Dr. Laura, and now Williams, because she erroneously believes that this is somehow a Constitutional issue. It makes me wonder why she didn't defend Rick Sanchez. Was it because Rick was not a fellow traveler in the icy lands of Dumbfuckistan? I don't know, but just in case you are going to say, Juan Williams is a liberal. Let me stop you. Juan just plays a liberal on the Faux PAC channel, that's not the same as being an actual liberal...

Sarah, I know you have your fawning toadies scouring the net for nasty shit written about you. So in case you read this I will say it one more time and maybe, just maybe. Someone as impenetrably fucking dense as you can understand: The First Amendment only prevents our government from infringing on your speech. Private employers can infringe on your speech when ever they please, and just because NPR receives a small amount of public funding does not make it part of the government, it is a private non-profit corporation with rules employees must adhere to...

So Sister Sarah, as one American to another, take a fucking civics class or please - SHUT THE FUCK UP!

GOP Candidates dominated by Willfully Ignorant Anti-science Fucktards...

2010-10-20T10:07:00.000-07:00

The fate of humanity is at stake this election cycle, but you won't hear that in the mainstream corporate media, or anywhere really. This is not hyperbole, if the projections prove correct and the Congressional or Senate majorities change from Democratic to Republican, our Congress will become dominated by dirty energy shills and willfully ignorant climate change denialists. None of the Republican candidates currently running for the Senate believe in the overwhelming scientific consensus that climate change is occurring.

If these people are elected you can write off any movement towards energy independence and sustainability. Nothing will ever be done to confront or mitigate the anthropogenic causes of climate change. I don't fucking care if you're disappointed by the Democrats, the worst corporate-tool Dem is still a thousand times better than all of these idiot Republicans combined. If these cognitively impaired dumbfucks are elected in mass, you should start preparing your children and grandchildren for a future of resource and economic deprivation, because it will not matter how wealthy you are, everyone will be affected by what is coming...

Climate science is not a partisan issue, science is not partisan, it is what it is. We as a society need to accept science and understand what it has done to help humanity. We also need to embrace sustainability and reject the myth that economic growth can be continuously sustained. There is no greater misconception than the belief that the constant accumulation and consumption of shit unnecessary to your survival brings with it social status and personal happiness...

R is also for Regressive...

2010-10-19T08:15:00.000-07:00

Too true, please vote for the more rational of the lesser of the two evils...

This is what it would look like if there was truth in Political Advertising...

2010-10-18T14:40:00.000-07:00

The Teatard party in a nutshell...

Even Donald Duck thinks you're a douche...

2010-10-14T14:37:00.000-07:00

Best recycling of old Disney crap ever...

You also have the right to be a Total Racist Asshole...

2010-10-13T18:29:00.000-07:00

Sweet-fucking-Jeebus on a stick! This artistic abomination is apparently what passes for reasonable political discourse in Grand Junction, Colorado. This piece of wingnut dumbfuckery (which is abhorrent on so many levels, I'm not talking Family Guy offensive, but Cleveland Show offensive) was featured on a billboard in a town I can only assume is as white as the driven snow, because otherwise it would offend just about everyone but the cousin-fucking cracker creepers who paid for its installation...

My first response was: Couldn't the piece of human excrement who conceived this partial birth abortion have included a few more ridiculous stereotypes for good measure? Seriously, did they think including say, the Kenyan anti-colonialist Obama or the BP-kicking thug Obama would have made the image too busy? Was that the bridge too far in this jambalaya of incoherence?

It seems the artist was trying desperately to avoid saying what we all know he and a lot of others are longing to scream from the rooftops, that being the dreaded *N* word. So instead he used every other possible derogatory image he could possibly conceive. The most disturbing thing about this billboard has to be the utter ignorance of the associations implied. After all everyone knows that when they're not watching 300, Chicago-style Nazi gangstas really love playing poker with commie Mexican illegals, Not-so-secret radical Muslims, and the gays. It is a well established historical fact that the Nazis and the Commies and the Muslims - absolutely love the gays!

My favorite image is the EPA (created by Richard Nixon) being portrayed as just another *demo-rat* out to destroy your freedumb, as opposed to its actual function - making sure some sociopathic corporation isn't illegally dumping PCB's in back of the trailer park in which this fucktarded artist resides...

I would love to hear any conservative pundit try to spin this idiot douchebaggery as being anything other than blatant racism...

Happy Genocidal Sociopath Day!

2010-10-11T18:30:00.000-07:00

Why do we have a federal holiday that celebrates a total douche-bag who facilitated the mass rape, exploitation, and genocide of the inhabitants of Hispaniola? Christopher Columbus was no hero, and he was not the kind of historical figure who should be celebrated. The most important reason we shouldn't celebrate Columbus is that he didn't actually do what he is credited for, and frankly, being infamous for extraordinary brutality is not really a great historical accomplishment worthy of celebration, if that were the case, we would have a Stalin Day as well.

It is a well established historical fact that Columbus was not the first European to discover and colonize the Americas. In fact, the Norse had explored and colonized Newfoundland as early as the 10th century. So if you want to be historically accurate maybe we should have a Leif Erickson day instead of a Columbus Day...

But shouldn't we as Americans be more interested in actual history, and not the sanitized version of history that we are taught in school? Are the realities of European hegemony and the forced religious conversion of native peoples so cruel and savage that we are forced to make shit up to sooth our consciences? Are we afraid that if we teach our children the truth, that they would suffer from a lifetime of nightmares generated by the fucking horror show that was European colonization?

It is time to do away with Columbus Day...

DC Comics provides relief for poor Fanboys...

2010-10-07T18:05:00.000-07:00

Finally some good news for fanboys and fangirls alike. Thankfully DC Comics have announced a price reduction on several of their monthly titles. The cover prices have been steadily climbing for forever. Not to date myself too terribly, but when I started reading comics they had the almost unbelievable cover price of twenty-cents - fucking twenty cents! Between then and now, there has been an almost nineteen hundred percent price increase, which one might assume is just a slight bit more than the rate of inflation...

Of course, there is a downside. There will actually be less story in each issue by several pages, and this means the end of back-up features that appeared in books like Detective Comics. That kind of sucks, but frankly I am being priced out of my hobby by these seemingly incessant price increases. The industry has been bitch slapping its fans for years, but it is especially bad in an economy in which myself and a lot of other people actually count their pennies. It's funny, the only thing that hasn't gone up continuously is my salary...

Let us hope that Marvel and everyone else follows DC's lead...

White House goes solar, again...

2010-10-05T17:43:00.000-07:00

I think it's great that the President is putting solar panels on the White House to produce hot water and electricity. This serves two purposes, the panels produce free energy which will reduce the burden taxpayers currently bear to power the White House. But more importantly solar on the nation's house sets the national example for what clean energy can do. We should thank Bill McKibben and 350.org. They offered Obama solar panels that unappreciated visionary President Carter had installed way back in the seventies, which of course Obama refused. But I think that act shamed the President into action. Whatever the reason for the turn around, this is still good news...

Let us hope that history doesn't repeat itself. Wouldn't it suck if someone totally fucking wacky happened to get appointed to the nation's highest office? Say the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse were the Republican October Surprise in 2012, that would be the divine sign Palin's devotees were waiting for. And wouldn't following in Reagan's footsteps be some sort of sex fetish thing for her? She would undoubtedly remove the panels because saving taxpayer money is only necessary when Democrats are in charge, and besides Sarah is, in her own words, "Not one who would attribute it (climate change) to being man-made"...

Burnt Offerings...

2010-09-30T07:30:00.000-07:00

Are you sick and tired of finding Satan's smirky mug staring back at you from your pricey bathroom tile? I know the bathroom is the appropriate place to have the shit scared out of you, but seriously now, enough is enough...

People have been continuously finding that depraved rat bastard's visage popping up all over the place, water-stained ceiling tiles, random clouds, and the odd malevolent Cheeto. Frankly I am sick of it...

But that has all changed thanks to this divine product that simultaneously fights the forces of evil and provides lightly toasted goodness that is truly heaven-sent...

"Crush your enemies"...

2010-09-29T07:21:00.000-07:00

"This hero stuff has its limits" from that really, really bad movie, Last Action Hero

Wow! I was wrong, there actually are some Republicans with a conscience. Yesterday in fact Arnold Schwarzenegger the Governator of Cal-e-forna called out by name oil giants Tesoro, Valero, and Koch Industries (the billionaire brothers who founded the very faux populist Tea Party) for spending millions to "buy votes" in an attempt to get Proposition 23 passed for their own "self-serving greed".

Good for you Arnold! At least one Republican understands the importance of protecting the environment and moving away from our self-destructive dirty energy addiction. Too bad you waited until you were term-limited out of office to grow a fucking spine...

FBI finds creative new ways to waste taxpayer money...

2010-09-28T07:45:00.000-07:00

You should thank Dubya for our perpetually-at-war ultra-paranoid surveillance state. Our collective dystopian nightmare was created after 9/11 and is steadily creeping into every aspect of our lives. Just to show how bipartisan spying on your fellow countrymen has become, the Obama administration is also getting in on the act.

Why you ask would the FBI waste its time raiding the homes of peace activists? Well, it appears that Orwell was right even though his date was a little off, because thought is now a crime in America. The FBI will not find anything incriminating in those homes because they have never provided material support to any group that has been labeled a terrorist organization. In fact, there have been no formal charges filed against them, and most likely there will never be. This represents one thing and one thing only - government sponsored intimidation of our citizenry...

In a related story I find it bizarre that an Israeli security company was hired by the state of Pennsylvania to spy on its own citizens, especially since the company has ties to the Israeli spy agency Mossad and the Israeli Defense Forces. What the fuck? Apparently the FBI can't handle this sort of dangerous cloak and dagger work so we need to outsource our domestic surveillance to a private contractor. Obviously we need true professionals to do the dangerous work of monitoring well-known subversive militant groups like the Quakers and Good Schools Pennsylvania...

I could lecture about how sacrificing our liberties for the illusion of security actually means that terrorists have won, but instead I will remind everyone of the subjective nature of labeling. It should be understood that one man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist. That is exactly the case of the Afghan Mujaheddin. St. Ronnie of the trickle down once labeled them freedom fighters. He actually referred to them as the Afghan equivalent of our nations founders. But decades later in an ironic twist of fate, these same folks have somehow morphed into terrorists who are laughingly called the ultimate threat to western civilization...

"Let the Heathen spill theirs on the dusty ground."

2010-09-24T06:46:00.000-07:00

The laugh of the day is once again brought to us courtesy of the insane awesomeness that is Wonkette. Go on become a fan, you know you want to...

Anger-Bear McCain demonstrates his presidential qualities...

2010-09-22T07:17:00.000-07:00

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Wow, America sure dodged a bullet! Can you imagine this paragon of maturity having our nuclear codes? Senator John McCain (R) Angrywhiteguyistan, is a fucking hypocrite, as well as an all around douche-nozzle. This man has more positions than your average NFL team. Not long ago he said he would support the repeal of Don't ask Don't tell (DADT) if and when the generals supported its repeal. Well Senator, they do. Now where is partisan hack John McCain on this issue? He's busy yelling at some kids who made the tragic error of stepping on his lawn...

The Year of the Fluffer...

2010-09-21T07:19:00.000-07:00

I thought I'd share this timely piece by artist Sydney Hardin, entitled appropriately enough - Drill Baby Drill. Since quitting halfway through her term as governor, Sarah's only real job has been to make sure the ideology stays rigid...

Screw elections, it's time to take your country back America!

2010-09-17T06:51:00.000-07:00

VS.

Be there Teatards or America as we know it will cease to exist within five years just like Glenn Beck told you. What, you say he's being hyperbolic? Why he doesn't even know what that means...

The good news is that there is no good news...

2010-09-14T08:14:00.000-07:00

Hi there, it's me your buddy Cassandra with the impending environmental catastrophe report that most of you will promptly ignore. Things aren't looking good on the climate change is a myth front with that wacky reality stuff constantly getting in the way. Arctic sea ice has reached the third lowest level in as many years since the advent of record keeping. This is part of an overall down trend that has not abated for at least thirty years.

The rapid melting has produced predictably devastating consequences on Arctic fauna. Canada's Musk Oxen population alone is down by 80%, and the overall picture for the survival of most Arctic species is bleak. Virtually every species of both plant and animal, terrestrial and aquatic, all are on a fast track towards extinction.

What do you get when you combine this news with the fact that Americans (the world's largest polluters on an individual basis) and now the Chinese (our future landlords) just don't seem to give a fuck about anything other than quarterly profits?

You get a shit sandwich...

Where did the few remaining sane Republicans go?

2010-09-08T18:42:00.000-07:00

Where are the conservatives with a conscience? As a recovering conservative and former Republican voter, I can tell you where I went. I went as far away as possible from the jumbo par-tay platter of spicy Wingnuts that the party has morphed into. Why did I leave? That is a complex question, but in part it was because of the party's demonstrable lack of principals. For example, has there been a single Republican party leader, conservative pundit, or hate-radio shock-jock who has spoken out against the fucktarded religious fanatics at the ironically-named Dove World Outreach Center? You know, the folks who want to barbecue the Koran in some seriously fucking twisted tribute to 9/11. Of course they have the right to burn books, but I wonder, is attempting to out-extreme the extremists really the proper way to combat religious fanaticism? Somehow, I think not...

This story really typifies the current conservative mindset, where rational policy debates give way to an irrational state of fear and loathing. It is also a view into the mindset of the Republican party leadership, who will justify any abhorrent behavior as long as it helps them regain political power. Even if that means tacit approval of the violence and intimidation against American Muslims. Actions that are being spurred on by media demagogues, and screechy poorly written chain e-mails. That is when they're not implying to the great unwashed that large swaths of the American populace are in league with our perceived enemies.

There is an absolutely moronic and totally counter-productive strategy being propagated by some on the right. It is a concerted attempt to demonize all of Islam for the actions of a few. That strategy is yet another demonstration of the severe irony deficiency on the American right. This belief is absolutely the wrong thing to do, but regardless it is being used by people who piously claim to support the troops. They are the same type of tools who screamed the loudest in opposition of Vietnam-era anti-war protests, claiming protesters were giving aid and comfort to the enemy. The concept of blow-back doesn't exist in the very pretty world of unicorns and rainbows and trees made of lollipops in which they reside. They are as blissfully unaware of their blatant hypocrisy as they are of their religious bigotry. In comparison, the Vietnam era anti-war protesters actually stood on principal, or at least something other than cynical power-mongering...

This my friends, is the face of the modern Republican party, winning at any cost. Even at the expense of the fighting men and women they deify. When and if the Republicans regain Congressional majorities in the fall, prepare yourselves for the Boehner having daily bouts of Beck-style crocodile tears, with the accompanying tragedy of smeared bronzer on expensive tailored shirts. You can also expect an onslaught of pointless politically-motivated investigations in the Monica Lewinsky mold. Couple that with the Republican party's uncanny ability to accomplish absolutely nothing, unless you count unnecessary wars, record deficits, tax-cuts for billionaires, and tax-payer funded three-martini lunches as something. The end result? Neo-feudal peasantry for the lot of you...

Update! Sarah Palin has ~~twated~~ tweeted to the crazed Pastor of the Dove Outreach center to stand down. (I guess he follows her on Twitter) Good job Sarah! It just goes to show ya, even a broken clock is right twice a day also, too...Wait! She also decided that this nut-job and his flock are the equivalent of the builders of the Park51 Muslim community center...fucking douche. Stay classy Sarah...

In Newspeak, victory means never having to say you're sorry...

2010-09-01T12:26:00.000-07:00

Sorry Mr. President, but the Iraq war is far from over. You can keep your empty promise to bring all the *combat* troops home, but that still leaves fifty-thousand of our forces there indefinitely. These are people with uniforms and guns, who surprisingly enough have been trained for combat, so calling them *advisers* is kind of a half-truth. You can remove one hundred thousand of our troops to sooth the American psyche, but when you replace them with even more corporate mercenaries, you haven't really changed anything...

The only thing more ridiculously transparent than "The end of our combat mission in Iraq" has to be the Bush apologists crawling out from under the rock they share at Newscorp to declare that credit for our awesome *victory* belongs to the fucking boy-King. Sillier still is the notion that the so-called surge was a huge success. Correct me if I am wrong, but wasn't the goal of the surge to allow the Iraqi government room to reconcile power and resource sharing between the various factions in Iraq, so eventually they could run the country without our presence? Also, didn't the sectarian war result from the Bush administration's inept mismanagement of post-war Iraq, its lack of prior planning for a long-term occupation, and its total ignorance of the inner workings of Iraqi society? Wasn't that what made the surge necessary in the first place?

Sure there has been a decline in violence, but that is relative. Iraq routinely ranks on top of lists of the most dangerous places on Earth, even with hundreds of thousands of armed Americans occupying it, and there has been no political reconciliation on the issue of resource sharing, and the government coalition that was duly elected over six months ago is still not in place. If that's how you measure success, then no wonder some people think Dubya was a great president...

How about we demand that Bush and company be given full credit for the unlawful invasion that has resulted in the deaths of the untold hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis and over four thousand Americans? Not to mention the strategic mistake that has empowered Iran and left Iraq a corruption-riddled failed state. How about they get to explain their *victory* to a war crimes tribunal? Then we can demand that the current President stop couching this in the same Orwellian language used by the previous occupant, and please Mr. President stop trying to frame our Iraq experience as anything other than a horrible human tragedy. Haven't we heard enough from the idiots who still try to frame the Vietnam debacle as something noble?

I believe the single greatest tragedy in America today is our collective state of denial about the effects of our rampant militarism. Almost twenty years of my life has been dominated by Vietnam and the Global War of terror. If you count the Cold war and all our little proxy wars around the world, that accounts for most of my forty-four years on this planet. My life has been witness to America being in an almost continuous state of war, yet sadly, the majority doesn't even seem to notice or care, and the minority sees it as good business...

I had a point, but not the one on Beck's head...

2010-08-31T17:30:00.000-07:00

There is mostly bad news coming from around the world these days. Everything from the devastating floods effecting millions in Pakistan, to our economy heading into its long predicted second dip. We hear of heat waves and droughts, and virulent microbes in unexpected places. Despite events of actual relevance occurring around the world, the media is transfixed by the bizarre spectacle of tens of thousands of our fellow countrymen journeying to the nation's capitol for a pointlessly meandering Sermon on the Mount/Nuremberg Rally performed by Glenn Beck, the Faux infotainment pundit and Mormon equivalent of Jim Jones.

Beck is at best, a wannabe leper messiah. A man who restores *honor* by revising his own history as well as the history of the founding of this nation to fit his ideology. But his latest intrigue is a desperate attempt to co-opt and pervert the recent history of the Civil rights movement, mixed with his usual warping of Christ's message into some selfish Randian nightmare that appeals directly to his mouth-breathing fans more base instincts.

After all, his fans are the perennially downtrodden of our society. They have been totally left out of the political process because their leaders have only dominated the process for the last thirty years. They make up of a broad cross section of the American populace, in that they are all relatively affluent middle-aged white Christians. A strange breed indeed, they cling to a depraved fantasy of taking America back, seemingly without understanding how elections work or ever mentioning who exactly they are wresting it from. They conveniently omit what they really want, which is to take us back to a time when the uppity knew their place. Just listen to them, they will tell you that they have struggled mightily for the last eighteen months. Struggled under the oppressive yoke of this decidedly un-American-yet-somehow-still-elected-by-wide-margins dictatorial regime hellbent on depriving them of their liberties...

Beck is self professed "rodeo clown", he was quoted as saying he doesn't give "a flying crap about the political process". Yet somehow that guy, the one who turns into a blubbering man-child whenever the founding fathers are mentioned, or gold goes up in value. Somehow that weepy fucking douche-nozzle is taken seriously by his lemming-like audience and the corporate media...

He told his devotees that ~~Chairman Mao~~ sorry, President Obama was using the Patriot Act to listen to their phone calls and read their e-mail without a proper warrant. Wait, no it wasn't that. He decried the infringement on our liberties by the elimination of the legal protections of Habeas Corpus. Wait, no, maybe it was the executive signing statement negating the Posse Comitatus act, you know the law that prevents the military from being used against our own populace. No, sorry, it wasn't that either. Wait, I remember now. He lamented the fact that our government can unlawfully detain any person indefinitely without charge or render citizens and non-citizens alike to third party states for illegal torture. Oops, sorry it wasn't that either. I know, he went on a prolonged diatribe about the trillions of tax dollars wasted, and the massive federal deficit created by our continued occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. He lamented that the Pentagon budget alone makes up almost half of all federal spending, and he suggested that the costs of the seven hundred plus military installations we maintain around the globe in pursuit of empire were adversely effecting us economically. Shit, sorry, that wasn't it either.

Oh wait, I know. He said Americans were losing their liberty because the President was forcing them to have a health insurance policy...

Sorry, I have seriously digressed from my topic. Which was the bit of good news that a well-regarded environmentalist and long-time skeptic of the severity of anthropogenic warming has finally come around to acknowledging that climate change (not terrorism, or fucking Glenn Beck) was the single greatest threat to mankind...