Dear Glenn Beck fans, this is what God thinks of you, Witness this awesome cosmic punking!

Dozens of people who parked at the University of Central Florida for an event say they were set up after their cars were towed. They said event parking signs directed them to a lot, but more than 50 cars in that lot were towed. People said those signs and their cars were gone when they got back.

A viewer contacted WFTV after his car was towed Saturday, along with 52 others. All of them were in line to recover their cars at an impound lot and all of them attended the Glenn Beck show at UCF.

The people parked in a Kappa Sigma lot. Mike Vedder thinks they were set up. He doesn’t know if it was a dislike of the conservative commentator or money.
“Maybe the have a deal with the tow truck company or maybe they got kickbacks under the table,” Vedder said.

They all said an event parking sign clearly directed them into the lot. Students at the fraternity wouldn’t comment, but WFTV caught up with the owner of Orange County Towing and Recovery, Ronald Hulbert.

“I have a lot at stake, a lot invested. I’m not going to lose it over a $125 tow, times 53, times 53, it was a good day,” Ronald Hulbert said.

Hulbert admits he’s never towed that many cars in one day before; he said it took him at least eight hours to tow all the cars. Each driver had to pay cash, netting him more than $6,600.

This is a great prank to play on the type of assholes who’d pay money to see Glenn Beck speak, isn’t it? Perfection. Whoever did this, I love you.
 

 
Thank you Scott!

A brilliant (and terribly droll) commentary on consumer culture, “Logograma” is an Academy award-winning short film directed by the French animation collective H5 (François Alaux, Hervé de Crécy and Ludovic Houplain). First shown at the Cannes Film Festival in 2009, “Logorama” also opened the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. I especially like the scene where Ronald McDonald holds a gun to the head of the Bob’s Big Boy mascot.

Arundhati Roy talks with Democracy Now about spending time with Maoist rebels in India. As somebody who’s spent time getting chased and almost killed by Maoist rebels, I’m not exactly sure she’s on point here. While they are fighting for the rights of the poor, they are also, to a large extent, providing a back door for China—and now that they have essentially sold Nepal to China, the buffer zone between India and China—two gigantic nuclear powers—is getting erased. Not good for anybody. In the slightest.

Earlier this month, when Forbes published its annual list of the world’s billionaires, the Indian press reported with some delight that two of their countrymen had made it to the coveted list of the ten richest individuals in the world.

Meanwhile, thousands of Indian paramilitary troops and police are fighting a war against some of its poorest inhabitants living deep in the country’s so-called tribal belt. Indian officials say more than a third of the country, mostly mineral-rich forest land, is partially or completely under the control of Maoist rebels, also known as Naxalites. India’s prime minister has called the Maoists the country’s “gravest internal security threat.” According to official figures, nearly 6,000 people have died in the past seven years of fighting, more than half of them civilians. The government’s new paramilitary offensive against the Maoists has been dubbed Operation Green Hunt.

Well, earlier this month, the leader of the Maoist insurgency, Koteswar Rao, or Kishenji, invited the Booker Prize-winning novelist Arundhati Roy to mediate in peace talks with the government. Soon after, India’s Home Secretary, G.K. Pillai, criticized Roy and others who have publicly called state violence against Maoists, quote, “genocidal.”

(AlterNet: Arundhati Roy on the Occupation of Kashmir)

(Arundhati Roy: Field Notes on Democracy: Listening to Grasshoppers)

The Guardian reports on Colonel Gaddafi’s bizarre literary output. I think he should form a writer’s circle with Lynne Cheney and crank out the world’s best S&M authority porn. Then they can both be gainfully employed in the San Fernando Valley working for somebody’s porn distribution outlet when Internet Sleaze finally proves to be the predominant ideology of the 21st century, leaving all fascist systems in the gulch.

If it feels as though Colonel Muammar Gaddafi has been around a long time, that’s because he has. Born in 1942, Gaddafi led the coup against the Libyan monarchy in 1969 – the same year Sesame Street debuted on US television. He’s as old as ineffably boring Sir Paul McCartney, his regime as venerable as Big Bird. And, like many dictators, he fancies himself as a writer.

Gaddafi’s most famous literary work is The Green Book, published in 1975. This treatise on “Islamic socialism” defined the concept of Jamahiriya, a state without parties that would be governed directly by its people. Which, in practice, translates as a military dictatorship, headed by – you guessed it – Gaddafi! His subsequent volume, Escape to Hell, is less well known. Marketed in the UK as a single collection of short stories and essays, it is in fact an amalgamation of two books: Escape to Hell (1993) and Illegal Publications (1995). Of course, while it’s safe to say that all works of dictator literature are to some extent fictional, few tyrants have tackled the art of Chekhov and Maupassant. I was quite excited to see how the colonel fared.

One of the first things I learned is that Gaddafi has little grasp of literary classifications. The texts in Escape to Hell are, alas, not short stories but rambling prose feuilletons. There are no characters, no twists, no subtle illuminations; indeed, there is precious little narrative. Instead, you get surreal rants and bizarre streams of consciousness obviously unmolested by the hand of any editor.

(The Guardian: Gaddafi’s surreal gibberish)

(Escape to Hell and Other Stories)

 
When I read about the vocal protesters at the University of Ottawa who effectively scuttled conservative pundit Ann Coulter’s speech there Tuesday night, my first thought was that Coulter would find a way to capitalize on it, a media feeding-frenzy would follow and it would turn into a win-win for Coulter, who presumably was still paid her speaker’s fee.

The protests followed another incident on Monday night at the University of Western Ontario, when Coulter told a Muslim student to “take a camel” instead of using airplanes. Fatima Al-Dhaher, the student, asked about Coulter’s statement that Muslims should not be allowed to fly on airplanes and should take “flying carpets” instead. Al-Dhaher told Coulter that—unlike most Muslims—she did not, in fact, own a flying carpet and asked how she should travel. “Take a camel” came the retort. Ooh, snap.

News travels fast these days, and predictably the protesters were out in force—over 2,000 of them—to “greet” the conservative author. Not one to give credit where credit is due, Coulter apparently saw a warning e-mail she was sent by University of Ottawa Vice President and Provost Francois Houle on Friday, gently and professionally telling her to not to step over the line as the real problem.

Houle’s e-mail was obtained by the National Post newspaper. Here is an excerpt:

“I would, however, like to inform you, or perhaps remind you, that our domestic laws, both provincial and federal, delineate freedom of expression (or “free speech”) in a manner that is somewhat different than the approach taken in the United States. I therefore encourage you to educate yourself, if need be, as to what is acceptable in Canada and to do so before your planned visit here.

You will realize that Canadian law puts reasonable limits on the freedom of expression. For example, promoting hatred against any identifiable group would not only be considered inappropriate, but could in fact lead to criminal charges. Outside of the criminal realm, Canadian defamation laws also limit freedom of expression and may differ somewhat from those to which you are accustomed. I therefore ask you, while you are a guest on our campus, to weigh your words with respect and civility in mind.”

Pretty hateful if you ask ... um ... Ann Coulter, I guess.

But it was the update to the matter Wednesday morning that was really head-twisting: The deliberately inflammatory right-wing pundit—yes, the same woman who told the Muslim student to “take a camel”—is actually planning to file a complaint with the Canadian Human Rights Commission alleging hate speech in connection with the e-mail!

Ann Coulter a victim of hate speech? Let that sink in for a minute. A woman who has no qualms whatsoever about publicly insulting Jews, homosexuals, Muslims, African Americans, Democrats—and now Canadians—a victim of hate speech?

It’s just like these right-wingers to blame Canada, isn’t it? Coulter later told a television interviewer that the “camel” comment was just a joke.

Cross posting this from Brand X

 
Yeah, I know. Big news flash: George W. Bush is an asshole’s asshole. How on earth did this semi-functional man-child, oh nevermind….
thx Jeremy Goff !

Rule #1: Do not wear your teabag hat out in the rain.
 
John Avlon, author of Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America, writes of a scary new Harris poll that says volumes about the level of political literacy in this country. If this is to be believed, it’s appalling stuff.

From The Daily Beast:

67 percent of Republicans (and 40 percent of Americans overall) believe that Obama is a socialist.
57 percent of Republicans (32 percent overall) believe that Obama is a Muslim
45 percent of Republicans (25 percent overall) agree with the Birthers in their belief that Obama was “not born in the United States and so is not eligible to be president”
38 percent of Republicans (20 percent overall) say that Obama is “doing many of the things that Hitler did”
Scariest of all, 24 percent of Republicans (14 percent overall) say that Obama “may be the Antichrist.”

 
Fuckin’ a right it is. (Signing the HCR bill into law that is.)

 
via Crooks And Liars
 
Here are ten benefits which come online within six months of the President’s signature on the health care bill:

1. Adult children may remain as dependents on their parents’ policy until their 27th birthday
2. Children under age 19 may not be excluded for pre-existing conditions
3. No more lifetime or annual caps on coverage
4. Free preventative care for all
5. Adults with pre-existing conditions may buy into a national high-risk pool until the exchanges come online. While these will not be cheap, they’re still better than total exclusion and get some benefit from a wider pool of insureds.
6. Small businesses will be entitled to a tax credit for 2009 and 2010, which could be as much as 50% of what they pay for employees’ health insurance.
7. The “donut hole” closes for Medicare patients, making prescription medications more affordable for seniors.
8. Requirement that all insurers must post their balance sheets on the Internet and fully disclose administrative costs, executive compensation packages, and benefit payments.
9. Authorizes early funding of community health centers in all 50 states (Bernie Sanders’ amendment). Community health centers provide primary, dental and vision services to people in the community, based on a sliding scale for payment according to ability to pay.
10. AND no more rescissions. Effective immediately, you can’t lose your insurance because you get sick.

 
Proud to be an American today! This is a wonderful thing for the people of this country. What a great day to be alive.

The Republican Party has been routed for a generation—or forever—and they know it. Now onwards to financial reform!