FOLLOW US ON:
GET THE NEWSLETTER
CONTACT US
Not the best kind of product placement: Teen f*cks a Hot Pocket® on Vine, becomes famous
02.27.2014
01:19 pm
Topics:
Tags:


Lock up your Pop-Tarts®...

We all know that teenagers aspire to be famous, like it’s some kind of Warholian birthright in the age of social media, but with the barrier of entry being so low these days, just about anyone can actually achieve fame, if only fleetingly. It doesn’t take a lot of effort per se, or even any discernable talent, or the barest hint of charisma… just a gimmick.

Take for example Thot Pocket, aka @VERSACEPOPTARTS, the… erm… whippersnapper The Daily Dot is calling a “Twitter folk hero.” What did he do to deserve to called a folk hero you ask? Well, first he got a little famous for violating a box of Pop-Tarts® and posting a video of himself doing so on Vine. (Thot shot the video himself in case you were wondering, it was a selfie.)

Talk about product placement, this is more like product debasement.
 

 
Capitalizing on his newfound notoriety, Thot had another thought: He tweeted to his followers that when he got 420 retweets of his tart-popping production, he would make brand new works of food pr0n. First he’d fuck a Hot Pocket®, then he’d a do donut and then he’d get jiggy with some Jell-O. No surprise, he got those 420 retweets and promptly made a video of himself violating a microwavable pastry and posted this to his Vine account, too.

Soon thereafter, Thot lost his Vine account, but he was proudly defiant:
 

 
No, no one can take that away from you, Thot… though who would dare try?

According to The Daily Dot, Thot Pocket has now also lost his Twitter account. Still, I doubt this will be the last we hear of him.

But who am I to speak: I once showcased (inflicted?) Rocketboy, the self-described half human/half cat “intergalactic super-hero” who stuck his dingus in a can of creamed corn in an adult film, on network British television. Here’s a moment from the old Disinformation series, if you dare…
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
|
02.27.2014
01:19 pm
|
The most racist preacher in America?


 
Is Brother Donny Reagan of the Happy Valley Church of Jesus Christ in Johnson City, Tennessee, the “most racist pastor in America”? This is what The American Jesus blog is wondering. Surely he’s one of the dumbest.

Brother Reagan begins his remarks in the video below by informing his congregation that he is probably “going to make some people mad.” He’s apparently not self-aware enough to realize that some other people are going to simply point and laugh at him, but I believe it’s safe to say that self-awareness is not a quality the good Lord bestowed upon Donny boy here in any appreciable amount.

“Today we have so much fussing and stewing about this segregation of white and colored and everything. Why don’t they leave it alone? Let it be the way God made it.”

Wait, what?

“There is a move in the message, of blacks marrying whites, whites marrying blacks. And folks think that is alright, but you know, my God still has nationalities outside the city.’

“Nationalities outside the city”! I LOL’d at that line. Brother Donny’s congregation, clearly consisting of low IQ buffoons like himself, shout “Amen!” as Reagan reads from his prepared remarks. I wonder how these intellectually challenged folks vote, don’t you? [Me, neither, that doesn’t even qualify as a rhetorical question does it?]

“Hybreeding, hybreeding, oh how terrible. They hybreed the people. You know it’s a big molding pot. I’ve got hundreds of precious colored friends that’s borned again Christians. But on this line of segregation, hybreeding the people. What, tell me what fine cultured, fine Christian colored woman would want her baby to be a mulatto by a white man? No sir, it’s not right.”

At 2:19, Brother Donny makes an honest admission:

“Now friends I’m not very smart.”

Um, that’s right you inbred cracker fuck calling for MORE INBREEDING!!!!

DNA doesn’t work that way, Bro.

Dumb Donny goes on to say:

“If God wanted a man brown, black, white, whatever color he wanted him, that God’s creation. That’s the way he wanted it.”

Uh, you heard the man… As the Firesign Theater once said “Good lord, a stiff idiot is the worst kind.”
 

 
Via Christian Nightmares

Posted by Richard Metzger
|
02.14.2014
01:14 pm
|
Google slaps ‘reported phishing’ warning on idiotic Republican scam website
02.06.2014
07:56 pm
Topics:
Tags:


This is what you get when you try to visit contribute.sinkforcongress2014.com

After the word got out earlier this week about their pathetic scheme to mimic Democratic congressional candidates’ campaign websites in a not-so-clever effort to trick would-be Democrat campaign contributors into donating to the GOP instead, the National Republican Congressional Committee has had to start offering refunds to donors who’d been misled by their scammy sites (and true to form, they are hilariously impugning the honesty, in advance, of anyone who’d dare request a refund! They simply cannot help themselves!)

Did they not think this would end poorly for them?

You have to wonder who it was that approved such a thing and WHAT they thought they would gain from doing something like this? You also have to wonder how many Democrats were fooled and gave money to the NRCC and IF IT WAS WORTH IT for the Republicans to look like total dickheads to just about everyone for perpetrating such a goofy move. No matter what your political affiliation might be, this simply makes them appear incredibly stupid, delusionally incompetent, and there very well could prove to be legal ramifications if this activity would be considered fraudulent in the states where it occurred.

To add insult to this bumbling self-inflicted injury, Google has put a “reported phishing” warning on at least one of the Republican scam websites (the one targeting Alex Sink of Florida.)

And of course this information is now being spread across the Internet. Nice work there, Republicans!

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
If you can’t beat ‘em, cheat ‘em: Republicans pull shenanigans to confuse voters—then brag about it

H/T Daily Kos

Posted by Richard Metzger
|
02.06.2014
07:56 pm
|
Get your popcorn ready: Bill Nye the science guy to debate idiot Creation Museum founder Ken Ham
01.02.2014
02:03 pm
Topics:
Tags:


 
Bill Nye, the popular TV scientist, put out a video last year indicating his opinion that teaching Creationism in schools wasn’t such a hot idea and might, you know, intellectually stunt the mental growth of the children subjected to such nonsense. Showing up for college with an Old Testament notion of how the universe and life in it came to exist, might, you know, put your kid a lil’ behind the curve…

In any case, Ken Ham, the moron who founded the Creation Museum in Petersburg, KY, challenged Bill Nye to a public debate and… Nye accepted! The debate is being touted in a message on the museum’s blog.

The February 4th event will ask “Is Creation A Viable Model of Origins?”


 
According to a recent Pew poll, for 46% of Americans—including 53% of Republican voters—the answer, sadly, appears to be a YES.

Nye’s original video prompted a response video from the Creation Museum (below). I wouldn’t put money on Ham to come out ahead in this debate!
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
|
01.02.2014
02:03 pm
|
What do the Neo-Nazis and skinheads at Stormfront make of Tila Tequila’s embrace of Hitler???
12.10.2013
03:45 pm
Topics:
Tags:


She’s not a racist or anti-Semite, she just wants to break you free of “The Matrix”

Yesterday, Tablet magazine “broke” the “news” of former MTV star Tila Tequila’s public embrace of Nazism. Wasn’t it just in 2012 when she announced that she was converting to Judaism? She even claimed that she was learning to read and write Hebrew. Then she became a conspiracy theorist and now she’s a Nazi going by the moniker “Hitila”!

At her blog Hitila wrote a rambling post on December 7th titled “Why I Sympathize With Hitler Part 1: True History Unveiled” about why Adolf Hitler was “misunderstood.” It concluded:

There is much, much, much more to Hitler’s side of the story that has been buried so I will continue the PART 2 of it next time.  For now here are a FEW of MANY inspiring speeches Hitler did that shows his TRUE COLORS as a man of compassion and not some evil monster he was painted out to be.  All he wanted to bring his people and country back up.  Just like how AMERICA IS FALLING AT THE MOMENT YET I DO NOT SEE ANYONE IN OFFICE *AHEM* THAT IS BRAVE ENOUGH TO SAVE THE AMERICAN PEOPLE LIKE HITLER WAS WILLING TO SAVE THE GERMAN PEOPLE!  You know why? Because all of the American Politicians have been INFILTRATED by the enemies.  The same ones who have painted Adolf Hitler out to be a so called “MONSTER.”  Hitler never wanted a worldwide genocide.  That is the biggest lie ever nor did he want the genocide of all the jewish people.  All he wanted was to be able to feed his people from the depression, defend his country from being attacked unfairly, and they claimed the war and harassed him and his people first…. I bet you didn’t know about THAT now did you?  And if you watch some of these speeches I have attached you will see that a lot of what he describes sounds EXACTLY like what AMERICA is going through right now….. Yet, do you see our President trying to save our Country here as Hitler tried to save his?  NOPE!!!  They cheated and played Hitler so bad…. I feel extremely compassionate and sympathy for the man with a ruined legacy as well as a forever condemned great people of Germany!  They are some of the NICEST people I have ever met and that is the truth!!!! Oh yeah… Hitler was also a Vegetarian and HUGE animal lover… what a monster!

Hitila’s new song, “It’s Going Down!” gives some further insight into her tiny, tiny mind. Here are the lyrics so you don’t have to listen (if you do like to make your ears bleed, the track is posted below):

Every time you hear my name it’s going down, goin down X 4
Feeding yo mind with GMOs
while givin yo babies flo flo
not flo rida but flo ride
that shit that burns yo third eye

Jewluminati motherfuckers hate me
Oh no they don’t wanna date me
Nor you nor you nor you too
Worldwide Genocide blame it on the jews

So now they call me a nazi
no bitch I’m just good at yhatzee
Espionage is my middle name HA!
I got you good while rolling through yo hood

Hitler no Hi Tila
Hitler no Hit Tila
Hitler No Hi Tila

You get the picture.

But sensing there was more comedic water to draw from this particularly poisoned well, The Raw Story‘s Arturo Garcia decided to see how the white supremacists at Stormfront.org were reacting to Tila’s abrupt Judaism to Nazism conversion. Hilarity ensued!

It’s exactly what you might expect.

“It’s insulting to Adolf Hitler to have that promiscuous, degenerate, mongrel defending him. She makes me want to vomit.”

“The sad part is this no one will listen to her.”

“I congratulate her for finding the truth.”

“Brave woman to throw her career away for truth. Jew Hollywood and media will never hire her again.”

“Very, very strange. Her entry almost seems copied and pasted from this website. I wonder if she wasn’t somehow ‘encouraged’ — either overtly or covertly — to promulgate this information in an attempt to discredit it. I, for one, am quite skeptical.”

“She sounds perfectly lucid to me.”

“She’s not a truther, she’s a plant.”

“We need more people like her spreading this type of message. As long she does not preach racial mixing, has no kids, and eventually commits suicide, it is all good.”

“She’s got 2 million followers. People will listen to her. The Zionist veneer is finally crumbling.”

“I posted a supportive comment on the page. I think we all should to show her that she is not alone in her beliefs.”

Saving the best for last:

“Is she of Jewish racial ancestry?”

[Add sound effect of your choice here]

The YouTube commenters are actually more insane than the posters at Stormfront, who at least weren’t as confused by what she’s selling….

Here’s “It’s Going Down!”. Going viral like an STD, baby…
 

 
Mind rot at its finest: “Tila Talks Ep. 9: Parallel Worlds, Nazis, Zionists, the Matrix & Illuminati”—she’s like a mentally challenged character in a Philip K. Dick novel. One that he burned.
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
|
12.10.2013
03:45 pm
|
Slavoj Žižek: Ayn Rand’s ‘John Galts’ are the idiots who crashed the economy & they’ll do it again
10.11.2013
04:25 pm
Topics:
Tags:


 
I had to laugh at the way Slavoj Žižek so masterfully ended his Guardian op ed piece, “Who is responsible for the US shutdown? The same idiots responsible for the 2008 meltdown.”

Žižek’s subtitle is “In opposing Obamacare, the radical-populist right exposes its own twisted ideology” and in the essay, he poses a provocative question that I’ve been wondering about a lot myself recently: “Barack Obama is accused of dividing the American people instead of bringing them together. But what if this, precisely, is what is good about Obama?”

I’d like to read Žižek—or Jonathan Chait, Brian Beutler, Alex Pareene, Michael Tomasky, Charles Hugh Smith, Frank Rich or the great Charles P. Pierce—taking on this topic in further detail once the dust has cleared.

The conclusion Žižek draws at the close, though, is simply sublime:

One of the weird consequences of the 2008 financial meltdown and the measures taken to counteract it (enormous sums of money to help banks) was the revival of the work of Ayn Rand, the closest one can get to an ideologist of the “greed is good” radical capitalism. The sales of her opus Atlas Shrugged exploded. According to some reports, there are already signs that the scenario described in Atlas Shrugged – the creative capitalists themselves going on strike – is coming to pass in the form of a populist right. However, this misreads the situation: what is effectively taking place today is almost the exact opposite. Most of the bailout money is going precisely to the Randian “titans”, the bankers who failed in their “creative” schemes and thereby brought about the financial meltdown. It is not the “creative geniuses” who are now helping ordinary people, it is the ordinary people who are helping the failed “creative geniuses.”

John Galt, the central character in Atlas Shrugged, is not named until near the end of the novel. Before his identity is revealed, the question is repeatedly asked, “Who is John Galt?” Now we know precisely who he is: John Galt is the idiot responsible for the 2008 financial meltdown, and for the ongoing federal government shutdown in the US.

Standing ovation!

Posted by Richard Metzger
|
10.11.2013
04:25 pm
|
Christian group thinks it’s ‘better to die than to live’ in pro-gay world!


 
Last night as I was writing this post about the end of the world fantasies of the Christian Right, I came across a ridiculous quote from dim-bulb entertainer Pat Boone who once said that he’d rather his young daughters died than to be raised under godless Communism.

I’d imagine that little Debby and her siblings would have felt differently, perhaps.

Here’s a new one, though: Christian political organization,The Family Leader, headed up by the sleazy Bob Vander Plaat, says it is better to die than live in a world welcoming of gay people.  In an article posted on their website with the title “9 Reasons You Will Be Made to Care,” The Family Leader group laid out a manifesto of ignorance, as Gay Star News reports:

They referenced the Disney Channel featuring a lesbian couple on a TV show, a California bill ensuring trans people can use the right bathroom, the US evangelist who was arrested in London for spouting anti-gay hate, and the Colorado baker facing jail after refusing to make a wedding cake for a gay couple.

The boycott of Barilla pasta has pissed them off too. What’s a poor Christian who is “being targeted by homosexual activists who’s [sic] agenda is clear: approve of my lifestyle or pay the consequences” to do, The Family Leader asks.

“At first, the cases were few and far between. Now the number of cases are building, and the collective threat is growing, with the goal of suffocating Christians’ vocal opposition to promoting a lifestyle which is not consistent with their faith.”

Would Jesus discriminate?

Here’s how it ends:

What will you do?  Will you give in to their agenda by saying and doing nothing? Or will you lead yourself, your family, your church, and your community?  Our nation, our children need leadership. What you choose will impact generations to come.

To paraphrase a quote from Winston Churchill:

“If you do not fight when you have a chance of winning, you will eventually fight when you have no hope of winning, because it will be better to die than to live.”

Or you could just kill yourself if you’re too sensitive to live IN REALITY. Like those nice Heaven’s Gate people.

It’s a modest proposal. A more realistic one.

The Family Leader’s loathesome leader, Bob Vander Plaat, is mulling over running for the Senate in the Republican Party primary in Iowa next year. He could win, too.

Via Joe.My.God

Posted by Richard Metzger
|
10.10.2013
01:13 pm
|
Oh Jesus: ‘Left Behind’ author’s group behind apocalyptic Tea party shutdown?


 
For those of you either too young to remember them—or perhaps not raised in the Bible Belt—among the very top best-selling books of the 1970s were Hal Lindsey’s The Late, Great Planet Earth and its sequel Satan is Alive and Well on Planet Earth. These books are literalist readings of the Book of Revelation, presenting a fanciful, goofy paranoiac eschatology comparing vaguely worded end-time prophecies written over 2000 years ago (and reworded an unknown number of times since) with (then) current events. They’re about as intellectually serious as Chick tracts.

Nevertheless, The Late, Great Planet Earth was marketed as non-fiction Bible prophecy predicting and decoding last days milestones—the USSR invading Israel, the coming of the Anti-Christ who would rule over the European Union, famine, plagues, etc, etc, etc—before the Rapture and the subsequent return of Jesus. One of Lindsey’s main themes was that Jesus would come back “one generation” after the state of Israel was established, so by the 1970s, this was a very hot topic in what we now refer to as red states. (If you have ever wondered WHY Southern evangelical Christians are so obsessed with Israel, wonder no more, Hal Lindsey’s books were—and still would be, although I think people forget this—a huge, huge part of this strain of American Christianity. It was there already, but he brought it to prime-time, so to speak and amplified it culturally.)

Hal Lindsey’s books (co-authored by Carole C. Carlson) rivaled the sales of titles like Jaws, The Godfather and The Exorcist as the books most likely to be read by people who didn’t read very much. These books were staples of nearly every garage sale back then. Apparently over 28 million copies of The Late, Great Planet Earth were sold.

Among the known fans of Lindsey’s books in the 1970s was California Governor Ronald Reagan.

In December 6, 1983, during an Oval Office interview, Reagan informed two stunned reporters from People magazine:

“There were times in the past when we thought the end of the world was coming, but never anything like this.”

Tea party nitwit Pat Boone was one of Reagan’s closest friends. He said of the President:

“I believe that Ronald Reagan would make no decision that would run counter to his understanding of God’s direction and what God says is going to happen and what God says he wants to happen.”

(Reagan said this of Boone to a group of evangelicals at the kickoff of his reelection campaign: “And Pat Boone stood up, and in speaking to this crowd, he said, in talking of communism, that he had daughters, they were little girls then, and he said, ‘I love them more than anything on earth.’ And he said, (and I thought, ‘I know what he is going to say,’ and ‘Oh, you must not say that,’ and yet I had underestimated him). He said, “I would rather that they die now believing in God than live to grow up under communism and die one day no longer believing in God.” Big round of applause for Pat Boone, father of the (20th) century…)

Among Reagan’s cabinet members were men known to be to some degree influenced by Christian millennialist beliefs that we were living in the end times. Reagan’s notably asinine Secretary of the Interior, James G. Watt didn’t believe in ecological conservation because Jesus was coming back. It is known that General John Vesse, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Chief of Naval Operations, James Watkins, would meet regularly inside the Pentagon with Herbert Ellingwood, deputy Counsel to the President and Attorney General Edwin Meese III to discuss their common faith. I think it’s safe to assume that talk of Bible prophecy and a nuclear end of the world was on the menu at such meetings!

Reagan’s Secretary of Defense, Caspar Weinberger, an Episcopalian, told students at Harvard:

“I have read the Book of Revelation, and, yes, I believe the world is going to end - by an act of God, I hope - and every day I think that time is running out.”

Yep, these were the folks who had their mitts on the fuckin’ nukes. This was our side! (It should be noted that the Soviets were atheists! WHAT must the KGB have thought of these guys???)

When the great Texas progressive muckraker Ronnie Dugger penned the article “Does Reagan Expect Armageddon?” for the Washington Post in 1984, the frightening prospects of the crazy Americans bringing an end to the human race became a cause for alarm all across Europe. I lived in London then and there was a lot of anti-American sentiment at the time. I can vividly recall being quizzed about HOW?!?!? HOW?!?!?! could these (or did they say “you”?) idiot Americans believe in this stupid shit from three exasperated French guys and a perplexed English punk rock couple at a party once. I tried to explain it as best I could, but I don’t think my shoulder-shrugging “Look, that’s just the way it is over there, what can I tell you?” rationale for “my peeps” was in the least comforting to them!

Something I read this morning made me think back to those halcyon Cold War days of the almost quaint-seeming batshit crazy Republican Christianists of the 1980s: According to an article in the New York Times yesterday, one of the principal reichwing pressure groups architecting and advocating for the current Tea party-led GOP government shutdown was founded by none other than Tim LaHaye, the author of this current last generation’s mega, mega apocalyptic best-sellers, the “Left Behind” series. Tim LaHaye is basically today’s Hal Lindsey.

Lee Fang writes at The Nation:

The coalition is managed by Heritage and the Council for National Policy. The latter organization, dubbed once as “the most powerful conservative group you’ve never heard of,” is a thirty-year-old nonprofit dedicated to transforming the country into a more right-wing Christian society. Founded by Tim LaHaye, the Rapture-obsessed author of the “Left Behind” series, CNP is now run by Christian-right luminaries such as Phyllis Schlafly, Tony Perkins and Kenneth Blackwell.

Guess who else has his fingerprints all over this shutdown mess? Reagan’s Attorney General Edwin Meese III...

The Council for National Policy, the Conservative Action Project and Ed Meese himself know all too well that racial—not to mention religious—demographic trends in the US mean that there is a very strong likelihood there “their type” will probably never get their hands anywhere near the nukes again, but not content to merely fantasize, sidelined, about the end of the world (and their own perceived ROLES in this cosmic battle between good and evil, like the Reaganites who actually carried the nuclear football for eight fuckin’ years), this cabal of numbskull, dumbshit apocalypse-obsessed morons want to bring it on by destroying the world economy!

You have to give these Teahadist types some credit, they know how to fight dirty. These Republican economic suicide bombers are willing to shred the Constitution to bits to “save” the country from majority rule, aren’t they?

Yo’ dawg, they’ll end the world to save it. It makes perfect sense. TO THEM. Because Jeebus is on their side, of course!

This latest news introduces a whole new level of apocalyptic weirdness into the mix. I encourage you to read “Meet the Evangelical Cabal Orchestrating the Shutdown” by Lee Fang at The Nation. The implications of what he’s written there are fairly staggering if you ask me.

This is a battle between good and evil. It is if at least one side sees it that way. The Tea party jihadis want a Christian theocracy and they don’t really care if they have to force it on everyone else. In this way, how is the Christian Right in any way different from the Muslim Brotherhood they fear so much? Their brain-damaged beatific vision of a theocratic America, a country cleansed of gays, Muslims, liberals, illegal immigrants, science and where non-white people don’t get to vote will never, ever come to pass absent a massive genocide occurring in North America, which I don’t think is going to happen anytime soon. The concept of “the American Taliban” is becoming more real with every passing day and the rest of the world (especially the business community and China) is starting to notice it, too. And they are alarmed at what they see. Even the Taliban are brutally mocking us for being stupid!

Holy shit. Literally.
 

“I reveal my innermost self, to God.”
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
|
10.09.2013
07:54 pm
|
Glenn Beck: Beware Obama’s Marxist revolutionaries, next stop mass murders!
10.03.2013
03:05 pm
Topics:
Tags:


 
Still trying to live up to his reputation as Glenn Beck, on his program today Glenn Beck insisted that it was really “Marxist revolutionaries” in the Obama administration who were causing national parks and monuments to be shuttered during the GOP-led government shutdown.

Despite knowing fully well which party was to blame for the shutdown, Beck blamed Obama anyway, spinning a yarn about “a secret cabal” in the White House whose goal is to “inflict pain” on Americans.

“I want you to understand you are now seeing what I told you about three weeks ago. I told you they have gone from nudge to shove. Your next step is shoot.”

“Understand they are into shove, every Marxist communist revolution always ends with millions dead. Always, without fail, every time.”

Somehow Beck equates Stalinist and Maoist atrocities to the Washington Monument being closed down temporarily and a supposed starvation endgame of the Obama administration:

“They starved them to death. Why? To teach them a lesson. This is the beginning of teaching the American people a lesson: don’t you screw with us.”

Oddly, considering his animus for the “Marxist” President, at the clips end, Beck admonished his listeners to support his “Defund the GOP” campaign before “it will be too late.”

Seems like odd logic, but it’s Glenn Beck so why bother asking why?

How senile would you have to be to willingly choose to tune into Glenn Beck’s radio show??? His audience must have a collective IQ of approximately one peanut… The folks at Rightwing Watch, they at least get paid for this torture!
 

 
Via Rightwing Watch

Posted by Richard Metzger
|
10.03.2013
03:05 pm
|
During the Reagan era America feasted on infected monkey brains & now ‘The Reign of Morons is Here’
10.02.2013
08:03 pm
Topics:
Tags:


 
As I was saying earlier, I wish I had a wall of video screens so as not to miss a single second of the insanity going on in Washington, DC today. It’s such an incredible spectacle to witness. The ultimate reality show and it’s on thousands of channels at once. It’s hard for me to do anything else other than just gawk at it slack-jawed and scour the Internet for new news. I’ve been called “perpetually amused” and that description more fits me to a tee, but never have I been more amused than I have been in the past few days. Today especially.

Shit is getting GOOD. The DC follies is the greatest show on Earth now that Breaking Bad is over.

I feel like we’re just about three-quarters of the way through a movie where the bad guys are about to get their asses handed to them, but then again, maybe not. The end of this one hasn’t been written yet, so there’s genuine suspense. From where I’m sitting, it does look like the Republicans have overplayed their hand, yes, and I think the outcome to all of this self-inflicted damage is all but assured, yes to that as well, but it also seems certain that we’re going to see at least a few more twists, turns and moments of high drama—and low humor—along the way.

Anyway, in my voracious appetite for vacuuming up and processing every bit of information I can about the government shutdown and the lunatics who are at present in charge of the asylum, nowhere have I seen it put better than by THE GREATEST AMERICAN WRITER OF OUR TIME, CHARLES P. PIERCE, writing at Esquire. This is required reading:

Only the truly child-like can have expected anything else.

In the year of our Lord 2010, the voters of the United States elected the worst Congress in the history of the Republic. There have been Congresses more dilatory. There have been Congresses more irresponsible, though not many of them. There have been lazier Congresses, more vicious Congresses, and Congresses less capable of seeing forests for trees. But there has never been in a single Congress—or, more precisely, in a single House of the Congress—a more lethal combination of political ambition, political stupidity, and political vainglory than exists in this one, which has arranged to shut down the federal government because it disapproves of a law passed by a previous Congress, signed by the president, and upheld by the Supreme Court, a law that does nothing more than extend the possibility of health insurance to the millions of Americans who do not presently have it, a law based on a proposal from a conservative think-tank and taken out on the test track in Massachusetts by a Republican governor who also happens to have been the party’s 2012 nominee for president of the United States. That is why the government of the United States is, in large measure, closed this morning.

We have elected the people sitting on hold, waiting for their moment on an evening drive-time radio talk show.

We have elected an ungovernable collection of snake-handlers, Bible-bangers, ignorami, bagmen and outright frauds, a collection so ungovernable that it insists the nation be ungovernable, too. We have elected people to govern us who do not believe in government.

We have elected a national legislature in which Louie Gohmert and Michele Bachmann have more power than does the Speaker of the House of Representatives, who has been made a piteous spectacle in the eyes of the country and doesn’t seem to mind that at all. We have elected a national legislature in which the true power resides in a cabal of vandals, a nihilistic brigade that believes that its opposition to a bill directing millions of new customers to the nation’s insurance companies is the equivalent of standing up to the Nazis in 1938, to the bravery of the passengers on Flight 93 on September 11, 2001, and to Mel Gibson’s account of the Scottish Wars of Independence in the 13th Century. We have elected a national legislature that looks into the mirror and sees itself already cast in marble.

We did this. We looked at our great legacy of self-government and we handed ourselves over to the reign of morons.

This is what they came to Washington to do—to break the government of the United States. It doesn’t matter any more whether they’re doing it out of pure crackpot ideology, or at the behest of the various sugar daddies that back their campaigns, or at the instigation of their party’s mouthbreathing base. It may be any one of those reasons. It may be all of them. The government of the United States, in the first three words of its founding charter, belongs to all of us, and these people have broken it deliberately. The true hell of it, though, is that you could see this coming down through the years, all the way from Ronald Reagan’s First Inaugural Address in which government “was” the problem, through Bill Clinton’s ameliorative nonsense about the era of big government being “over,” through the attempts to make a charlatan like Newt Gingrich into a scholar and an ambitious hack like Paul Ryan into a budget genius, and through all the endless attempts to find “common ground” and a “Third Way.” Ultimately, as we all wrapped ourselves in good intentions, a prion disease was eating away at the country’s higher functions. One of the ways you can acquire a prion disease is to eat right out of its skull the brains of an infected monkey. We are now seeing the country reeling and jabbering from the effects of the prion disease, but it was during the time of Reagan that the country ate the monkey brains.

Read more…

Charles P. Pierce. He’s the best of the best, right? He’s also one of the last sane men left in America. Miss his wisdom at your peril. He’s good. Mark Twain good. Hunter S. Thompson good. Joe Bageant good. Jon Stewart good. He’s damned good!

Read Charles P. Pierce daily at the Esquire Politics blog

Posted by Richard Metzger
|
10.02.2013
08:03 pm
|
‘House of Turds’: The most instantly iconic New York Daily News cover in history?


 
One for the ages, here. One John Boehner will never, ever live down.

Superb! It certainly beats the previous winner by a longshot.

Posted by Richard Metzger
|
10.01.2013
10:53 am
|
Democrats mull a special ‘no hookers’ bill to shame diaper-wearing anti-Obamacare Republican


“Mommy, I made a poopy”

I make no bones over the fact that I hate Republicans. I hate them. Loathe ‘em. All of them. If you call yourself a Republican and I’m not related to you by blood, you can just go fuck yourself. Right now. I can’t be any more clear on that, can I? Anyone who self-identifies as “a Republican,” you’re an idiot, and you’re clearly not bright enough to know that you’re an idiot, either, which must be a real disadvantage for you as you make your way through life.

However, I must say that I have looked at the vicious, gnashed-teeth, bare-knuckled school of political combat the GOP has waged for decades—the Lee Atwater-style skull-fucking—and find their efforts superior, far superior, to the wimpish Dems, who simply never seemed to be willing to “go there” like the GOP do, ready to kill without any hesitation and never holding anything back. Say what you will about Republicans, they will shiv you. Expect it. They play to win and in the Darwinian game of American politics, that’s worth something!

I don’t care much for the Democrats either, they sure aren’t a team I root for, either, but I will admit it, I do love watching Harry Reid and his Senate pals playing such HILARIOUS hardball with hapless conservative Senator David Vitter of Louisiana. He’s just so easy to fuck with—like shooting a big fat, diaper-clad Republican hypocrite in a barrel—who could resist? Apparently not even the characteristically milquetoast and timid Democrats.

Vitter, who—of course—claims to be a Christian, is that very special sort of Republican idiot, in that he lives in a glass house—he had an important (and deeply humiliating!) cameo role in 2007’s “D.C. Madam” scandal that he doesn’t deny—yet has no qualms about throwing boulders at other people, including those who lack health care. Vitter has been an especially vocal thorn in the side of Senate Democrats over Obamacare, trying to tie a dickish amendment to the energy bill and wasting an entire week of Senate work. But diaper-wearing David Vitter is about to get his comeuppance…

In fact, it’s already started, as Politico reports:

Vitter, a Louisiana Republican, has infuriated Democrats this week by commandeering the Senate floor, demanding a vote on his amendment repealing federal contributions to help pay for lawmakers’ health care coverage.

But Democratic senators are preparing a legislative response targeting a sordid Vitter episode. If Vitter continues to insist on a vote on his proposal, Democrats could counter with one of their own: Lawmakers will be denied those government contributions if there is “probable cause” they solicited prostitutes.

I daresay, I don’t think David Vitter’s feeling so smug this morning. The deeply hypocritical Vitter, a married father of four children and a pro-gun, anti-choice, anti-gay, anti-immigrant, “Family Values,” Tea party-backed conservative who says he believes in Creationism, is widely thought to be considering a run for the Governor of Louisiana in 2015. Now, thanks to Vitter’s own passive-aggressive petulant obnoxiousness, the entire country has been reminded again of his shitty diaper scandal. Nice work, asshole!

The only politician in America more embarrassing than David Vitter is Anthony Weiner!

UPDATE: My god is this man fucking stupid!
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
|
09.13.2013
04:04 pm
|
‘Commie!’: Racist Tea party goon squad menace Arizona activist at anti-immigration rally
09.09.2013
12:02 pm
Topics:
Tags:


 
Here’s how the cameraman, Dennis GIlman, an AZ pro-immigrant rights activist described what happened:

“This was filmed on the public lawn of the Arizona State Capitol on September 7, 2013 where the “We Are America Tour” added Arizona racist, former State Senate President President Russell Pearce. Pearce is famous for SB1070 and his association and endorsement of neo-Nazi JT Ready, who killed an entire family before killing himself in 2012. The local racists have worked closely with FAIR for years. I was there to film the speakers.

It’s a safe guess that if Minute Man founder Chris Simcox wasn’t sitting in jail for multiple counts of child molestation that he would’ve been a speaker at this event also. Is it any wonder why they didn’t want the “liberal Media” filming them? For my own safety, I refused to leave without a police escort. It took over 7 minutes for any law enforcement to arrive. The video is edited only for length.”

The speaker is Gabriela Saucedo Mercer, a failed former Republican candidate for the Arizona Senate who said such outrageously racist shit that even Jan Brewer had to distance herself from her last year. She tells the (obviously) low IQ crowd that she’s against amnesty and that immigrants should do things the legal way when they want to come to America, just like she did (Apparently what Mrs. Mercer means by that is that—hey, hey—they should all marry wealthy men!). These fucking brain-damaged numbnuts cheer her on.

Although the video pretty much tells the whole story here, as there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of nuance to what transpired, here’s some additional information via The Phoenix New Times:

All of it was unprovoked. It’s almost funny when, after they surround Gilman like a pack of wild dogs, they tell Gilman to “stop pushing.”

Fortunately, playwright James Garcia was on hand, taking pictures of what was going on. He recently posted some of these to Facebook, with an eyewitness account of what transpired. Garcia writes:

“He was exercising his First Amendment right as an independent journalist to document a news event when he was literally surrounded by several people who alternately tried obstructing his view to keep him from videotaping, while a few of them began pushing and shoving him around—apparently intent on trying to provoke him….

“At one point, some of protesters who had surrounded Dennis began to yell out that he was assaulting them. These were blatant lies. The most aggressive thing Dennis did was turn his camera on his aggressors in hopes of documenting their abuse, while he pointedly insisted that they not touch his camera equipment. “

To be fair, assuming the group had a permit for the rally on the state Senate lawn, they could ask Gilman to leave. And if he chooses not to, they could wait for the police to show up to ask him to leave.

Having a permit does not give you license to harass and assault someone. Gilman says that when the authorities showed up, he agreed to leave if they would escort him all the way to his car. Smart move, considering the nature of the crowd, and the fact many of them were packing.

The best thing the nativists could have done is ignore Gilman’s presence. By singling him out and acting like a bunch of schoolyard bullies, they not only revealed their true colors, they ruined a chance to convey their intended message. Now they have to defend themselves by blaming the victim, which makes them look even worse.

Here’s a little free PR advice for them that they won’t take: Apologize to Gilman and promise to ensure his safety at the next demonstration they hold, whatever that is. This would be the smart thing to do, a way of mitigating the damage. But they won’t, largely because they are filled with rage and must attack anyone who disagrees with them.

And also because they are really, really dumb.

For some time, members of the neo-Nazis affiliated “Remember 1986” group (co-sponsors of the event) have been known to show up and harass Mexican day laborers at a spot in Phoenix where they congregate.
 

 
Via reddit/r/politics

Posted by Richard Metzger
|
09.09.2013
12:02 pm
|
Hatebakers blame gays for loss of their business, but comically believe God still watches over them


 
Lord forgive them for they know not what they do…

There’s an amusing—and not at all subtle—lesson to be learned from the travails of the “Christian” bakers in Oregon who claim that they’ve been the victims of harassment from gay activists—who they compared to the Mafia—but don’t expect the target of these efforts to understand what that (you’d think) hard-fought wisdom might entail…

As reported by the Christian Broadcasting Network and all across the rightwing blogsphere, Aaron and Melissa Klein closed the doors of their “Sweet Cakes by Melissa” bakery this past weekend and moved their wedding cake business into their own home. The Kleins, who earlier this year declined to make a wedding cake for a lesbian couple because they view gay marriage as “wrong,” seem to think that God supports their idiocy on all levels, even on the most mundane level, as stupid business owners.

So far though, looking at the matter objectively, God doesn’t really seem to have their backs…

“My attorney likens this — he calls it economic terrorism,” Aaron Klein told The Blaze. “These people, they have literally tried to cut any business ties off through harassment.”

If God did support the Kleins, you know, personally, I mean, wouldn’t he have just done some kind of supernatural shit to make all the straight couples buy wedding cakes from them? Maybe he could have made it so the gay mafioso army wouldn’t have been able to get phone reception to ask local wedding planners not to do business with bigots? Something like that? He’s God and all, that should be a total cinch! Snap your fingers kinda stuff for an all powerful deity who intervenes in human affairs ALL THE TIME.

Well… the Kleins didn’t just lose their gay clientele, clearly they lost most of their customer base across the board. If God supports the Kleins, then why did God let this happen to them???

This must prove very confusing for the Kleins. No wait! Maybe not: Aaron Klein’s statement goes to show just how deluded this dude truly is:

“It’s a sad day for Christian business owners and it’s a sad day for the First Amendment. The LGBT attacks are the reason we are shutting down the shop. They have killed our business through mob tactics.”

Well, that’s one way to look at it. Not a very intelligent point of view, mind you, but it’s all Aaron’s got and he’s the one who just saw his business go belly up, so he’s stickin’ with it!

I’d wager that God had nothing to do with any of this low IQ kerfuffle. Or maybe, just MAYBE, Aaron and Melissa, GOD IS TRYING TO TELL YOU SOMETHING?

YOU! Yes, YOU!

Is it even possible that Aaron and Melissa are on the wrong team and that God’s not even rooting for them?

Nah…

When news of the LGBT activists’ actions became public, many local Christians decided to support the Klein’s bakery, giving them, briefly a sort of Chick-fil-A-ish windfall. They were unable to keep up with the demand… for a few days.

This message was posted on the “Sweet Cakes by Melissa” Facebook page in February, but was hurriedly removed. THIS is who the local Christians were supporting:
 

 
Glenn Beck, CBN, Fox News, all of them, are supporting the guy who sat down, typed THAT up and posted it for all the world to see!

The beauty of it is, this is exactly what the First Amendment and the free market are all about. This exemplifies what conservatives are always blathering on about: The Kleins exercised their First Amendment right to be morons, the word got out and now nobody wants their baked goods anymore because they don’t want to do business with assholes. It’s our God-given right as American consumers to vote with our money.

Besides, it’s not like it’s their “right” to discriminate. In some states, maybe, but not in the one where they live. Last month, Oregon’s Bureau of Labor and Industries announced it has launched a formal discrimination investigation against the Kleins. Oregon’s Bureau of Labor commissioner, Brad Avakian told The Oregonian that he was committed to a fair investigation to determine whether the Kleins’ bakery violated the Oregon Equality Act of 2007 by discriminating against the lesbian couple.

“Everybody is entitled to their own beliefs, but that doesn’t mean that folks have the right to discriminate. The goal is to rehabilitate. For those who do violate the law, we want them to learn from that experience and have a good, successful business in Oregon.”

It’s predictable, but still so ridiculous, that the rightwing blogs and freepers tore into this statement like red meat. In some quarters, Avakian’s remarks have been “augmented,” shall we say, by a certain kind of paranoia to imply that “re-education” gulags are the next stop on the train for Christians who refuse to toe the “militant” LGBT line.

It’s always the Christians who are the victims, but would anyone feel sorry for the Kleins if this was over them refusing to serve Jews?

Oh, right, there’s no comparison because Jews are born Jews and gays are born… straight?

“Better is a poor man who walks in integrity than a rich man who is crooked in his ways,” from Proverbs, was posted on the “Sweet Cakes” bakery’s Facebook page.

Well, welcome to being poor, Aaron and Melissa. You’ve definitely earned it.

PS Good luck passing that home health inspection, it looks like you’ll need it. With your luck, God will send a member of the velvet mafia over to review your kitchen.
 

 
Below, a CBN report supportive of Aaron and Melissa Klein:

Posted by Richard Metzger
|
09.04.2013
02:36 pm
|
Hilarious: Sign petition to name hurricanes after global warming deniers!


 
Every time I check to see how many YouTube views this clever video has gotten, it goes up by tens of thousands of views. The first time I looked, it had 150,000 views, the next day it was double that and just now, it’s at an impressive 876,672.

It’s only been up for two days. Must’ve touched a nerve!

Via AlterNet:

The environmental group petition 350 Action is urging the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) to name hurricanes after policy makers who deny climate change.

The campaign entitled, “Climate Name Change”, released an accompanying video, which features prominent politicians who are skeptical of climate change such as Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), Washington Post reported.

The video includes satirical news bulletins that could result from the proposed naming system, such as:  “If you value your life, please seek shelter from Michelle Bachmann” or “thousands of animals have been displaced or killed by Governor Rick Perry.”

Wunderbar! You can sign the petition here. The video is a must-see piece of well-made political messaging. Whoever came up with this concept, bravo!
 

 

Posted by Richard Metzger
|
08.28.2013
04:38 pm
|
Page 2 of 9  < 1 2 3 4 >  Last ›