Caption Contest

Not as celebrated was Kafka's short story in which his character wakes up as Donald Duck.

The President is Not a Catholic But Thanks For All the Fish

Dear Bishop Daniel Jenky-

I've read in the news of you calling President Barack Obama both Hitler and Stalin. This has unfortunately resulted in a typically liberal online petition that seeks to force you to either apologize to the president or to resign from your sinecure at Notre Dame. Personally, I think your only crime was overzealousness in attempting to get the President to abandon his Protestant roots and, in the process, to proselytize him into Catholicism. No doubt, you were encouraged by Mr. Obama throwing Reverend Jeremiah Wright under the wheels of the bus as if he was a slavering, brain-starved zombie during his presidential candidacy but I fear that you'd read too much into that. The President does that with anyone in his circle who angers the real fascists in American government.

Granted (the thrice-married, blow job-loving Newt Gingrich notwithstanding), this is a slippery slope, Bishop, in converting an elected American official who may already be set in his ways. Obviously, better minds than mine have already established the Vatican's brief but lovable flirtation with fascism and aiding and abetting Adolph Hitler's ceaseless attempts to gentrify Europe of a common unwelcome presence ("Der Juden", I think Pope Pious XII used to call them until the spring of 1945). But I doubt that Mr. Obama is unready or unwilling to take that giant step into outright popery and, in the process, becoming the nation's first black fascist papist chief executive, even if John F. Kennedy beat him in the Catholic presidential derby. Plus, JFK was a bad fascist and almost as bad a Communist.

(Just as a personal aside, some querulous liberal naysayers will harp on the fact that you called our President both a far left and a far right extremist in some attempt to unite the nation. Do not listen to the unchurched liberals. It was a valiant attempt at ecumenical unity since insisting on believing President Obama is a Communist on a par with Stalin is something shared by both sides of our Great Ideological Divide.)

Unfortunately for the RCC, getting in bed with the Nazis turned out to be the world's deadliest fad (next to nude skydiving, which I won't get into). But the Vatican did play its part in the ransoming of the Jewish people in Rome in which 70 pounds of gold were ransacked from the Jewish community even though the RCC could've gotten that much by pulling the gold thread from his pajamas and melting down the Pope's cutlery. Thousands of Roman Jews were rounded up, anyway, never to be seen again and all Pope Pious XII had to do was physically step outside to prevent the roundup (I heard he was in the bathroom with irritable bowel syndrome, a cause for much regret, I am sure, until the Pontiff's death in 1958).

Perhaps it was just as well, since Pious and Hitler were such close buddies. No doubt, if Facebook was around back then, they would've been fast friends. It would've been something like, "Adolph Hitler updated his status: Exterminated another 5000 Jews at Dachau and Buchenwald. The gas bill for those fucking ovens will be murder. LOL. A fascist's work is never done." "Pope Pious XII updated his status: Oh, Adolph, you're so naughty! LOL. God bless you, anyway."

Therefore, while it may be commendable to try to make President Obama the next Hitler, I am afraid that he may not have an appetite for the body and blood of Christ (I hear he's more a Five Guys Burgers and Fries and beer fan than wafers and bad white wine). However, if our current Pontiff has his way, no doubt he will pick you up and make an appeal on his own initiative, if his salad days in popery back in the real Hitler's day is an accurate indication.

Yours in and out of Christ, up and down, north, south, east, west of the Vatican and thereabouts,

Jurassicpork

I Cannot Do That, Dave

Dear Dave Drunkenmiller-

I must compliment you on your brilliant nom de plume, as Robyn the Drunken Miller in The Canterbury Tales provides lovers of English literature and dirty jokes with a wonderfully filthy morality tale that pokes fun at the corrupt clergy of the early 14th century. Indeed, in your “diatribe” to that Godless atheist Justin Griffith, you had, as with parish clerk Absolon, the ultimate brown nose, farted a righteous blast of indignation in the face of true believers.

Indeed, your pen name was a wonderfully witty and erudite choice because what better way to drive home the absurdity of religion with a brilliant example of extreme ecumenical eructation than to take up the cause and the name of a teller of ribald tales from a great work of Middle English literature?

Nonetheless, your hilarious screed was pinned down like a mental patient in four point restraints by an underpinning of seriousness because the encroaching nature of religion in the armed forces is a problem that must be tackled immediately if not sooner. Still, unlike the founder of any religion, your faux identity as a pompous former chaplain is stunningly funny and more brilliant than any other faux conservative this side of Stephen Colbert and Jesus’s General.

Take, for instance, your insistence of being called “Sir” in this priceless passage:

In reference to my name, you can call me Sir. As a Sergeant, you should know how to respect a Commissioned Officer. I think you believe you wear the uniform proudly, I hope you do, but your blatant disrespect you show to leadership openly on the internet is offensive to me. I hope Senior Leaders deal with this!

If Sgt. Griffith were serious about you, and I can assure you, Dave, that he is not, he could call you anything he wishes. He could refer to you as Bag o’ God, Chaplain Chap-ass or anything he wishes. But obviously, since you’re a brilliant satirist and a fellow shooter in the foot of religion, you’re well aware that a retired commission does not remain in effect either now or in perpetuity.

Likewise, delicious was your character’s hypocritical take on the conversion issue. As we all know, the United States military, largely through the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, has been violating the United States Constitution for decades through its ceaselessly pathetic efforts to proselytize “the unchurched” as real bags o’ God prefer to call them (and coining a nonexistent word, in the process) and promoting one form of Christianity or another while in uniform, which is also blatantly in violation of the Constitution.

Furthermore, it was a real knee-slapper when you tried to “claim” that Sgt. Griffith was guilty of trying to stop others from practicing their religion instead of what he in fact is doing, which is in trying keep characters such as the one you adopted from shoving their own God and belief system in the faces of others like goat innards jiggling in the hand of a desperate vendor at an Arabian bazaar. Surely, a stunningly brilliant satirist such as you would see the not-so-subtle distinction.

Indeed, there is something seedy and desperate in a religion that seeks to convert nonbelievers. Perhaps it’s Christianity’s innate insecurity and ceaseless sense of persecution after going 0-9 in the Holy Crusades (in which they were so desperate for conscripts, they even employed, like Hitler in 1945, children). With the child molestation scandal rocking and rolling the Roman Catholic Church and the emerging revelations of the Church of England, the United Anglican Church and the Catholic Church conspiring to torture and murder over a 130+ year-long span of time tens of thousands of Indian children largely over logging rights in Canada, it’s almost understandable why such gibberish-spouting, Bible-banging, canvas tent-dwelling, snake-charming zealots would try to pump up their dwindling numbers.

But surely, as a master satirist, you already know this and do not need me to further elaborate.

In summation, dear Drunken Miller, you are a deadly wielder of words on a par with other great satirists such as Juvenal, Jonathan Swift and Tony “Psycho” Perkins of the hilarious Family Research Council. I eagerly await your future screeds.

Your humble and obedient servant,

Jurassicpork

Fox News at its Finest: Pt XVII

Poor Fox and its allies have been taking a beating, lately, and have been loading their diapers with outrage as false as their news.

Oh yes, let's all have a pity party for the pampered cunt wife of a multimillionaire who acts as if the 1% is the 99% and vice versa.

No, it's not corporations we're "bullying", morons, but ALEC, who bullies people of color and low income people in general through its "model" legislation. And those who continue subsidizing it and Rush Limbaugh.

And speaking of Rush "Tokyo Rose" Limbaugh, let's throw a few boo hoos his way, too.

No, Media Matters' only target is your blatant hypocrisy and permanent divorce from all that is truthful, real and decent.

It took Snopes.com and a Facebook user to accurately sum up this freight car o' Fail.

Finally, let's round out this newest collection of Fox lies, follies and fuckups with a blast from the past from 2008. Sadly, this not Photoshopped but the real deal.

It's 4/20

Behold a Real Liberal Democrat

If anyone even suggested to Barack Obama that he deliver a speech this dead-on and sarcastic, one calling out the Republican Party, that staffer would be fired immediately. I think Obama would shit his pants behind the podium if he ever delivered a speech like this. Use this clip of Roosevelt's speech to see just how far to the hard right Overton's window has shifted and think about what real liberalism used to look like, at how real Democrats worked for you before this fruitless, centrist, bipartisan compromise bullshit came into vogue. Because when you elect a "Democrat" like Barack Obama into the Oval Office. someone who insists on giving the Republican Party at least 95% of what they want while still getting vilified with lies and innuendo to the point of sedition and treason, then you're doing no better than electing a moderate Republican. Think about that, and this video, before you Obamabots march like lemmings to the polls this November. Because the only difference between Romney and Obama is how long you want the inevitable fall off the cliff to be delayed.

Ann Romney, Please Shut the Fuck Up

Seriously.

Even though your silicon-based husband Willard would've already sunk his campaign without your help, you really, seriously, truly, honestly just need to shut the fuck up because you are simply a cunt. You are a gimlet in both inner ears, Nosferatu fingernails clawing forever on freshly cleaned glass or blackboards, that cat hair or two in the eyeball. You are an outrage and an embarrassment even to other rich, monster-fucking cunts like Hilary Rosen.

There's a very real chance I'll get slapped with the misogynist label but one thing we have in common, Ann, is that neither of us ever gave a fuck what people thought about us. Here's the difference:

I did not grow up in wealth and privilege nor did I marry into it. And even if I had, I'd like to think I'd have the presence of mind to not retroactively create poverty just because there was a time in my salad days when I couldn't lift my four upscale automobiles to street level with a car elevator.

"Living on the edge" usually doesn't include being able to cash in stocks and bonds because poor people can't afford to speculate in the stock market. Instead, poor people raid their kids' piggie banks, dig into the couch cushions and count pennies, sell their cars so they can get on welfare, thereby crippling their ability to get to a job interview and to a job so they can get off welfare.

That would be poor people your Ken doll of a husband Willard made poor by buying up corporations then putting them out of work, usually just before Christmas, while outsourcing their jobs to China or liquidating the company. Poor people sometimes work, sometimes two or more jobs (when there were jobs, not that you'd have any insight into that), just to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table. They usually don't have rich industrialist/Governors/HUD directors as fathers to bail them out when their stock portfolio gets a little thin.

And in your little self-defensive diatribe about all the troubles you've seen, I don't recall you mentioning Mitt's student loans that crippled him with over $100,000 in debt before he ever saw his sheepskin or the Pell grants he had to take advantage of, the same Pell grants on which many millions of college students have had to depend to have a prayer of paying down their tuition, the same Pell grants that your antifreeze-blooded lunatic of a husband would love nothing more than to abolish and replace with Paul Ryan vouchers.


And as for "entertaining", for poor people, "entertaining" usually means having a moving party when families whose jobs were outsourced by your husband then had to leave when they got the foreclosure or eviction notice served to them by a constable.

And the pressures of parenthood weren't alleviated by nannies and other servants when it came time to go to a Republican ladies luncheon so you could glorify the destruction your husband wrought on real working class families and badmouth liberals and how poverty is a "mental disease", as Neil Boortz recently put it.

Staying home with the children or working one or two or three jobs wasn't always a choice (Choice is usually something conservatives like to deny those who aren't blessed with an inherited fortune, is it not?). To the working poor and middle class (which are increasingly becoming one and the same thanks to private equity vultures like your husband), nannies from upscale agencies weren't an option. We have day cares that are so prohibitively expensive it hardly makes sense to even work one of those jobs. So sometimes, stay-at-home moms would forgo work because it didn't make any sense to slave for 40 hours a week just to put their entire paycheck into a day care center's pocket.

Ann Romney, you are a pearl-clutching, rich cunt who seriously needs to shut the fuck up, the stereotype of the rich Republican cunt wife who is so clueless and so out of touch you've forgotten what it feels like to sweat. Unlike the Rude Pundit, I do not cut you a little bit of slack and acknowledge your MS and the struggles you've had to face because other people, poor people with no insurance, have had to face the same disease. And when poor people without affordable health insurance or any insurance are afflicted with degenerative diseases, it if anything widens their compassion for others.

MS has not done the same for you. You continue carrying on seemingly with your husband's blessings as if we should stop moving our furniture out of our foreclosed homes and raising kids that our work schedules practically guarantee we never see awake or spend any quality time with them so we can all have a pity party for Ann and Willard Romney just because decades ago they couldn't put on glittering parties with the glitterati like the Kennedys.

Parenthood also includes seeing your kids off at the AFEES as they take the oath on enlisting because job opportunities were stretched thinner than a Crêpes Suzette thanks to scumbags like your husband. Parenthood also includes crying inside and out knowing that your teenage child will get sent into a war zone needlessly created by your husband's party despite the recruiter's assurances they wouldn't. Parenthood for over 5000 families also includes receiving a flag folded into a tight little triangle by an honor guard at graveside. But you and your kids wouldn't know anything about that.


Because your Ken and Barbie, Ward and June version of Pleasantville parenthood means your kids can stay out of the military and not have to work ball-busting jobs or any jobs at all so they can pose with pretty, ponytailed cheerleaders and ride air conditioned campaign buses to support their scumbag father's every failed campaign because he's so creepily corporate and about as popular and appealing as AIDS in Provincetown.

So, even though you're just bringing into more merciless relief what a pair of cold-blooded, reptilian douchebags you and your husband are, for the sake of all that's holy, you seriously need to shut the fuck up, you stupid, out of touch cunt.

Open Thread

Won't have much computer time today since it's my son Adam's 20th birthday. But please accept these ecards in lieu of any actual content, all written by yours truly.

Titanic, Triangle Shirtwaist and the Inevitable Failure of Reform

John I. Taylor, owner of the Boston Red Sox, was just putting the finishing touches on a "lyrical little bandbox" to be named Fenway Park. The grand opening of the diamond for one of the eight charter members of Ban Johnson's still-new American League was supposed to be one of the biggest, if not the biggest, news story for mid April 1912.

At the same time, a luxury ship known as the RMS Titanic was in her fitting out berth undergoing her own final touches. The keel had been laid three years earlier by laborers in Belfast, Ireland, many of them in the same economic class (third) as the immigrants who would occupy steerage below the water line.

James Cameron's classic has been panned for its historical inaccuracies, including the hit job on Mr. Murdoch's character (He was portrayed as a bribe-taking opportunist as the ship was sinking and the lifeboats separated from the davits) but we can be fairly sure he did his research in recreating the hedonistic behemoth as only CGI and trick photography can deliver.

As is all too well known, the RMS Titanic was supposed to be last word in not only luxury but also safety. The hubris of the ship builders, the White Star Line and its ultimate owner, JP Morgan, was such that only half the passengers and crew could be accommodated if the ship sank. The Titanic had enough space and davits to carry 64 wooden lifeboats, more than enough to save the 2200+ souls on board. However, the Powers That Be decided only 20 lifeboats (including four collapsible lifeboats) would be sufficient. The Titanic was unsinkable, after all. The lifeboats were mere window dressing. In fact, maritime law at that time stated that a ship at over 10,000 tons had to carry just 16 lifeboats. Ergo, Titanic actually had four over the bare legal minimum.


The ship's builder, J. Bruce Ismay, who would suffer social ostracization for his role both before and after the Titanic's foundering, decided to build an additional screen on Promenade deck A, thus making Titanic the largest ship afloat, larger than her sister ship, the Olympic. Even before her ill-fated maiden voyage, Titanic had injured nearly 250 workers, killing six. But such collateral damage was to be expected with a massive undertaking over a three year-long span of time.

Titanic had the capacity and resources to comfortably accommodate well over 3000 passengers and a full crew of nearly 900 but a coal strike just prior to her maiden voyage assured that only a little over half the berthing areas would be occupied. As the graphic shows, an estimated 78% of the crew perished after Titanic's starboard side hit an iceberg off the coast of Newfoundland, flooding five of her compartments.

The investigation that followed in Titanic's tragic wake found that J. Bruce Ismay, the ship's principal builder, exhorted Captain Edward Smith, then winding down his career, to fire Titanic's other engines and to flex her muscles so she could give some good copy to the worldwide press. Excessive speed was listed as the primary cause for the collision. But the real reason was hubris.

And it was hubris and callousness that accounted for the deaths of 1514 people of all social classes. It was overweening pride that led the builders and owners to think that Titanic could not be sunk (despite being made out of iron) and the lifeboats mere useless appendages, it was hubris that led Ismay to think they could blindly barge at over 20 knots through a part of the North Atlantic notoriously littered with pack ice at that time of year.

And another look at the graphic above shows that callousness resulted in a higher survival rate across the board of first class passengers. In spite of the Titanic's standing policy of "women and children first", one third of first class male passengers scrambled aboard the precious few lifeboats. By contrast, only a third of the 3rd class children were also saved. Males in second class suffered the most horrendous casualty rate: A full 92% of them perished, presumably because they insisted on honoring the ship's "women and children first" policy.

Realizing as the ship's five compartments began to flood and word spread around that Titanic would surely sink in two hours, the first thought was to lock down in steerage the third class passengers and casual crew who worked for as little as £3 10s a month so they wouldn't take up valuable lifeboat space. To cover the landed gentry with more glory, it was later discovered that several of the lifeboats were deployed with as few as a dozen survivors even though each one was built to accommodate 65. Even under those horrendous circumstances, elbow space for the wealthy was worth condemning people to die.

I'm sure, even as the 1% ("the better half", as Billy Zane's character Cal Hockley put it) were given precedence over the 2nd and 3rd class passengers and the rest were plunged into 28 degree water that killed them within 2-3 minutes, that not a single person was thinking of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire that had occurred nearby, killing nearly 150 underpaid garment laborers barely over a year earlier. Just as the Titanic became the worst disaster in maritime history, so had Triangle Shirtwaist became the worst industrial accident in American history.

So many men, women and even children perished that day because all but one exit was locked by management to prevent presumed employee theft. Many of the Irish, the nationality that built Titanic, and other nationalities in steerage were locked belowdecks so they wouldn't "steal" their only means of salvation. The lifeboats that had been regarded superfluous just two hours before were now seen as the property and birthright of the landed gentry.

As is inevitable, many shook their heads and wondered how these disasters could've happened and reforms were swiftly put in place. Just as Triangle Shirtwaist brought about workplace reforms, the Titanic's sinking gave birth to SOLAS, which is still in use today, and maritime laws had been strengthened to better ensure the safety and survival of passengers and crew.

Today, Titanic owner JP Morgan's corporate heirs in the Wall Street bank that still bears his name is front and center of several other atrocities against working class people that have been made more notorious thanks to the spiritual heirs of the 2nd and 3rd class passengers who perished and live on in Occupy Wall Street.

JP Morgan, as with so many of their competitors/colleagues, is notorious for stealing homes that do not belong to them, in refusing to modify mortgages, in charging usurious finance rates and bludgeoning their working class account holders with excessive fees.

The reforms that had been swiftly erected in the wake of the Titanic and Triangle Shirtwaist were certainly very good things (although far too late in coming, thanks to self-interested obstructionism by the 1% that just as surely called the shots a century ago as they do now).

But reforms ultimately fail if they are not maintained and refreshed. Even child labor laws that were first enacted in Massachusetts in the 1830's are under attack. Women's rights are under attack as the landed gentry and right wing policy makers spend the entire 21st century trying to hurtle us back to the 19th. Pensions had long since been taken away from workers and risibly replaced with 401(k) plans that placed the burden of retirement funds on them. Workplace safety standards are under attack, the EPA and OSHA are mere shadows of their former selves and the 1% want us back in the pre-Titanic/Triangle Shirtwaist days when workers had no protections and, in worst-case scenarios, immediately deemed expendable.

Honest and well-meaning regulations, oversight and reforms are all good and well. But they are ultimately doomed to failure unless we reform the self-dealing, self-interested mindset of the sociopathic 1% that hold those who keep them in the catbird seat (or lifeboats both literal and figurative) in complete contempt. And how does one go about permanently reforming the mindset of the sociopath?

Romney Closes Asshole Gap With Obama

With former Senator Rick Santorum now out of the picture, the GOP presidential nomination now appears to be Mitt Romney's for the taking, leaving the former Massachusetts Governor free to close the asshole gap with the President.

Obnoxious Republican rectums were slower to embrace Mr. Romney than obnoxious Democratic rectums who had long since embraced President Obama.

"The man's a Brooks Brothers mannequin that would give George Romero the creeps," said Republican asshole Joe Bob Turley of Hattiesburg, Mississippi, "but damn it, if God wanted a black president of the United States, he'd've done made us all black."

With Mr. Santorum suspending his campaign, it's expected that Mr. Romney will pick up the remaining asshole delegates he needs for the nomination, thus sparing America the spectacle of a brokered convention and the Republican Party the embarrassment of picking up those assholes again from scratch with a new nominee. The Super Assholes, aka the super delegates, have already signaled that Mr. Romney had sucked them up.

Liberal assholes supporting Mr. Obama were more effusive in their praise for the incumbent.

"Sure," said Susie Kovalek of Queens, New York, "the President has ordered the assassination of American citizens without due process, protected the war criminals of the Bush administration, gave Wall Street and the 1% one tax break after another while freezing pay for federal workers for two years, undermined unions, ramped up Afghanistan, kept us in Iraq for three more years, bloated private industry, reserved for himself the right to indefinitely detain any American citizen on a whim and smashed to fucking smithereens every one of his campaign promises while employing lobbyists, corporate CEOs and vacuuming up corporate cash. But he, like, killed bin Laden and he's handsome. Like, stop being so judgmental. Nobody's perfect. You're just a racist if you don't think he's doing a good job."

The liberal asshole was then pepper-sprayed and stuffed into an NYPD paddy wagon presumably for walking past Zuccotti Park.

A recent followup Zogby poll showed that almost 50% of uncommitted conservative assholes from one month ago now planned on voting for Mr. Romney despite the republican nominee's slowness in proving he's human and the entire Romney clan coming off as unforgivably rich aliens embarking on a boring invasion. Mr. Obama, on the other hand, had already closed the liberal asshole gap by getting over 90% of the yawning left wing rectums' support early on.

The narrowing in the asshole gap promises the usual two man race and Mr. Romney essentially having the GOP field to himself means right wing rectums are now less conflicted over who they will eventually use to vote against Mr. Obama. The 55-60% of the electorate who do not self-identify as assholes are likely to remain home on Super Tuesday.

Taste the Rainbow Coalition

(By American Zen's Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari.)

After 47 days of infuriating inaction and a less-than-glacial progress in the Sanford Police "investigation", George Zimmerman is being charged with murder in the second degree.

This is the result of some legal soul-searching by the Special Prosecutor who decided that she couldn't win a case of first degree murder, which would've required the tricky process of impaneling an impartial grand jury and, if Zimmerman were to be found guilty, the possibility of the death penalty. It's not this reporter's job to judge the more pragmatic wisdom of any attorney, much less Special Prosecutor Angela Corey, nor will I uselessly bloviate about how a compelling case could've been made proving that Zimmerman did have malice aforethought, that this was a hate crime and that the legal definition of premeditation, on which the decision to go for 2nd instead of 1st degree charges appears to be based, could be more elastic than previously thought.

I have come not to bury Zimmerman or the stupendously callous and casual Sanford Police Department or the special prosecutor for what could've been a cowardly decision to try a case carrying charges with a higher percentage of success. I've come here to praise President Obama and the American people for a job well done.

Because it's obvious to any thinking person that were it not for Mr. Obama elevating the Trayvon Martin murder to the presidential level and were it not for the American people, starting with the late Mr. Martin's family, this needless death would've been quietly swept under the rug in Sanford, Florida and Zimmerman would likely still be patrolling his neighborhood with the same zeal and seeming impunity as Samuel L. Jackson's Abel Turner in Lakeview Terrace.

Take a bow, Mr. President, and the same goes to everyone in this notoriously and infamously indifferent country that gets more upset at the temporary loss of internet and cable access and standing in line for more than 30 seconds than the intolerable injustice of a wrongful death of and bureaucratic apathy toward a fellow American of color, a child who was killed while carrying candy.

If significant action hadn't been taken, it would've proved to us and the rest of the world that we have not progressed one inch since the 1955 murder of 14 year-old Emmett Till. And if anthropology teaches us one thing, it's that human evolution always favors or at least seeks out progress and not mere Protean change for its own sake.

Hopefully, this will create a ripple effect and many officers working under former chief Bill Lee will be disgraced and fired or forced to resign. I will not dwell on the fact that the video of the Sanford Police booking Zimmerman was done with all the zeal of a routine DUI (which, on reflection, would've proved more efficacious, as that would've involved a BAC, which was not done on the shooter but the 17 year-old victim).

But I'll widen my scope even more and say that this article isn't even about just the Trayvon Martin shooting and how catalytic the American people showed they were in the wake of this most intolerable of urban vigilantism. This is about Planned Parenthood. This is about Rush Limbaugh. This is about SOPA and PIPA (with the help of some corporate self-interest.). This is about ALEC. This is about the Koch brothers now having to do their dirty work under the withering light of growing public scrutiny. And lastly, this is about Occupy Wall Street which is gearing up again after a short winter. And this is about all the things that the American people have stopped, altered or changed through countless grass roots efforts through online petitioning, protests and other forms of progressive activism.

The Trayvon Martin case is a textbook example of the power of the American people when united by a righteous and just cause. We derailed SOPA and PIPA just as we derailed the first vote on the bailout in 2008. We cost Rush Limbaugh and Premiere over 130 sponsors. We made Intuit, Coke, Pepsi, Kraft, Wendy's and other Fortune 500 companies to stop funding the endlessly evil American Legislative Exchange Council. We forced the Susan G. Komen foundation to refund Planned Parenthood.

The fight is just beginning and the American people are just stretching and realizing how much strength its body has. And, as if preordained by a didactic deity, all these examples of the might of We the People are taking place in an election year in which more seems to be at stake than usual.

Yet, even in a nation of over 300,000,000 people, there are so many destructive influences at work that seek to undermine the very foundation of our Republic and ALEC is just one of them. We still need to pick our battles and to not scatter our resources. But the waking giant of our population is beginning to raise its collective voice through human microphones and petitions and those at whom our outrage is aimed cannot help but hear us.

Occupy Wall Street and its countless analogs across this vibrant country is but mere prologue.

This Just Out In...

Happy Donnie Darko Day

Or, as we say in our household, the day Jesus turned into a flying zombie.

Shorter John Derbyshire

If John Derbyshire had thought for a hundred years for a time to write The Talk: Nonblack version, he couldn't have chosen a worse one. With the country more racially divided than ever over the Trayvon Martin shooting/smear campaign/irrational rallying around George Zimmerman, both Derbyshire and the right wing rag that employs him, the National Review, thought it would be the perfect time to remind people of how much we've regressed rather than progressed.

Derbyshire, you might remember, last caused this big a stir by proposing two and a half years ago taking away from women the right to vote. It's pretty tough to top that level of wingnuttery but Derbyshire, in letting out his inner Kipling, somehow managed it.

What was overlooked at the time was his little sidebar on Alan Colmes's radio show in which he said that it may not be a bad idea to repeal the Civil Rights Act of 1964 on the grounds that the government “shouldn’t try to force people to be good.” And it's that little sidebar that provides us with a springboard in explicating Derbyshire's virulently racist and hideously researched article.

First, let's take a look at the lead picture (Click to expand it. I'll still be here pinching the bridge of my nose when you get back). Let's shorten each paragraph to the essence of what Derbyshire says.

Paragraph One: "I'm too lazy to type 'African American' so let's just go back to the nearly archaic term 'black.'"

Two: "They come from West Africa. Pay no attention to the fact they came in chains and largely against their will. They fucked some Indians. Ignore, also, the fact that many of their slave owners raped them."

Three: "You're North European and Asian only. The spics and redskins don't count."


Four: "Like it or not, blacks are considered citizens and have the same rights as you. But if they scare you, they're immediately rescinded (see Zimmerman, George)."

Five: "Believe it or not, they don't all tap dance, eat fried chicken, chit'lins and watermelon. But not one has ever won The Fields Medal for mathematics. Forget the fact only 13 Americans have ever won it and not one Caucasian American since 1998. So they're not as smart as you think."

Six: "Chances are you may actually have to meet your first black person before you're 16. Sorry. Law of averages and all that."


Seven: "Meeting blacks automatically segues into white safety, but ignore the fact the links I provide show a widespread bias against black students and lawmakers plus another making specious claims about people of color without links or source material."

Eight: "Blacks, for some reason, have a problem with this discrimination, so avoid them. You're better off with your own kind, anyway."

Nine: "About, oh, 5% will really hate you for the color of your skin. Alpha males lead the rest out of racial solidarity, which is inconsistent with the rest of human behavior."

Ten: "Since about, oh, 5% of blacks should be given a wide berth, play the law of averages and just stay away from as many of them as possible. Here's some more source data, in the form of an 11 year-old op-ed that could've been written by me."

Ten A: "Since they can't all be trusted, carefully vet every black if you get caught in a clump of them."

Ten B: "They have George Zimmermans, too. Trust me on this."

Ten C: "If going to a public place that may allow black people, check your weather report to see what the black barometer says. Consult your local racist. I almost witnessed a shooting once a quarter of a century ago. Trust me on this, too."


Ten D: "They clump like overcooked black beans. That's when they're the most dangerous."

Ten E: "They can magically materialize and multiply like krill or a crowd out of a Jerry Lewis movie. Beware."

Ten F: "If your Congressman is black, move. Luckily they have no senators. In the President's case, however..."

Ten G: "Black politicians are more corrupt than George W. Bush, Tom DeLay, Duke Cunningham or any white Republican in the Senate or House."

Ten H: "If you see a black bleeding by the side of the road, fuck 'em."

Ten I: "Be civil and don't piss them off. Keep moving if you haven't vetted them."

Eleven: "Five white people who aren't doctors said over 10 years ago that blacks are stupider. Someone said 'Life is an IQ test'."


Twelve: "You have Affirmative Action to thank for seeing so many blacks get ahead. Otherwise they'd be too dumb to advance beyond dishwasher or porter. You'd be better served by your own kind (see Republicans, white.). To show how much smarter I am, I'll throw ceteris paribus at you, tho most blacks just say, 'All things being equal'."

Thirteen: "Believe it or not, some are like us and can be trusted up to a point. Let's reduce them to an acronym such as IWSBs. You can use them to answer well-founded charges of racism with, "Some of my best friends are..."

Fourteen: (see Action, Affirmative.) Political correctness will force you to meet more of these decent blacks because, as I said, slumming with them makes you look progressive. Don't worry, there's enough to go around."

Fifteen: "Wait, scratch that. Quality blacks are scarcer than Brazilian hockey players. Don't be too jealous when you see them or you'll be accurately labeled a racist."

In response to this, uppity blacks and their strategically-placed white friends began calling for Derbyshire's ouster. This caused Slate to remind us yet again why it was such a huge mistake to hire Dave Weigel.

Weigel utterly does not get the point. After reminding us that Derbyshire can't be racist because he once lived in China and his wife once briefly appeared in a Bruce Lee movie (Yes, he actually said that), Weigel then writes,

Derbyshire is saying something that many people believe but few people with word-slinging abilities know how to say: There are differences between the races, and whites should watch out for blacks.

First off, Derbyshire "slings words" like a disinterested cook in a diner on Rt. 66 near Alamogordo, New Mexico slings hash. Secondly, Weigel misses the point by saying that some African Americans are hostile toward some whites because people such as Weigel and Derbyshire keep harping on racial and cultural differences that reduce them to ignorant stereotypes. Gee, why would they do that? All they tried to do was help keep them in their place and the rest of us safe from them.

The question now circulating all over the internet is, "Should Weigel and Derbyshire be fired from the places that employ them?" They, too, miss the point. The point is that both places supposedly have editorial gatekeeping, meaning both articles passed muster with at least one editor at each publication. Not only should these... writers, for want of a better word, be kicked out on their fat keisters, so should their editors for allowing the publication of this racist tripe that comes dangerously close to sounding like something out of The Onion or Stephen Colbert. And not only should Derbyshire be immediately given the Olbermann treatment, he shouldn't be allowed near his kids for filling their heads with such fact-starved bullshit.

Bye bye, John. Don't let the door hit your narrow, uptight, pasty white ass on the way out. Say hello to the 17th century for us.

Let's be Blunt About Trayvon and George

This is Laffy's latest blunt, a 10 minute video from mostly Twitter liberal luminaries about Trayvon Martin, including the Rude Pundit and Marnus3. I come in at 3:50 in. Very powerful piece and a good job by Laffy. The original post can be found here.

Thought of the Day

The World's Worst Standup Comedy Routine

At about nine seconds in, you can simultaneously hear the inaudible sound of crashing plates, glasses and silverware, plus sour notes on a piano, wheels screeching like wounded puppies and a needle harshly dragged over an LP as Rick "Frothy Mixture of Anal Lube and Shit" Santorum's campaign finally came to a screeching halt. This is his "Macaca" moment, this is Fonzie jumping the shark and Mork and Mindy having a baby that looked like Jonathan Winters all rolled into one.

I wish I could say this is an April's Fool's prank, that a Republican presidential contender didn't really sink as low as one could possibly sink by calling the President of the United States a nigger but it's captured forever on glorious videotape. It's quite a trick, making Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and especially racist Ron Paul look dignified and respectful of race by conspicuous relief but somehow Ricky Retardo managed it.

And, no little Ricky, you didn't try to say "blah." We're not all as stupid as you.