Editor Humor

My job suddenly seems so much more bearable. At least I don't have to edit Palin's speeches.

Scandalous!

The Illinois state university system is in the grips of a scandal over students being allowed to attend state universities even though they are under-qualified.

The investigation has found that the under-qualified students are white and bad at sports.

Obama Bigger Douchebag Than Previously Suspected

Human rights activity thus far:

Ruled out prosecution of torturers

Quashed ACLU FOIA into prisoner abuse

Reinstated Gitmo kangaroo courts



I'll just keep telling myself that a Republican would have been worse.

...right?

Maybe?



Sigh.

Emily Says...

I love Concrete Blonde as much as the next guy, but is Johnette Napolitano really qualified to be head of Homeland Security?

Obama And Cheney In Battle For Moral Low Ground

Attorney General Eric Holder says that this administration has made it clear from day one that it will not condone torture. Hope! Change! Hurrah! As it happens, Obama is so opposed to torture that he's already promised not to prosecute the torturers. Those of us with dictionaries will, at this point, be excused for our difficulty in reconciling Holder's comments with Obama's actions.

The torturers were, Obama reasons, just following orders, so the man has a point. Ever since Colin Powell whitewashed the Mai Lai Massacre, only foreigners are guilty when they follow orders. Americans are free to rape, murder, and mutilate civilians, as long as they get permission first.

Obama told the torturers that they should not "...be discouraged that we have to acknowledge that potentially we've made some mistakes." Potentially. He's not going to commit to calling the torture of prisoners a mistake. Let's not go crazy with the whole not condoning torture thing. The torturers have got his full support and we're going to move on. They should be proud to be members of an organization that... um... sanctions and carries out torture of prisoners, so buck up, lil torturers!

Because that's how we learn, people. We torture prisoners. And then we move on. Proudly.

Meanwhile, Cheney, speaking from his retirement home in suburban Mordor, says that what he finds disturbing about the release of the torture memos is that we didn't get to hear the success stories. Is anyone surprised that he doesn't find the actual torture disturbing? Anyone?

Lost (Not Found)

So, yeah... remember all those guns we forgot to keep track of in Iraq? The ones that the U.S. Army shipped using a bunch of shifty Eastern European gunrunners that aren't even allowed into Iraq?

Wow. What an embarrassing fuck up that was. I mean, what kind of dumbass do you have to be to send hundreds of thousands of weapons into an unstable, war-torn region and then leave them lying around where anyone can walk off with them? It's a good thing we learned our lesson and took Gomer Pyle off security duty.

What? What's that you say?


Crap.

More Letters To Politicians

Harry Reid sent me email today. You'll note that I was far too polite to point out that he'd called me "Dear SUSAN" (his all caps). I'm sure he'll see my signature and recognize his little faux pas. There's no need to embarrass him by dwelling on it. That would just be rude. Because I've been taught that it is polite to respond to personal correspondence, I did so, and because I have a genetic propensity for jackassery, I thought I would share it with you.

-----

Dear Harry,

I notice that you mentioned that you seated 7 instead of 8 senators yesterday, and I was hoping you could help me out with a little question I have.

Could you explain where, exactly, the Illinois constitution provides a role for a senator from Nevada in the process for filling a vacancy in an Illinois senate seat? Can't find it? Neither could I. I wonder if we could perhaps find a former Illinois Attorney General willing to weigh in on the matter, because I'm pretty sure he would have a better grasp on the fine points of Illinois constitutional law than you or I.

You may want to take advantage of this special, limited-time offer to sit down and shut the hell up, but if you continue to interfere where you have no legal mandate to do so, I hope you'll consider continuing these little e-mail chats from jail.

Happy New Year.

Your pal,


(Deadspot)
Illinois Democrat since 1984

Three Steps Forward, Two Steps Back

We won, and that's pretty cool. Equality rocks. I mean, it's not like we went crazy and elected an atheist or a woman or someone who isn't married, but you know, small steps and whatnot.

Some good things happened. Ohio, finally able to vote without the shackles of a corrupt Secretary of State slash Republican Campaign Chair, went for Obama. Go, Flan! Bizarro Indiana voted Democratic.

The deep south and the western plains states, the Ignorance Belt, stayed red, but even they showed signs of change. South Dakota voters said that yeah, maybe women should have the right to choose, and the other Dakota realized that people really should pay their taxes after all so that the government can pay to fix things. I'm not entirely clear on how they thought Republicans would do that, but progress is progress, right?

With the good came the bad, though. Schizoid California inexplicably voted for Obama but against equal rights. Florida, sans Harris, did the same. Arizona voted Republican and against equal rights, so kudos on their commitment to being assholes, I guess. I'd blame the heat, but New Mexico opened a can of 15-point-spread whoop ass on McCain. Have I ever mentioned that even the desert in New Mexico is beautiful, and that Arizona, much like Bruges, is a shithole? Consider it mentioned.

And even though we won a crushing victory in the electoral college, the popular vote was disturbingly close. After 8 years of the Party of Hoover trashing our international reputation, eroding our civil rights, pillaging our economy, and, oh yeah, getting us involved in a land war in Asia (twice!), there were still 57 million people who thought that we really needed another 4 years. Double you tee eff, mate? What is it going to take to convince these sheeple?

Still, I'll take whatever we can get. Half a cup of progress is better than none. Right?

Go, And Do Thou Likewise.

I voted.

Twenty Twenty Twenty-Four Hours To Go

Look, if you put up with this blog, you're probably already planning to vote, right? Bear with me anyway.

I live in Illinois. It is pretty solidly Democratic. I live in Urbana. It's an island of urban blue in a sea of downstate rural red. The state is going to go Democrat whether I vote or not. The county is going to go Democratic whether I vote or not. The city is going to go Demcratic whether I vote or not. But here's the deal... I'm going to be there first thing in the morning when the polls open, and I'm going to vote.

If there's one thing that I've learned from the time that I spent coaching, it's this: Sometimes you have to play well enough to beat the other team. Sometimes you have to play well enough to beat the ref.

Sometimes the ref is a petty little asshole. Sometimes the ref just isn't really paying attention. Sometimes the ref just sucks. On those days, you have to crush the other team so badly, put the score so far out of reach, that even the ref can't steal the game. He can only make so many bogus offside calls. He can call only so many phantom fouls. And yeah, if the other team are nice guys, it sucks to run the score up on them, but it also sucks to have some chump screw your team over, and our team's been screwed for the last 8 years.

That's all a little irrelevant anyway, because the Republicans aren't nice guys. They're dicks. Look, we both know that the Republicans are going to try to steal this, because it's the only way they can hold on to power, and because they're amoral lying scumbags, and because they don't give a shit about democracy, or the rule of law, or any of the other nice things they say to try and get votes from people who would know better if they ever paid attention. Luckily, there's a simple way to beat them.

Here's the ugly secret. It doesn't take great ideas. It doesn't take superior statesmanship. It doesn't take inspiring ideology. It doesn't even take filthy lucre. All it ever takes to win an election is for people on our side to get off their fucking couch and vote. Voter turnout rates in this country suck, but if their voter turnout sucks and ours doesn't, it's game over, man, and we win.

Let's deliver a victory so crushing that their next Katherine Harris never gets the opportunity to throw away our votes. Let's deliver a monster win in the popular vote so the Democrats know we're fed up with them bending over when the Republicans try to steal the election in the inbred redneck backwaters where this thing is still close.

Whether you think your vote is going to matter or not, get your ass out and vote for Obama, or don't bother speaking to me again.

Oh, and if you're in Cali, vote against Prop 8, because who they love is a stupid reason not to give someone equal rights.

Take Me Seriously!

I'm pretty and I have lots of money!

In a vain attempt to get us all to take her seriously, the Republicans have spent more than twice the average American family's income to give Sarah Palin a new look.

She's a one-woman economic stimulus package:

She dropped $75,000 in a single store in Minneapolis.

She spent almost $42,000 on a shopping spree in St. Louis.

She spent over 4 grand on hair "consulting", which makes the Republican's bitching about John Edwards's $400 haircuts look just a teensy bit hypocritical to those unfamiliar with the fact that the Republicans are, in point of fact, a huge steaming load of hypocritical.

She even dropped almost $5,000 at a guy's clothing store.

I'm sure that will come as a great relief to everyone currently crossing their fingers and hoping that the economy will stay afloat until the Party of Hoover gets unceremoniously kicked out of Washington so the Democrats can try to undo the damage those assclowns have managed to do in the last 8 years.

Whew... all that shopping's enough to wear a girl out.

Two Observations, A Suggestion, And A Pizza Place

First, let me just say that calling yourself a "maverick" is a lot like giving yourself a nickname; if you do it without irony, you're kind of a douche.

Second, I don't need to hear your opinion on nuclear weapons or nuclear power until you've done at least enough research to find out how to pronounce them.

And finally, if I may, what these debates need is a shot clock. As soon as a candidate strays off point, the clock starts, and if they don't get their ass back on topic before the buzzer goes off, the rest of their time is given to the other candidate. If you're not going to make them answer the questions, then we might as well just let them each read their list of talking points and then show an episode of Scooby Doo.


...but not one of the ones with Scrappy. I hate that little bastard.

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Net Profits

I read an interesting bit on the most recent Japanese financial crisis.

When their companies screwed up, instead of buying a portfolio of loans that might turn out to be worthless, the Japanese version of the Fed bought a portfolio of stock that might turn out to be worthless. See what they did there? Because selling stock is the way (Republicans and businessdrones should probably have learned this in Micro Econ 101, but apparently they were too busy joining a frat, doing kegstands, and crashing daddy's car...) businesses raise capital when they've screwed the pooch and would prefer not to close their doors and sell off their assets.

To make a long story short, the central bank got stock, the companies got their bailout money, and eventually many of them stopped sucking.

Then the government sold the no-longer-quite-so-worthless stocks and (and here's the bit that we may want to pay attention to) turned a profit on saving their economy. See how that works? They employed a pretty complicated economic theory, but I think I can explain it in words of one syllable: They bought low, and they sold high. Even a business major should be able to wrap his pointy little head around that.

Perhaps someone should explain this concept to the Party of Hoover^TM before they bankrupt our children by scooping up our tax money and making it rain for their country club buddies.

Even better? If the board continues to run their company as ineptly as it was when they got us into this mess (by, say, offering cut-rate adjustable mortgages to goldfish and soft toys), we can do something about it. Because the Fed owns stock in the company, it can vote to can their asses at the next shareholder's meeting. That's a lil performance incentive right there, yeah?

So we've already bailed out AIG. AIG is an insurance company, right? The way I see it, they owe us approximately $85 billion dollars worth of health insurance right about now. $85 billion ain't what it used to be before we let the Republicans run the economy for 8 years, but it still ought to pay a premium or two, right?

If we're laying out the quid, they'd better come up with some quo.

Postponing The Inevitable

Oldy McMoneybags would like to postpone the presidential debates, because the best way to resolve our financial woes is to not talk about them. He wants to have a big meeting about it instead, saying, "We must meet until this crisis is resolved."

Seriously? With the Party of Hoover^TM in charge of resolving their crisis, that's going to be one long-ass meeting.

Obama, on the other hand, says that he is still going to debate on Friday. I wonder if he's aware that a debate requires two people? Yes? Oh, well, I'm sure the dead air during McMoneybags's turns at the mike will be riveting television.

I Heard The News Today, Oh Shit.

"The government will spend billions of dollars to buy up bad loans from financial institutions so that they can begin making new loans."

The newscaster said it. He just didn't seem to understand that it was a bad idea.

I had a long post full of piss and vinegar, but not so much of the funny, so I deleted it. Instead you get this, also short on funny, but now with 73% less vitriol.

I just want a couple of things from this bailout deal.

1. I want heads to roll.

A plan which puts the same idiots who got us into this mess in charge of getting us out of this mess is a plan which has not been well thought out. Any financial institution that takes government bailout money should have to fire their upper management and the people who get canned should be done with their careers in this field. Maybe a job in the food service industry is more suited to their talents.

2. I did not make foolish decisions. I am not happy to be paying for people who did. I'd really prefer not to pay my mortgage and theirs.

At the very least, the government should only be left holding the bag for one loan per person. If you thought you were a real estate genius and took out a bunch of bad loans, you should be screwed, moron.

3. Instead of temporarily banning short selling, how about temporarily removing the protection for personal assets given by incorporation?

Run your business into the ground, lose your mansion. Seems fair to me. In fact, it seems a little bit like poetic justice. Perhaps a little incentive not to screw over the whole economy is in order, yes?

4. I blame HGTV.

It may be because I'm in the middle of a kitchen renovation which has taken considerably longer than half an hour, but I'd like to see HGTV take all of their stupid House Flipping Realty Envy shows off the air. They were still trying to lure people into buying real estate as a get rich quick scheme when it was clear to a chimp (No offense, Dr. von Monkerstein) that the bubble had burst. What dicks.

I'd also like to see each show's last episode be an hour long special where the cast and crew get repeatedly kicked in the junk by people who lost their homes to foreclosure, but that seems like the sort of thing that would be tough to legislate.

5. Arrrr!

Keelhaul the scurvy dogs.

Presidential, Vice

I take it all back.

Sarah Palin is totally ready to be president if Oldy McMoneybags should kick the bucket (as opposed to her role if Oldy McMoneybags kicks it old school, which is totally different and significantly less likely, but I digress).

She's got the ridiculous views on education.

She's got the requisite certainty coupled with complete ignorance that has become our foreign policy trademark.

She's destroyed a small town's economy.

And she's finally passed her final test, stonewalling an ethics investigation.

Bravo, Sarah, bravo.

Oh Wait, There Were Witnesses?

I know that I get biblical allusions and racial slurs mixed up all the time, so it seems to me like Emil Jones came up with a perfectly reasonable explanation for the lastest clusterfuffle. Right? That happens to other people? No? Hm. While we're on the subject of mythological fiction, I'm nearly positive that there's a relevant biblical quote for all of the Obama supporters who have been accusing Clinton supporters of racism, but I'm a recovering fundie (Hi, Mom!), so I can't recall. Something about motes and beams? Surely someone holier than I will remember.

What the hell, Emil? You're a state senator from Illinois. You've clawed your way to the top of the state senate... the Illinois state senate. Shouldn't you be better at this lying thing by now? "Doubting Thomas"? Really? That's the best you could come up with? What are you, some kind of amateur?

If any Obama supporters can hear me all the way up there on their high horse, they may want to listen carefully to the next four words.

Shut. The hell. Up.

Just button it for the next three months, and if we beat Oldy McMoneybags, then you can show us all what total asshats you are, and it'll all be coolies because, hey, we won and they're stuck with us for four years. Right now? Your behavior is costing us votes and last time I checked, the polls weren't looking so great. If you could avoid losing the election for us, that would be just spiffing. If you fuck things up for us now, we're only going to live in a free society with civil liberties and affordable health care if we can score at least 67 points.

Now don't get me wrong. There are plenty of assholes to go around in this sad story. At least the victim took the high road and... who am I kidding? She went straight to the Sun-Times and called Emil an Uncle Tom right back. Ah, very clever: the Rubber And Glue Defense. Only the You've Got Cooties Riposte could possibly defeat that. I'm so glad to see that we've raised the rhetoric in the great race debate to grade school playground level. More importantly, for those swing voters keeping track at home, we've clarified that you're an Uncle Tom whether you support a white sentator from New York (from Illinois) or a white governor from Illinois. So there's one thing that Obamacistas and Clintonistas can agree on, anyway: As long as you get along with white folk, you're an Uncle Tom. So maybe we can't solve our problems with race, but at least we're making excellent progress on the party unity thing. With any luck, maybe by November we can all go down together.

Maybe you didn't get the memo. You won the nomination. Golf claps all around. Mondale won the nomination. Dukakis won the nomination. Winning the nomination doesn't mean dick. You're still just one dopey tank ride away from being a footnote, and frankly, another rich old white guy becoming president? Not such a historic moment. All of the stuff you care about only happens if you win the general election. Perhaps you could focus on that.

Three months. That's all I'm asking. Get your shit together.

Same Old Story, Same Old Song And Dance

Remember when I brought up the Red Cross thing in connection with the Betancourt rescue and how they couldn't get their story straight and it all started falling apart right from the start? Remember when I said how completely improbable the Columbian government's version of events was?

It seems the Red Cross thought so too, and now they have the video evidence to prove it.

The video, which has now been shown on Columbian TV, showed that the Red Cross logo was being used before the operation had even begun. Dominik Stillhart, the Deputy Director of the International Committee of the Red Cross said, "If authenticated, these images would clearly establish an improper use of the Red Cross emblem, which we deplore." Hmm. Maybe we could get some clarification about the validity of the video from the Columbian response to it, Dom.

The Columbian government has responded like any grade school child caught in a lie. They have grudgingly apologized and vowed to get the person who ratted them out. After claiming that the President, the government, and the Chief of the Armed Forces had no idea that the use of the logo was part of their extensive careful planing for this mission when they lied about it just being one nervous guy, the Columbian Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos described the leak of the video as disloyal, corrupt, and treasonous, and promised that they would identify and punish the person responsible. Sounds like they think the video is real, Dom.

Santos also described Columbia as "the Fatherland", which gives you an idea where their heads are at.

Just to recap, the Columbian position is now that they carefully planned the mission all on their own with extensive help from the United States and totally still get all the credit for all the good stuff, and that their violation of the Geneva Convention was just the result of one nervous soldier disobeying following orders.

Oh, and that they are so sorry about all this that they are going to track down the person who proved it wasn't an accident and maybe charge them with treason a little.

Republicans Love A Good Hostage

So, another election cycle and another Republican getting involved in a hostage rescue. When we heard the news about the Columbian hostage rescue, those of us who were around during the Reagan years probably thought of Ronnie's negotiations to delay the release of the Iranian hostages until after he took office. But here they were in the thick of a story about ending a hostage situation instead of prolonging it. And they say that an old dog can't learn new tricks...

"What a coincidence," we thought, "an embattled Republican candidate in desperate need of some anti-terrorism news to prop up his campaign decides to take some time off from campaigning for a little Central American junket. The old coot probably just wanted a little sun, but what ho? He just happened to be in town when a daring mission rescued American hostages from terrorists. What a stroke of luck!"

Except, as it happens so often with the Republicans, their story started to unravel almost immediately. White House mouthpiece Dana Perino said he had no information about the raid beforehand, but someone forgot to tell McCain, because he was busy spreading the word of his briefing on the classified, top secret mission. Oops!

The State Department said that the US had nothing to do with the rescue, but had known it was in the works for months. The Pentagon said that the US was not involved. Then McCain and U.S. Ambassador William Brownfield spilled the beans and said that the Columbian operation had extensive help and "close cooperation" from the Americans. Shocker!

The Republicans knew for months, and they pulled their candidate from the campaign trail to put him on the ground in Columbia just in time for a hostage rescue that they helped pull off. This sounds not so much like a coincidence, no?

And now it comes out that the rescuers violated the Geneva Convention and have put Red Cross workers around the world at risk by dressing up as Red Cross workers. Their story now is that it was just one guy, and he was "contradicting official orders", but that story doesn't even pass the giggle test.

First, here's the thing about uniforms: they're uniform. It's right there in the name. If there's one guy wearing something different, he kinda stands out. Don't they have Sesame Street in Columbia? "One of these kids just doesn't belong." You're telling me that not one guy asked "Hey, Jorge, what's with the Red Cross, pendejo?" You can't even start a park district soccer game without someone checking to make sure everybody's wearing the right uniform, but during a highly-sensitive military operation the guy wearing a giant RED CROSS went completely undetected by everyone around him?

When you put a big red cross on your chest, you stand out. It's kind of the point. Wearing a "don't shoot me" sign only works when it's not discreet. If you can't see it from the other side of the battlefield, it's somewhat ineffective. Are we to believe that they couldn't see it from the other side of the helicopter?

Second, since when do you have to issue "official orders" to a military unit not to dress up as the Red Cross? That's a little odd, isn't it? By the way, don't dress up as the Power Rangers either. Saban has vicious trademark lawyers, dude. They'll fuck you up.

Congratulations. It's pretty difficult to come off as the douchebags when you're being compared to hostage takers, but you did it. Kudos.

Oh, and of course they managed to have a naked, blindfolded prisoner exposed to mixed company before the helicopter even touched down. What is the deal with right wingers and their fetish for naked dudes with blindfolds, anyway?

(administrivia)
My first and dearest fan Flan has graced me with an award that I really don't deserve. I need to find some more deserving bloggers to share the love and then I'll post it.
(/administrivia)

California Uber Alles

Thank you, thank you, thank you. San Francisco is officially made of awesome and win. If only they could name the contents after him instead of the plant, they would be dead on, but you take what you can get.

This is exactly the kind of voter from which we need to see more initiative.

Now get your ass out and vote.