what is the lesson here?

It's that everything they run on that godforsaken propaganda network is a lie. Every. Single. Thing.

random wonderments, 03 august 2012

• I wish him all the best, and wish his family maybe to buy some decent safety goggles or something?


• We're all wondering the same thing.


• Well, there was that one time when he dressed up like a condom...

• The upside of climate change, I guess? Nothing could possibly go wrong there.


• Forget VP; Get this guy on the Supreme Court, ASAP!


• Still better than the Bush endorsement.

i vaguely remember reading something about an eye, and a beam being in it, and another eye...well, whatever; i'm sure it wasn't important

Now that McCarthyite (No, wait! McCarthy was a Patriot! Must keep wingnut memes straight!) noted communist infiltrator and pederast Harry Reid has had the temerity to suggest that Mitt "Mitt" Romney's refusal to release his tax returns stems from the possibility that he didn't have to pay any taxes despite his obscene wealth, wingnuts the world over are OUTRAGED at this baseless attack against a political figure without any evidence to back it up. I thought, in the spirit of comprehensively tackling the problem of unsubstantiated allegation being treated as serious accusation when leveled against those seeking high office, I would helpfully list several other instances of exactly the same sort of thing that have been foisted upon the public over the last couple of decades. Unfortunately it's not comprehensive, but at least it gets us started:

• Bill Clinton ran coke through Mena Airport
• The Clinton Body Count
• Hillary Clinton had a lesbian affair with a Russian spy
• Hillary Clinton's lesbian lover is a terrorist agent of the Muslim Brotherhood
• Lesbian (?) Hillary Clinton had her lover Vince Foster murdered, also because he knew too much about the Clintons' super-illegal land dealings and also too crime of passion something something
• Pardongate
• Whitewater
• Wampumgate
• Travelgate
• Filegate
• John Kerry shot himself for a Purple Heart
• Swiftboating
• Climate change is all a giant conspiracy to something something RICH SCIENTISTS AND DEATH TO AMERICA
• Iraq was behind 9/11
• Iraq had WMD
• Birtherism
• Obama is a Muslim (or possibly the Antichrist!)
• Obama is a gay coke addict
• Eric Holder sold guns to Mexican drug cartels in order to increase support for gun control
• Obama supports reparations
• Obama won't release his transcripts because they prove he's a foreigner/he's stupid/he did gun-running for Muslim terrorists/he's a commie/whatever

None of this is to say that what Reid is doing is necessarily right, or good, just that, hey, this is the way politics is done nowadays and it's the people complaining loudest about Reid who are the ones who created this environment. The expectation that Democrats should be better than this even though Republicans are not, or that Democrats should unilaterally concede the "making shit up" ground to Republicans no matter how effective it proves to be, is naive at best, and comically ludicrous when it spews forth from the crowd that lies with impunity about every Democrat under the sun in order to score political advantage.



P.S. And, yeah, zOMG EVEN THE LIBERAL JON STEWART SAYS REID IS AN ASSHOLE! This is particularly not relevant for several reasons:

• Who gives a shit?
• Jon Stewart isn't particularly liberal.
• He ended that particular bit with a long look at all the whackaloon lies that have been invented whole-cloth by just one show on one right-wing TV network, but onward Fox goes without any concern over Jon Stewart's disapproval.

The only thing of note from Stewart's segment is the hypocrisy it takes for the right to suddenly pretend that they A) care what Jon Stewart has to say and B) are offended at unsubstantiated accusations being tossed at political figures.

How the stupid gets mainstreamed

Fucking actuarial tables, how do they work?

They include gradually raising the retirement age to compensate for the fact that we now live, on average, 14 years longer than when F.D.R. signed Social Security into law.

Look, I don't expect Alan Simpson to understand this stuff; he's a pissed-off old dude who would be shouting at people for stepping over the line on the shuffleboard court if Obama hadn't stupidly plucked him out of retirement to give him another crack at fucking the country over. Plus, before he lost his mind to age he was a senator, which is a job that anybody with half a functioning brain is disqualified from getting. But Bill Keller until recently was executive editor of the New York Fucking Times and is actually believed by his readers to be able to tell the difference between his ass and a hole in the ground. And so I'd love to know how it's possible that Bill Keller doesn't realize that "life expectancy at birth" is the wrong statistic for this particular argument, and that the correct statistic, "life expectancy at age 65," shows that the increase he's talking about is roughly half of what he says it is.


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well the jerk store called, and they're out of you!

Completely predictable, but funny nonetheless.

i'm not that dumb, am i?

Why is it that the broadcasters at any event like a royal wedding, major funeral, or Olympic opening ceremonies feel like they have to explain everything for us like we're idiots? "That was JK Rowling, who is famous for having written the blockbuster 'Harry Potter' series of young adult books, which have sold millions of copies worldwide. Books are collections of words and possibly pictures printed on paper and bound together in order to be read. Words, you may know, are combinations of sounds intended to convey thoughts and concepts in verbal communication, and typically recorded in written form as several strings of letters." I'm only making part of that up. Am I wrong, do we need this stuff explained like this?

Update: Also, too. They really do think we're that dumb.

let me try something...

Other countries that aren't America are stupid. People who live in countries that aren't America are stupid and probably not even real people. The Olympics are stupid because we have to pretend that countries that aren't America are not stupid, and act like we like them when we should probably be doing War on them. The Opening Ceremonies of the stupid Olympics are stupid because the people who are in them are not Americans and probably not really people, but here they are doing some stupid not American dance when meanwhile they should be dead because we did War on their stupid not American countries.

Mr. Hiatt, I can has job please?

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