News Roundup for 1/23/12

Sorry GOP. Not happening

-Headline of the Day-
"No GOP Cavalry Coming — It’s Too Late For Last Minute Presidential Candidates To Get On The Ballots."

Newt Gingrich's lopsided win in South Carolina has some Republicans nervous. Not helping any is the fact that polls show Newt actually winning Florida right now. All this has super-informed conservative pundits like Bill Kristol and Jennifer Rubin begging for some other Republican to jump into the race and save everyone from their party's awful candidates.

But reality has a message for them: you are screwed.

"In every primary state up through early April, the filing deadlines have passed," according to the report. "That includes the very delegate-rich Super Tuesday of March 6, when a total of 329 delegates will be at stake in primary states, compared to 104 in caucuses." Altogether, a new candidate would have to be able to win the nomination despite sitting out 21 primaries. This is unlikely.

The report goes on, "[F]or a Republican hero to ride in on a white horse, it would take a scenario that verges on political science fiction: A combination of write-in voting where applicable — and for Romney to fully drop out and endorse this new savior candidate, to essentially bequeath his place on the ballot by telling his pledged delegates elected in this manner to go along with it."

So you guys are just going to have to make do with what you've got. I'm sure that'll work out great for you guys. (Talking Points Memo)


-Newt on family values-



Say what you will, but he's got experience. (McClatchy)


-Bonus HotD-
"Tennessee Tea Party Don’t Want No Talk o’ Slavery In Them Schoolbooks."

Bravely fighting back against reality's liberal bias. (Wonkette)

News Roundup for 1/13/12

Sometimes pronounced "four"


-Headline of the Day-
"Rick Perry Lists 3 Departments He’d Cut, But Adds One, Misses Another."

OK, so Rick Perry wants eliminate the departments of commerce, interior, and energy... or is it commerce, education, and energy?

Something like that anyway. All you need to know is that Rick Perry wants to eliminate federal agencies. Three to be specific and which three being too specific.

Referring back to Rick Perry's "Oops" moment at a Republican debate, an interviewer asked him which agencies he'd cut. Should be easy enough. The mistake that marked the beginning of his campaign's tailspin is not likely to be one repeated.

Or so you'd believe. "Three right off the bat, you know, commerce, interior and energy are three that you think," Rick answered.

And Rick answered wrong. On the campaign trail, he's been talking about eliminating the department of education, because -- let's face -- he's living proof that being dumber than a sack of doorknobs is no impediment to fabulous wealth, fame, and success.

What he hasn't been doing is saying word one about the Department of the Interior.

The interviewer caught the slip and asked him if he'd eliminate the Department of Education as well. Darn tootin', Rick said. Then the stupid continued. "They are blackmailing states with our own money, basically saying here is the national test, and here are the national standards you’re going to put into place, "One size fits all doesn’t work. Well maybe it does in gym socks but it sure doesn’t in how we educate our children."

Maybe, maybe not. But you want to take that up with President Bush and the bipartisan group of dim bulbs who passed No Child Left Behind. The Department of Education is doing this stuff because the last Texas Governor to be president made them do this stuff. You can repeal it and they'll stop doing it. You don't have to blow up the waterworks to turn off a faucet, you know.

But whatever. What's important to remember is that the list of agencies Rick Perry would cut grows every time someone asks him; mostly because he can't keep them squared in his mind and when he screws up, his line is "Oh yeah, that one too." (ABC News)


-Cartoon time with Mark Fiore-
Hey kids, the National Defense Authorization Act means that everyone's safe from terr'ists forever. Yay!


Click for animation

Whether you're safe from your government is another question entirely. (MarkFiore.com)


-Bonus HotD-
"Romney's Rhetoric On Jobs Record At Bain Devolves."

First Mittens claimed 100,000 jobs had been created by Bain. No one bought that. Then it was "tens of thousands." No one bought that either. Now it's just "thousands."

By this time next week, it'll probably be "me and this other guy."

Don't believe it. (Talking Points Memo, with video)

News Roundup for 12/13/11

Hitting a new Lowe

-Headline of the Day-
"Protests growing against Lowe's."

All Lowe's wants to do is sell you a hammer. Maybe some bathroom tiles. If they're lucky, some big saw thing. So it was that the home improvement chain sought what it thought was the path of least resistance when it came to wingnut bigots concerned that a TV shows wasn't portraying American Muslims as terr'isty enough. Turns out TLC's All-American Muslim managed to find a family that wasn't building bombs in their basement and this was the worst thing ever! One guy even suggested they find a family that does engage in terrorism and film that, because committing crimes against America is apparently cool with him so long as it makes Muslims look bad on the teevee.

So all these people got together and decided they needed to complain to the advertisers of the show. And that's when things got stupid. Lowe's, apparently headed by people born without spines, decided that they wouldn't advertise on a show that was controversial. They said they were sad that they'd made "some people very unhappy," but this was the way things were going to be.

But here's the problem with avoiding controversy: you can't. It's pretty much impossible -- especially when the people ginning up the controversy are a bunch of bigoted assholes who hate a show because it doesn't lie about an entire American demographic. In running away from a tiny controversy, they ran headlong into a giant one. That's the sort of brilliant business sense that we've come to expect from corporate America.

Anyhoo, now Lowe's is in trouble with the not-bigot people, which is just about everyone (I know, we've been over this all before, but some people are just tuning in). They've got MoveOn and a Democratic senator on their case, as well as people like me. It's just really, really bad.

So, the lesson here is that if you run a business and a bunch of customers tell you to start hating another bunch of customers, chase them off with a broomstick. Pronto. (Politico)


-An apt analogy-


Click to embiggen

Works for me. (DailyKos)


-Bonus HotD-
"Axelrod Plays The Monkey Butt Card On Newt Gingrich."

David Axelrod: "I told my colleagues yesterday a bit of homespun wisdom I got from an alderman in Chicago some years ago when one of his colleagues wanted to run for higher office and he was really dubious. He said, 'just remember the higher a monkey climbs on a pole, the more you can see his butt.' So, you know, [Newt Gingrich] is very high on the pole right now and we’ll see how people like the view." (Talking Points Memo)

News Roundup for 11/8/11

Rush Limbaugh's "Date Night" van

-Headline of the Day-
"Limbaugh On Cain Accusations: Political Correctness 'Has Now Spread To Behavior — Not Just Speech.'"

Rush Limbaugh has had it up to here with all this PC crap! Not only can't you say whatever you want without some liberal or minority or lady getting offended, now you can't even do whatever you want -- it's an outrage!

"Political correctness, which is censorship, has now spread to behavior -- not just speech," Rush told his audience of bobblehead dolls today. "It's spread to behavior." He then went on to pine for the good old days, when you could refer to women as "broads" and everyone was cool with it.

"I tell you, you women, why don’t you just make it official, put on some burqas?" he said, wrapping it all up in a neat bow of crazy. "And I’ll guaran-damn-tee you nobody’ll touch you. You put on a burqa, and everybody’ll leave you alone, if that’s what you want."

Of course, Herman Cain's problem isn't that it's politically incorrect to fondle an unwilling woman and pull her head down to your crotch -- it's pretty much legally incorrect. Cain's lucky he didn't walk away in handcuffs that day -- and not in a fun way.

But still, wouldn't it be better to live in Rush's world, where you can sexually assault any random person and have "Oh, don't be so PC!" as a perfectly legitimate defense?

Why, nowadays you can't roam around, doing whatever the fuck you want to whomever the fuck you want. It's like there's no anarchy anymore!

And is that really what the founders intended? (Talking Points Memo, with video)


-Herman Cain explains-


Click for full comic

That ought to clear everything up. (GoComics)


-Bonus HotD-
"Gazillionaire Mitt Romney Whines Gov’t Employees Earn More Than He Does."

No, really. (Wonkette, with video)

News Roundup for 9/16/11

Rupert Murdoch

-Headline of the Day-
"News Corp. Ex-Employee Said Contacted in U.S."

Crikey! Things may get very bad for a certain Australian gazillionaire very quickly -- or, as they say down under, "Rupert Murdoch could find himself in a tin of Alice's biscuits right spot Roger Winkly." Something like that anyway.

It seems the feds would like to have a word with "a former [News Corp.] employee of a U.S. unit who claims knowledge of illegal activity at the company." The said former employee, one Robert Emmel, a former account director at News America Marketing In-Store LLC, has firsthand knowledge of "hacking and possible violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act."

A News Corp. spokesperson is blowing this off as trivial, but keep in mind that distortion is what News Corp. employees do. (Bloomberg)


-Mad Tea Party-
The Tea Party came to shake this up in Washington!


Click to embiggen

Boy, did they ever... (McClatchy)


-Bonus HotD-
"Perry's Problem: Move To The Right On Social Security, Move To The Bottom In The General Election."

Rick Perry's numbers have been dropping like a stone since his Social Security views started getting coverage.

Seems people like socialism a lot more than Republicans think. (Talking Points Memo)

News Roundup for 9/2/11

Worker in a Republican Utopia

-Headline of the Day-
"Regulations, taxes aren't killing small business, owners say."

One thing you can count on with Republicans is that they're guaranteed to get supply and demand bass-ackwards and wrong, every time. Let me explain the modern conservative economic model for you and you'll see what I mean.

First, you give businesses tax cuts and gut regulations. If you do this, regardless of demand, businesses will hire people, because that's what business are for -- hiring people. It's a liberal myth that people start businesses to make money. They do it to become the lofty and selfless "job creator." Every time you've got a little extra money, you go out and hire another worker.

If demand is low, this means that businesses will hire people to do jobs that no one needs done. They'll lean on brooms or watch monkeys on YouTube or something for a while, because small businesses are charities and they're cool with that. After a while, everyone's drawing a paycheck for YouTube monkey viewing, they start spending that money, and -- voila! -- you've got demand. Now all these workers have something to do. No more YouTube monkeys and capitalism is saved!

Strangely enough, the world doesn't work anything like that at all. Businesses seem to believe they're in the business of making money, not jobs, and stubbornly refuse to hire workers when they don't need workers. You can cut taxes and strip regulations all you want, but if the demand for the goods or services isn't there, then they're not going to hire anybody. I think maybe because they're commies or something.

So McClatchy newspapers went out to verify the obvious. They contacted small business owners to get their take on taxes and regulations. "Their response was surprising," they report. "None of the business owners complained about regulation in their particular industries, and most seemed to welcome it. Some pointed to the lack of regulation in mortgage lending as a principal cause of the financial crisis that brought about the Great Recession of 2007-09 and its grim aftermath.".

There you have it, the American jobs crisis is the fault of small business owners -- because they refuse to put their heads in the clouds with Republicans, like decent Americans should. (McClatchy)


-Cartoon time with Mark Fiore-
Hey kids, Thursdays are usually cartoon day, but Uncle Mark was sick or one vacation or something and it was this whole big thing...

Anyway, Xeth is filling in and he's got a cartoon called:


Click for animation

And rocket packs. We were supposed to have rocket packs. The Jetsons was just a horrible lie. (MarkFiore.com)


-Bonus HotD-
"Palin to Rip 'Crony Capitalism' in Iowa Speech."

Wait, what? (RealClearPolitics)

News Roundup for 8/26/11

Our political press

-Headline of the Day-
"Why Political Coverage is Broken"

If you've read more than one post I've written, you probably get the impression that I'm of the opinion that our news media sucks. But there's a reason for that; our news media sucks.

Press critic Jay Rosen has a good idea as to why: reporters try to pretend they have the inside scoop all the time, by pretending they're actually part of the stories they're covering.

And you've seen this yourself; reporters spend one hell of a lot more time talking about campaigning than they do about issues. And if the subject isn't elections, they spend more time on the palace intrigue of getting legislation passed than they do on what the legislation actually does. And then, after the bill passes or doesn't pass, the first question they ask isn't, "What does this mean for Americans?" No, it's, "What does this mean for Democrats/Republicans/President Obama?"

Result, straight up suckage on a massive scale and glossing over the important meat to concentrate on the minor details.

But that's not the big problem. By pretending to be political insiders, reporters fool news consumers into theink they're insiders too -- to become "cognoscenti of their own bamboozlement," which is the most awesome phrase I've read all day. In other words, it makes it awfully easy for politicians to play the media by pretending to provide the "inside scoop." As a result, the media basically reports on what amounts to advertising, not substance. And then reporters go off and report what's the message and how the message is being put out and what the message means to whom and who's polling the message... Who should really even give a fuck? What's in the damned bill or what does the candidate stand for!?!

"In campaign coverage, nothing is more common than a good lesson in candidate strategy: how Mitt Romney plans to capture the nomination by skipping the Iowa caucuses," Rosen says. "That's what fascinates the pros, the insiders. But think about it for moment: should we give our votes to the candidate with the best strategy for capturing our votes?"

Because you should, that's why. Now shut up and eat your fluff. You're a super-savvy political insider now! (PressThink)


-Fashion forward-
Moammar Q or K or G or whatever was always a leader in dictatorial fashions. What's he wearing these days?


Click to embiggen
Best I've seen him looking in years. (TruthDig)


-Bonus HotD-
"International Law Expert Chuck Norris Is (Shockingly) Wrong About UN Arms Treaty."

You know, if wingnuts stopped freaking out about things that aren't actually happening, they'd find themselves with one helluva lot of time on their hands. (Talking Points Memo)

News Roundup for 8/17/11

Just your normal teabagger

-Headline of the Day-
"Manhunt On For Ex-Marine Oathkeeper Accused Of Rape."

You know those rightwing extremists that it's silly to worry about? Yeah, one of them is on the run in Oklahoma, likely armed and dangerous, after not showing up to court on "one charge of possessing an unregistered grenade launcher that was registered as stolen from a military base in California, and one charge of raping a minor."

Former Marine and current militia-type Charles Dyer is a crazy SOB and believes that the whole thing is a government conspiracy to put him away. So he plans to go out with guns blazing. "I have been pushed to the limits multiple times by law enforcement and the judicial system in an attempt to cause me to take violent action against them," he said in an email sent to his attorney. "If I do, I know I will be the monster they depict me as."

Yeah, we totally shouldn't worry about guys like this. Did I mention he was a member of the Tea Party?

At least he's not a union thug. Those are the people we have to worry about. Right? (Talking Points Memo, with video)


-Man of the people-
Mittens explains that corporations are people.


Click to embiggen

And it's true. (McClatchy)


-Bonus HotD-
"Santorum: 'Huge Moral Failings' Are The 'Root Cause' Of Our Economic Problems."

Translation: the economy sucks because gay people and abortion exist. (ThinkProgress)

News Roundup for 8/4/11

History's greatest educator

-Headline of the Day-
"How Bush Killed Bin Laden: What’s Really In Huckabee’s 9/11 Cartoon."

Mike Huckabee is a man who thinks of the children. And so it only makes sense that he puts out cartoons that help the little tykes understand history. In one video, kids learn how Ronald Reagan saved America from black thugs in t-shirts that said "DISCO" on them and Franklin D. Roosevelt wasn't around to fight WWII. You know, real accurate stuff.

And so it is with 9/11 and terrorism. In case you've forgotten, the story goes like this: a bunch of Muslims attacked America, because they hate our freedom and because they were Muslims. Then George W. Bush yelled at them with a bullhorn and gave birth to the PATRIOT Act atop the pile of rubble. Liberals, of course, hated the whole idea because they like terrorists and don't like to make people mad, so they just wanted to forget 9/11 ever happened.

But not George W. Bush! He did a bunch of intelligence stuff and some stuff happened for a while that no one really needs to know all that much about and then, lo and behold, Osama bin Laden was dead! Yay for Bush!

Thank God we have Mike Huckabee to set the record straight. (Talking Points Memo)


-Cartoon time with Mark Fiore-
Hey kids, with all the fightin' and feudin' and fussin', wouldn't a little "bipartisanship" be nice? Well, we're going to find out how bipartisanship in Washington works Yay!


Click for animation

Remember, bipartisanship means never having to say you're sorry for breaking someone's kneecaps with tire iron. (MarkFiore.com)


-Bonus HotD-
"Obama Turns 50 Despite Republican Opposition."

Onion headlines are often amazingly accurate. (The Onion)

News Roundup for 8/3/11

Mamma Santorum's special homemade jelly

-Headline of the Day-
"Santorum To Give Out Free Jelly At Ames."

Religious nutbag Rick Santorum plans to play up his downhome folksiness to midwesterners by handing out jelly to Iowans. This strikes me as unwise.

See, Rick's already got a bit of a google problem. If you google up "Santorum," less than family-friendly results come up.

Given the nature of those results and the existence of a certain kind of special jelly that sounds like it's named after Kentucky, one would think that Rick would avoid attaching his name to "jelly" in the google machine. Seriously, it just seems to be going in the entirely wrong direction.

Given this development, I feel confident in making a brash and bold prediction: Rick Santorum will never be president. And he was so close, too. (Talking Points Memo)


-But don't compare them to terrorists!-



Click to embiggen

(Sherffius)


-Bonus HotD-
"O'Reilly Blames Women's Health Care 'Breast Feeding Stuff' For High Unemployment."

It doesn't have to make sense, it's Bill O'Reilly. (ThinkProgress)

News Roundup for 6/6/11

Fighting the scourge of Obamacare

-Headline of the day-
"Santorum: D-Day Troops Fought For Health Care Freedom."

Rick Santorum officially announced that he'd be running for president today. Speaking at a rally in Pennsylvania -- where at least one attendee passed out from all the excitement -- Rick said that Obama is basically Mussolini and that soldiers in WWII fought to defend Paul Ryan's Medicare-slaying.

"Average Americans. The very Americans that our government now, and this president, does not trust a to make decision on your health care plan," Santorum said. "Those Americans risked everything so they could make that decision on their health care plan."

That's right, WWII was a battle over big government healthcare -- which I guess Hitler was for. And then all those vets came home and found themselves covered under the big gummint GI Bill and the Veterans Administration.

It must've been a bitter, bitter pill to swallow. (Talking Points Memo)


-Patrioticker than you!-
Republicans love America...


Click to embiggen

...it's just that "democracy" thing they've got a problem with. (McClatchy)


-Bonus HotD-
"Andrew Breitbart of Big Government Hijacks Anthony Weiner Press Conference."

What a tremendous ego this dick has, huh? (Village Voice)

News Roundup for 6/2/11

Casus belli

-Headline of the day-
"'Sovereign Citizen' Opens Fire On Store Because It Ran Out Of Crawfish."

'Sovereign citizens' are crazy people -- generally gun nuts and militia types. More specifically, they belong to some sort of legal cult that maintains that government has no legal right to... well... govern. Further, they believe that everyone is their own damned country and that this whole crazy-assed idea will hold up in court -- which it doesn't.

Anyway, the nation of Larry Wayne Kelly went to war with the nation of the L&T Seafood Market -- using the Powell Doctrine of overwhelming force -- when said seafood market turned out to be out of crawfish. According to the report, Kelly called the market to order some crawdads "and became 'incredibly irate' when an employee said the store didn't have any." He kept calling and they kept being out and this was just the worst thing ever. "Employees found 11 bullet holes in the front of the store the next morning."

So the cops went after Kelly, who tried to hit them with his car, and finally busted him. "Kelly told law enforcement that he is a sovereign citizen..." the report goes on, "and that he doesn't have to follow the law."

Police informed him that he was mistaken.

"If you don't have crawfish, you can get crab or something else," store owner Tommy Nguyen said. "Why is crawfish so important?"

You'd have to ask the nation of Larry Wayne Kelly that -- and his embassy seems to be closed. (Talking Points Memo)


-Cartoon time with Mark Fiore-
Hey kids, meet Snuggly the Security Bear. He's here to talk to us about the PATRIOT Act and robots! Yay!


Click for animation

OK, so where do I get my hands on some anti-matter? (MarkFiore.com)

-Bonus HotD-
"Ohio GOP House Speaker's Twitter account hacked."

Don't get too excited, no weiner photos were tweeted. (Raw Story)