Weirdocracy

Updates most recent post at bottom. Refresh your own damn browser; we don’t know that kind of HTML

7:36 – Tuning in real early just to make sure this thing is streaming somewhere on the internet (It’s on FOX; is there some way to let Google know that we’re watching only for satirical purposes?) and we are treated to the lovely Harris Faulker introducing herself and being promptly cut off by a title card (“FOX NEWS LIVE“) and some rippin’ drum and bass, which is in turn interrupted by chatter on the topic of how doomed is Obama? We’ll open a 40 and wait for the fireworks (9 PM ETOMFUG).

8:07 – The current pre-debate topic is Sesame Street. It is “funny” “irreverent” and “educational” says the Talking Man. Let’s hope the debate they’re supposed to be talking about rises to the same high standards.

8:27 – The LIVE broadcast has moved to a BREAKING NEWS item: the Homeland Security surveillance state may erode privacy!? Seriously, this is now BREAKING NEWS because Obama is doing it. (and make no mistake: Obama is doing it.)

8:32 – Allow us to document an innocuous FOX NEWS lie: they’re recycling recorded segments on a LIVE webcast. Seriously, it says LIVE in three different places. At least now we know what’s coming.

8:50 – Some fine FOX News miseducation: Some Troll says that government can’t create jobs. His argument follows thus: only the profit motive creates jobs. Government help is not needed. In fact it hurts and businesses are saying “Stop trying to help us, let us create jobs.” This is actually a fair summary of his point. Do you follow? The profit motive doesn’t apply if the money was spent on repairing a bridge. That money is poison, and construction workers get cancer from it, and then Wal-mart and Red Lobster get cancer and then America is over.

9:01 – A surprisingly understated introduction. Perry is introduced first and gets the biggest cheer. PREDICTION: he “wins.”

9:02 – The obligatory social media / Googleocracy boilerplate. This debate is unique because of you. It’s a beautiful snowflake.

9:04 – First question to Perry, a softball about getting gov’t off the backs of small business men and women. Have you ever seen a small business man? He is practically squashed under the heel of the Politburo. DO YOU HAVE A JOBS PLAN, MR. PERRY? You’ll see it soon enough, he smarms.

9:06 – Haha, mic problem for Romney on his opening response to the jobs question. This thing on? Ha… he recovers well, obviously he has had a looong time to study this “economy” thing.

9:09 – It is so hard to pay attention to Michele Bachmann when she is talking. Quite a tepid response to her rote answer about Obama bad, Privatsecorgood. They used to love her…

9:11 – Newt, would you extend unemployment benefits? NEWT: I will talk about something else, business training, best workforce in the world, laziness is the problem.

9:13 – Whosthis, oh Huntsman, you said you’d give subsidies to natural gas companies. How is that different from the President’s subsidies which are awful? HUNTSMAN: I will say this thing I rehearsed while I think of an answer to your question, and run over time. Did anyone catch that?

9:15 – The “Time’s up” jingle is the incoming message sound from gchat. Think about how annoying that might be for someone with gchat open. Meanwhile everyone knows about – and loves – Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 plan. Something about “That dog won’t hunt.” and small bizzesmen.

9:18 – Ron Paul gets a question, we missed it. Veto it, is his answer. But we knew that.

9:20 – Is it OK to say that Gary Johnson sounds a little bit gay? Anyway he just proposed a consumption tax. Holy crap, that sounds smart and European!

9:22 – And break. On TV they’re probably pimping Goldline. On the live stream, it’s Filler Time! Someone thinks Ron Paul won something. The Data says Republicans watching at home LOVED what he just said. Then they’ll jeer him for suggesting that our policy of barely-discriminate bombing in the browner corners of the world is bad diplomacy.

9:25 – That break was way too short. A creepy message from Fla. Gov. Rick Scott. He starts off sounding normal but then some kind of weird, word-swallowing speech impediment kicks in and everyone listening is like “this guy is a frikkin governor?”

9:27 – My Man Perry, you’ve been taking criticism for your brilliant plan of turning over Social Security to the states. Want to respond to that? RICK: I never said that.

9:28 – Mitt, did he? MITT: Yeah he did! Ha, actually a funny joke: “Rick, there’s apparently some guy named Rick Perry out there writing books that say it’s unconstitutional, and a terrible festering sore on America’s anus. You better find that guy an tell him to stop.” This is close enough to what was actually said to appear in quotes.

9:29 – Some back and forth between them, Romney comes out slightly better.

9:32 – Everyone likes Obama’s idea to raise taxes on millionaires. Would you do what is overwhelmingly, democratically popular? It’s.. Huntsman? with the answer, and it’s NOPE.

9:35 – Gingrich is talking about “Warshington,” we’re getting a snack.

9:39 – SANTORUM: Public education kidnaps your children and renders parents helpless to educate them. Nothing from him about the Gay Menace to this point.

9:41 – All the candidates have come out against education. When it’s Perry’s turn, he tries to stick it to Romney, again, saying that he’s fully in bed and making out with Obama’s education policy. Romney dismisses this with a “Nice try” and an “I have no idea what this walking wig is talking about.”

9:43 – BACHMANN: “I would turn out the lights and lock the door.” That’s all we got. Well, that’s not all we got…

9:47 – E-verify? What? This is an issue in the race? What the heck is this?

9:51 – Romney mercilessly eats Perry’s lunch over discount tuition to University of Texas for the children of illegal aliens.

9:52 – Perry responds with the thoughtful, compassionate point that these kids didn’t ask to be brought here and have a right to education. Audience response: light applause with a strong rip tide of BOOOO!

9:55 – We loved when Ron Paul suggested that a border fence might one day be used to keep us IN. He’s standing behind it now and the audience is responding.

9:57 – When does this END?

10:02 – The Google Brain says we are thinking about Google Israel. How would the candidates destroy the greater Middle East?

10:03 – ROMNEY: Obama apologized when he should have pissed on their sandals. And he pissed on their sandals when he should have gotten on his knees and fellated the Hell Turd, “Bibi” Netanyahu.

10:05 – Cain, my brother, the Palestinians are moving to declare statehood in the UN. How would you handle that? CAIN: Huh? Israel is our bro.

10:06 – The much-diminished Perry, what would you do if Pakistan lost control of its nukes? PERRY: We need allies in the region and we don’t or do have them… is anyone following this? Nobody claps. Wow, he’s really flailing here.

10:10 – American Googleman Butch Russell (sp?) wants to know when we’re gonna stop spending all this dang money on other countries? EVERYONE: ALWAYS, YESTERDAY.

10:12 – Michele wants to weigh in. Can she weigh in? “We can never have flights to Cuba” because they are a state sponsor of terrorism. Thanks for clearing that up, Michele.

10:13 – This thing can’t be 2 hours, can it?

10:14 – SANTORUM: We are not killing enough people in “Afghanistahn”.

10:16 – A gay soldier asks a question about progress in the military and is booed. Santorum has a secret orgasm.

10:20 – RON PAUL: The States will solve abortion. Everyone loves it.

10:24 – Do we really have to pay attention while everyone vomits the same stale nonsense about “Obamacare”? Obamacare would have killed Herman Cain. Obamacare is Lawrence Brewer and we must execute it.

10:26 – Michele, dear, you said something really irresponsible about vaccinations. Are you ashamed? BACHMANN: I don’t know anything about that, but I do know that Rick Perry violates little girls.

10:28 – Rick, is that true? PERRY: Sort of, but look, I rehearsed a really compassionate answer to this and I erred on the side of life. A few real ugly boos under general applause.

10:32 – Romney and Perry try to out-smack one another. It’s getting fairly nasty. Romney makes a solid, semi-meta point: “There are a lot of reasons not to elect me. There are a lot of reasons not to elect all the people on this stage.” This comes off as honest. Romney wins. Now we presume the candidates are on a pee break.

10:37 – And we’re back. Mayor Bloomberg gets a shout-out. He thinks we’re not far from the proletarian cogs busting their shackles. How are you going to stop this?

10:39 – An extended hill metaphor from Cain. We will again be Kings of the Hill. That show was pretty ok. Watchable at least.

10:40 – BACHMANN: Repeal Obamacare is the answer.

10:42 – The consensus, by applause, on how to fix the economy, defeat Obama, repeal Obamacare, Reagan.

10:44 – Gary Johnson gets the biggest laugh of the night with “My next door neighbor’s dog has created more shovel-ready jobs than this president.” Gary Johnson should MOVE.

10:48 – WILD CARD: Who would you pick as your VP? Cute. Gary Johnson picks Ron Paul because the little guy is so adorable. Santorum picks Gingrich. Newt doesn’t know. Paul doesn’t know. Perry wants Newt Gingrich and Herman Cain to join physically. Romney, on fire, riffs on how revolting that would be and says “anyone” on the stage would be able to fill the role and be better than Obama. But Mitt, you hate Perry? ROMNEY: Obama is even lamer. Michele forgot the question. CAIN: I’ll go with Romney if he does what I tell him, or Gingrich because he’s so smart. Huntsman gives a surprisingly human answer (he is Pawlenty’s replacement droid) and picks Cain.

DEBATE OVER! Romney won. Perry looked like an amateur. We’ll watch the polls to see if anyone watched the debate.

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It is all becoming clear. Mitt Romney is currently the only serious Republican candidate for president. Everyone else is either deluded, running mostly to raise their national profiles, or an immortal troll who feeds on human sadness. Mitt Romney alone unites these qualities, and he has the best hair:

What else did we learn from this debate?

Michele Bachmann is really good at remembering quotes.

Newt Gingrich knows quotes too, but his preferred strategy is to simply imply that great figures in history have supported his position, alluding to Washington, Eisenhower, and Lincoln in explaining why the US shouldn’t be protecting Libyan cities from being leveled from the air.

Tim Pawlenty likes Coke. People laughed after he said this, and indeed it was the most engaging and humanizing facet of his personality revealed thus far.

Rick Santorum used to be a Senator.

Herman Cain wants to get to the root of the problem and solve it with a generic, folksy talking point. He loves the Constitution, but he sorta doesn’t trust Muslims. (Gingrich went on to imply a direct equivalence between Muslims, Nazis, and Communists. Never forget.)

Muslim-bashing consistently drew applause. Fun times in America!

Ron Paul is still Ron Paul, your favorite wacky sage, speaking in a language only the free can truly understand. Tonight, he did concede that the government should protect personal property from being seized by the government. Presumably everything else should be auctioned off.

TPM for the YouTubage; Wonkette for the wax bust of Romney

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A no-bullshit genius master stroke of narrative-shaping by the president and whoever else dreams this stuff up. Follow the timeline:

April 22–Obama’s lawyer asks Loretta J. Fuddy, who is in charge of these things, to please send over (pdf) the president’s birth certificate, the only proof we have that he is black.

April 25–Fuddy complies.

April 27–The birth certificate is posted on the White House website.

May 1–Obama announces the death of Osama bin Laden after a successful mission ten years (god, has it been that long?) in the making:

Here, Obama tips his hand. He specifically states that the CIA brought this lead to his attention in August, and says that “Last week, I determined that we had enough intelligence to take action.”

Specifically, Obama authorized the raid Friday morning. But to get to the point of authorizing action, there must be detailed plans–you have to decide what you’re going to do, then you have to practice it so you don’t crash your helicopter (which they did anyway, why can’t they figure out how not to crash their helicopters?)

So, they must have known bin Laden’s whereabouts for some time before it was possible for Obama to give the final go-ahead to actually do the real Hollywood shit. I hope whomever thought of stoking the birther lunacy right before this ultimate money shot got the fellatio he or she deserves.

TPM

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The things Barack Obama does and says usually make sense, even if they are wrong.  Not so today, when he weirdly declared that “We don’t have a stronger friend and stronger ally than Nicolas Sarkozy and the French people.”

But was the President speaking for himself, or for the nation?  The former would be quite sad, as one would hope Barry has a better friend than the president of France, who lives so far away and is always so busy!  More likely, then, that Obama spoke in his capacity as the country’s top diplomat.  But, uh, why?  Britain is our closest ally and has been since shortly after we whupped their butts, twice.  And, as reported in The Mirror, “no US president in modern times has described France as America’s closest ally.”

So what happened?  Most likely this was a slip of the tongue.  Obama’s sitting there with Sarkozy, he’s tired, can’t understand a damn word this guy’s saying, gotta say something nice, sound presidential, speak in superlatives… it’s easy to understand how he could slip up.  Diplomacy’s hard.  That said, Stalin never would have made this mistake.

Expect some back-pedaling and overtures to David Cameron and the British people to shortly emanate from the White House.

Also, enjoy this awesome thing from a stupid meme:

mirror.co.uk; Huffington Post

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Gabrielle Giffords, a member of Congress from Arizona’s 8th district, has been shot in the head, but doctors are “optimistic” that she will live. That would leave Leo Ryan as the only member of Congress to lose his life in the line of duty.  However, six others are dead, a dozen or more wounded, and all because the human brain can get kinda funny sometimes.

Here’s a doctor speaking dispassionately about all this sickening carnage:

Meanwhile, the suspected shooter, Jared Lee Loughner, appears to be a real weird fucker!  He believes he is “able to control every belief and religion by being the mind controller!”, according to one of these things he allegedly put on YouTube, via Huffington Post:

Basically, Jared Loughner is a sleepwalking Paultard Army recruit (!) whose hobbies include syllogism, terrorism, mind control, and anarchistic grammar.

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Rep. John Boehner (R) Ohio

What insane nonsense is Fox News rentboy World Net Daily pushing today? Oh, apparently Barack Obama is going to give Manhattan back to the Red Indians, says some guy:

“U.N. resolutions like this claiming amorphous rights can be a stalking horse for future attempts to have international courts enforce broad interpretations of those rights at the expense of American sovereignty,” Theodore Frank, a fellow with the Center for Legal Policy at the Manhattan Institute, a leading public policy think tank in New York City, told WND.

Yeah, he’s saying that Obama’s gonna “Give Manhattan back to Native Americans” as the headline says, except that’s not at all what he’s saying, of course.  Need us to explain what he’s actually saying?  Just smack yourself a few times, you’ll get it eventually.

Here, from the same article, is a hint, red cheeks:

“Re-purchase would restore land back to its original owners thus strengthening tribal sovereignty and jurisdiction over its people and land,” Julianne Jennings Nottoway, a professor of anthropology at Pima Community College in Tuscon, Ariz., said. “Also, it would allow tribes the opportunity to develop socially, politically and economically as competitors as nation-states within a global context under the act of self-determination.”

Oh, so if the Indians buy back some of the land that was stolen from them during White America’s genocidal phase, then they control it, and they’ll be more like an actual country, and less like a dispossessed shell of a decimated culture that’s been all but eradicated in the name of progress.  Right?

Yeah, we guess, but Obama’s black, right?  Yeah, we thought so.

Does it surprise you that there is no left-wing equivalent of World Net Daily, a popular site that wildly distorts insignificant news items in order to prove their thesis that Barack Obama is the devil’s own consigliere, bent on enslaving you and your brain-damaged kids in furtherance of his vague and contradictory communofascist agenda? It does not surprise us one bit, because while the American Left is a pathetic joke, at least the issues they raise, generally speaking, are of actual concern, so they don’t have to obfuscate/distort/lie in order to make their point.

World Net Faily

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We're gonna need a bigger sarcophagus...

Ha ha, oh Ed Rendell, this almost makes up for Mumia:

Rendell viewed the NFL’s decision [to postpone the Eagles-Vikings game due to inclement weather] as a referendum on the toughness, or lack thereof, of the United States.

“My biggest beef is that this is part of what’s happened in this country,” Rendell said. “I think we’ve become wussies.”

“We’ve become a nation of wusses. The Chinese are kicking our butt in everything,” Rendell added. “If this was in China do you think the Chinese would have called off the game? People would have been marching down to the stadium, they would have walked and they would have been doing calculus on the way down.”

Ed Rendell is one of that rare breed of politicians that does not merely feign interest in local sports teams in order to pander to the electorate.  He’s a passionate fan of Philadelphia sports who often calls into sports radio shows and appears on the local Comcast affiliate to share surprisingly informed thoughts and opinions.

(Do you remember the last time politicians stuck their noses in the world of sports?  It was probably when Congress called all those retired ballplayers to testify about steroids and how nobody in baseball used them to hit home runs or throw 100 mph, ever.  That was pretty depressing, even if you had real role models growing up and therefore did not have to idolize these meat-heads who were paid millions because they were strong and coordinated and (often) willing to shrink their testicles in order to stand out.)

espn.com

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December 26, 1831–The amateur naturalist and bird fancier Charles Darwin, grandson of the celebrated potter Josiah Wedgwood, was among those to depart England today on board the HMS Beagle, bound for the nether-worlds which lie beyond the southern oceans.  The clergy of Norwich Cathederal sends their best wishes and expresses their hopes that Mr Darwin’s observations bring glory to God.

We don't want more of this because WHY?

If you were hopeful that the recent string of good stuff happening in Congress was a trend with some momentum, ha, what an idiot you are!  The DREAM Act, which would have provided a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrant children and young adults, provided they achieve certain educational benchmarks or serve in the military for up to two years and stay out of trouble, died an unremarkable death on the Senate floor.  Why’s that, “Daily Political“?

The Dream Act, or perhaps more commonly known as the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act, just collided into a dead end. Do you know why? It’s because the Senate fell short of those much needed 5 votes that’d have been a great help to overcome a threatened Republican filibuster.

For some reason, this article was a top result on Google News.  Stupid algorithms.

Aaaanyway, yeah, this is disgraceful for a lot of reasons we don’t have to get into here.  Expect more of the same as long as there are votes to be  grabbed by demonizing minority groups who are powerless to defend themselves.  “Don’t let the illegals take my job!” cry the bigoted slobs, ignorant of the reality that they themselves aren’t even qualified to work at Denny’s.

Weirdocracy reporter-at-large Tofu Dog emailed his Senator, North Carolina “Democrat” Kay Hagan, about her vote against the bill, and received a lovely auto-responder which included the following text:

We must strengthen our borders, crack down on employers who knowingly hire illegal workers and shut down the underground economy. With our economy in peril, it is more important than ever to ensure that we are protecting the jobs, wages and working conditions of American workers.

This was probably written by an intern, because Ms. Hagan finds it difficult to type and jerk off Newt Gingrich at the same time.  Too far?  Not far enough?  We offend, you decide!

Daily Political (?)

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This from “The Slatest,” a collection of news briefs via Slate:

The number of jobs listed on the Internet ballooned to 4.7 in early December, up from 2.7 last year, according to data from Indeed Inc., a large employment Web site.

Recession?  What recession?