Monthly Archives: October 2010

Tuesday Open Thread

Welcome to your Tuesday open thread. Can you believe that the election is only one week away?!? Chris Coons has a link on his website where you can commit to vote for him on November 2.

I feel like my childhood has died. Sony has killed the Walkman.

Japan-based electronics manufacturer Sony says that after 31 years, the cassette Walkman no longer has legs.

As the world headed into the Reagan era, a Sony Walkman was the must-have gadget, not exactly cheap at an average price of $200. In the early 1980s, the super-portable stereo player was revolutionizing music listening. As the first mega-marketed portable personal stereo, the Walkman allowed us a private audio world anywhere, anytime, among friends or strangers who might have been wearing their own headphones, grooving to their own mixes.

The Walkman was its iPod of its day. In fact, I would argue that the Walkman is an iPod precursor.

Ugh, gross. And TMI. Racist Sherriff Joe Arpaio (Arizona) had a gift for Sarah Palin.

One of the things Arpaio is famous for (besides bad treatment of Latino immigrants) is for making his inmates live in tents and wear pink. To humiliate them.

Washington Times Compares Gay Soldiers To Wheelchair-Bound Soldiers

I was a bit surprised yesterday when MJ didn’t award the asshat of the day award to the Washington Times editorial board for their truly bizarre and offensive editorial in defense of DADT.

The destructive force unleashed by the Pentagon’s collaboration with the leftist agenda is apparent from the circus created when homosexual activists like Dan Choi sashayed over to the Times Square recruiting center to make a political point in the short period in which the Phillips order was effective. Leftists are only interested in political points and symbolism here. Providing defense to the nation in the most effective way possible is the furthest thing from their mind. Treating military recruitment primarily as a diversity issue opens up a closet full of absurdities. On what basis, then, would the military discriminate against the elderly? Why can’t grandpa become a paratrooper? Should the military not reject someone merely because he is handicapped? Why not a wheelchair-bound infantryman?

The judiciary’s chieftains suffer no ill consequences when the unintended consequences of their decrees prove to be ruinous. That’s why answers to the thorny questions of public policy belong to the elected branches of government. Military leaders also need a reminder that “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” is still the law of the land, regardless of the personal desires of the commander in chief.

Wow, Lt. Dan Choi sashayed? And LGBT soldiers are like elderly or wheelchair-bound soldiers? My personal opinion – I think anyone who is healthy enough and willing to serve should be able to serve. I don’t have any objection to disabled soldiers serving in a capacity that they’re able. High-ranking officers are older already. I guess this makes me a lefty extremist pushing a radical agenda. That whole radical agenda that “all men are created equal.”

That Pesky 1st Amendment

This year’s crop of GOP candidates have been very aggressive in claiming the mantle of “Constitutional conservatives.” They claim reverance for the document (while telling us it doesn’t mean what 200 yrs of history says it means) and say we’ve lost our way. In fact, in the “Summer of Spittle” in 2009 anti-health care reform protestors claimed they had the right to protest at Town Hall meetings because the 1st amendment gives them this right.

Despite all the talk of the Constitution, a lot of these candidates hate the press. We’ve seen Alaska Senate candidate Joe Miller handcuff a reporter for asking inconvenient questions. Now there’s this:

As the candidates arrived, a group of Paul supporters pulled a female MoveOn member to the ground and held her there as another Paul supporter stomped on the back of her head and neck.

According to the Louisville Courier Journal, “Lauren Valle of MoveOn.org approached Paul and tried to give him an “employee of the month award” from Republicorp…a fake business MoveOn created to symbolize what it says is the merger of the GOP and business interests controlling political speech.”

The video shows more than the initial story says. The woman didn’t “trip” and the head-stomping was not accident. She was wrestled to the ground and held down while a man stepped on her head. In the news clip, the woman is lucid and talking to reporters afterwards (but complains of a headache). Today we’re hearing the woman is in the hospital.

Christine O’Donnell’s campaign has also had some run-ins with the 1st amendment. Besides her now infamous “you’re telling that’s in the 1st amendment” gaffe, she’s also barred local news from covering her events because she didn’t like their coverage of her campaign. Yesterday, the News Journal was once again barred from an O’Donnell event.

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell held a “Small Business Owners for O’Donnell” event this afternoon in Newark.

It was the fourth group to launch a “for O’Donnell” effort in recent weeks, preceded by medical professionals, Hispanics and sportsmen.

Minutes before the event started, Chris Merola, a member of O’Donnell’s communication staff, informed The News Journal that the paper would not be allowed to remain at the press conference.

Other media outlets, including Philadelphia and Salisbury television stations, were allowed to remain. The event, held at the Newark Regional Republican Headquarters, had been announced through a press release distributed by the campaign’s public relations firm.

Constitutional conservatives obviously don’t like the “Freedom of the Press” part of the 1st amendment. The Constitution means only what they want it to mean.

Desparate and Stupid

What can we say about O’Whack-a-Mole’s political commercials. To me, their amateurish at best. My guess is that her ambulance-chasing former campaign manager set her up with some media shop who promised great commercials that would help her win. Instead, they’ve turned out dreck!

Witchiepooh has yet to run a single positive commercial telling the voters why they should vote for her. Instead, she’s trying to do to Chris Coons what she did to Mike Castle. But we were prepared. And we also didn’t realize how many gifts she’d give us (SCOTUS decisions, separation of church and state, mice with human brains).

Here’s her latest anti-Coons ad (I got a preview copy in my email from her campaign).

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIa0q3bIK90&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

Monday’s Asshat of the Day

It’s the week before Election Day and some folks are getting desperate and paranoid. Today’s winner thinks there’s an evil plot by the President to get your personal information.

Yes, those wacky, paranoid, idiots over at resistnet.com (you know, the ones that want to round up illegals and shoot them from the backs of pick-up trucks and the ones who worship at Curly’s obese feet) are telling their members that a page on Facebook is not as innocent as it looks. Under the title of “Facebook Users, BEWARE! Obama Supporters Launch Misleading Facebook Application Which Steals Your Personal Information,” Assistant National Director Mellie of Dallas, GA tells her minions

Commit fraud. Obama’s lust for power has lead his team to create a Facebook app which data mines your page and steals as much sensitive information as it can. As you can see from the photo below, it attempts to convince
you to give up everything about you, which is then fed into the Team Obama database, and WILL be used against you at some future point.

This app wants to know everything about you, including your religious and political beliefs. If you see this app on your page, we highly recommend you to not only delete the post, but also block the app and then block the person who posted it to your page. This is war, people, make no mistake about that. Because Obama’s Team has no intention of taking prisoners.

We aren’t the least bit paranoid, are we now, Mellie?

And an honorable mention goes to Friday’s winner, Sean Bielat, who just doesn’t know when to stop. Last week, he introduced a homophobic commercial to the campaign. But as is typical of the teabaggers, they love to shove another foot in their mouth (amongst other things). Yesterday, he compared being gay to being short, when it comes to military service.

According to the Huffington Post,

Bielat also did something else. He made a bizarre comparison when discussing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” to the Boston Herald, arguing that gays should have no guaranteed right to serve in the military — just like short people.

“There’s no absolute right to serve. Men under the height of 5 feet, 2 inches can’t serve — I don’t see anybody protesting. Where are the people standing in front of the White House, the short guys standing in front of the White House? You don’t see it,” Bielat told the Boston Herald. “We understand that there’s no absolute right to serve in all these other areas,” he continued.

Bielat is not an asshat. He’s a complete and utter fucktard!

Christine O’Donnell Flip Flops on Jesus….AGAIN!

She can’t decide. Is Jesus her co-pilot, or not?

First, during the primary, we heard the conclusive statement that she had Jesus whispering in her ear. Urging her onward, or at least that’s what she thinks he meant by whispering the word “credibility” to her. He could have meant that she had none and shouldn’t run for office. (That GOD – he is so cryptic.)

Then someone told her that talking about how God talks to you makes you sound crazy, so she cleaned it up a bit for her debate with Chris Coons, by saying that her beliefs were irrelevant and that her faith “hasn’t really influenced my politics.” [Writer rubs eyes comically, looks at bottle of whiskey in hand and throws it into the trash]

Now this…

Not only is God relevant again, but HE the reason she is running. God will not stop whispering to her and generally will not get off her back. Part of the reason is that her supporters keep pestering God to butt into the race:

“The day that we saw a spike in the polls was a day that some people had a prayer meeting for me that morning for this campaign,” explained the Tea Party-backed hopeful. “I believe that prayer plays a direct role in this campaign…”

Bonus Fun: 1) Hold it. The only way she got a “spike in the polls” was by comparing the apples and carburetors of two different polling outfits. To say otherwise would be to lie and we know Christine would not lie, not even to save famous Jesus killer, Anne Frank. 2) She claims in the CBN interview that she had to be talked into running. Ha!

Take The Elitism Test!

Charles Murray (of The Bell Curve fame) has an op-ed in the Washington Post about how liberals are a bunch of elitists who don’t understand Real Americans(TM). I put together a quiz based on Murray’s elitism litmus tests.

Scoring: Each correct answer is worth 1 point. For Yes or No questions, Yes is 1 point, No is 0 points. Please be kind to your fellow commenters and don’t put the answers in your comments.

1. Who replaced Bob Barker on “The Price Is Right?”
2. Have you ever watched a full episode of “The Oprah Winfrey Show?”
3. Who is Jimmie Johnson (2 answers)?
4. What does the acronym “MMA” represent?
5. Have you ever read “Left Behind?”
6. Have you ever read a Harlequin Romance?
7. Do you have an RV?
8. Have you ever been on a cruise?
9. What is the significance of Branson, MO?
10. Have you ever attended a Kiwanis or Rotary Club meeting?
11. Have you lived a year in a small, non-college town?
12. Have you lived in an urban neighborhood where most of your neighbors don’t have college degrees?
13. Have you ever spent a year with a family income less than 2x poverty (college student doesn’t count)?
14. Do you personally know an evangelical Christian?
15. Have you ever worked in a factory or ever visited a factory floor?

Scoring:
0-5 You’re an elitist! I bet you had to put down your latte to type, didn’t you?
6-10 You’re an elitist wanna-be
11-15 Congrats, you’re a Real American(TM)!

Monday Open Thread

Welcome to the Monday edition of your open thread. Less than a week until the Restore Sanity/Keep Fear Alive rally in DC! Plus, only 8 more days until the election commercials go away! I can’t wait for that!

This is good. The “Don’t Vote” ad aimed at Latinos in Nevada is backfiring.

Those ads by a right-wing front group called “Latinos for Reform” — urging Latinos no to vote for Democrats in the coming election because they haven’t delivered on comprehensive immigration reform — may not be turning out to be such a hot idea:

But the fever-pitch backlash to this advertisement suggests the message could bring about just the opposite effect, by energizing a Hispanic voting bloc that may have been lethargic with a new and compelling reason to get out and vote — by and large, for Democrats.

From the 2004 to 2008 elections, Hispanics grew in force from 8 percent of the electorate to 12 to 15 percent, depending on the exit poll — roughly equal to President Barack Obama’s margin of victory. Obama carried 76 percent of the Nevada Hispanic vote in 2008.

Electorate growth rates among Hispanics have slowed since. But what hasn’t is their overwhelming enthusiasm for Democrats.

“Hispanics are much more likely to view congressional Democrats favorably than other groups,” said John Tuman, chairman of UNLV’s political science department who also teaches in the Latin American studies department. According to a recent study by UNLV and the Brookings Mountain West think tank, “it’s only among Hispanics in any Mountain West state that you see Democrats having an overall net favorability ranking,” Tuman said.

Yeah, campaigns that smack of overt minority voter-suppression efforts — particularly since the self-serving hypocrisy of these ads (“Punish Democrats because they haven’t been effective in overcoming our longstanding efforts to kill immigration reform”) is so transparent — tend not to go over so well with minority voters.

The story of actor Randy Quaid and his wife Evi keeps getting stranger and stranger. They were arrested in Canada and have asked for asylum because their lives are in danger:

The American couple were arrested in Vancouver last week on US arrest warrants related to allegations that they vandalised their former home in Santa Barbara, California.

However, when they were brought before an immigration hearing on Friday, the pair said they wanted to stay in Canada because they believe their “lives are in danger”.

They warned they are at risk from “Hollywood star whackers”, who they claim are responsible for the recent deaths of several of Mr Quaid’s actor friends, including Heath Ledger and David Carradine.

“We feel our lives are in danger,” Mrs Quaid told the Immigration and Refugee Board hearing.

“Randy has known eight close friends murdered in odd, strange manners. We feel that we’re next.”

I don’t know much on this back story but I just hope Mr. and Mrs. Quaid can get the help they need.

Ron Williams Endorses Chris Coons?

I think Christine O’Donnell has been a real inspiration to the editorial page of the News Journal. First Harry Themal let loose on O’Donnell, now it’s Ron Williams’s turn.

But once again she thinks we’re all stupid to the ways of television advertising and tries to convince us that either know one paid attention to her instructions to pull the ad or there was this big conspiracy by the TV and cable systems to keep the ad on the air against her wishes. Give us a break. Pleeeeze.

This woman has done more in 30 days to stink up the image of Delaware politics and politicians here than any one incident in the last 35 years.

She’s embarrassed herself beyond embarrassment, if that’s even possible, and has kept the Delaware senatorial race on the late-night jokes tour longer than Joe Biden and Sarah Palin combined.

Yep, pretty much.