Ted Stevens, corrupt douchebag extraordinaire, admits that he’s the self-absorbed asshole who hates America, the Constitution and representative government, and if you read between the lines – eats babies and may very well be responsible for unusual rock formations in northern Europe.
I wish I could say I was surprised.
In a “true” democracy, everyone votes on every issue. If we need a new road from Athens to Sparta, we all get together in the town square and vote on it. In today’s United States of America, there are roughly 300 million people, and unfortunately, there’s no town square big enough for all that. Instead, we have representative democracy, which entails that we send elected officials who we trust to vote in our interests off to Washington, and we go to sleep comfortably knowing that they are looking out for us.
Or… so we would like to think. A bill was passed through committee that would establish the creation of a public database so that we could search from home and find out where OUR tax dollars are being spent. It looked as though the bill was on the fast track to being passed on the floor of the senate as a whole. I mean who could possibly vote publicly against a bill which mandated that the government reports to its constituents (you and me) what the government does with our money?
Well, as luck would have it, no one has to! Instead, a senator has put a super-secret hold on the bill, not allowing it to come for a vote, and no one knows who placed the hold. Thanks to some actual investigative reporting, we do know who didn’t place the hold. Perhaps after a few more calls, they will have the list narrowed down thereby outing the corrupt senator who feels that pork barrel spending is his right as a public servant, and the yokels who voted him (or her) into office don’t deserve more than the fucking sack of oranges he’d like to beat us with.
Speaking of dropping science in favor of religion, check it:
Evolution Major Vanishes From Approved Federal List
God bless the USA.
I told you so. Why do they even need these conferences? If these astronomers and cosmologists would just come up to Astoria, we could kick it in my crib, solve the problems of the universe and hell, I even know a few chicks. Open invite, fellas.
In the meantime, that bitch Pluto knows who’s boss now. Luckily, it shouldn’t be too hard to rewrite textbooks since half the country has dropped their science books in favor of Bibles – so no harm done.
Hey Pluto! Your atmosphere so thin Nicole Richie asked it for dieting tips!
Hey Pluto! Your gravity so weak, when I jumped outta yo’ momma’s bed, I drifted into space!
Hey Pluto! Your orbit so unstable, they kicked it outta the methadone clinic for scaring the other patients!
Hey Pluto! Your year is so long you spent your last birthday in the Mesozoic Era!
Hey Pluto! You so cold, your ice cubes got frostbite!
Hey Pluto! You so far from the sun, uh… we can’t see you with the naked eye!
Take that!
DoG invites you to submit your own Pluto snaps. And if you can actually make them funny, all the better...
Guess what? Another dead white chick. Problem is, this one has been dead for a fucking decade! I was just going to say shut the fuck up about it, but Rebecca Traister says it better.
This wasn’t important when it was on the “news” 24/7 ten years ago, and considering, oh I don’t know - war, devastation, death, terrorism, global warming, a fascist regime in Washington, and so on, it is even less important today. That guy is like a total creepshow, Kevin Spacey in Se7en kinda whackjob, but he also didn’t do it, and oh yeah - who the FUCK cares?! People die every single day. Imagine if they covered every civilian death in Iraq with such fervor.
Are you happy, Pluto-huggers? Because of your sentimentality and your unhealthy marriage to your mnemonic device, they’ve gone and redefined the definition of planet to appease you. Thanks to you, there are currently twelve planets identified, including one in the Asteroid Belt.
A fucking asteroid!! Mnemonic that, bitches!
Furthermore, they’ve classified Pluto’s “moon” as a new planet, as well as another Kuiper Belt object (of which Pluto and Charon are members) which is bigger than Pluto. And guess what? There are at least dozens more we’ve already discovered, and undoubtedly hundreds more we haven’t yet.
This is what we have now. Because of these idiots’ childlike attachment to this stupid comet called Pluto, our Solar System has thousands of “planets.” Hold on, what’s that? Is it a bird or a planet! Call fucking Prague!!
Racists that is. It doesn’t matter if you’re a senator from typically cosmopolitan and forward-thinking Virginia or if you go to Klan rallies in Alabama, a racist is a racist. George Allen used to hang a confederate flag in his Senate office. That’s enough for me. But if it’s not enough for you, there’s his racial slur from the other day.
"This fellow here over here with the yellow shirt -- Macaca, or whatever his name is -- he's with my opponent," Allen said. After suggesting that Webb was spending more time with "Hollywood movie moguls" than with real Virginians, Allen turned back to the subject of Sidarth. "Let's give a welcome to Macaca, here. Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia."Not convinced that was a slur? Try this on for size:
Felix raised Allen's mother, Etty, in Tunisia, a French protectorate in North Africa. As a child, Allen's grandparents lived near the family home, and Etty spoke five languages around the house.We know he didn’t blurt it out as a means of calling Sidarth a silly name because he said it twice, and he damned well knew what the word meant. The guy is a racist pure and simple. That plays in Virginia, so he’ll get reelected. Let’s make sure he doesn’t get to the White House.
…
In North Africa, the word "macaca," often spelled "macaco" or "macaque," is far more than a string of random syllables. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word dates back to the mid-1600s, as a Flemish approximation of the Bantu word for monkey in the Congo and southern Gabon. The word migrated north, taking on all the racist connotations that followed African colonization. By the early 1800s, Jacko Maccacco, a famous fighting monkey, could be found on display in Westminster Pit, a notorious London arena for dog fights. The word had entered the common vernacular, and it eventually became a racist shorthand for blacks.
”I do apologize if he's offended”It reminds me of another apology quite common in Virginia between redneck and wife: “I’m sorry you made me hit you.”
Independent senate candidate and crazy-ass sore loser (CASL™) Joe Lieberman is transforming into a Republican before our very eyes, as in a poorly made werewolf movie. Or perhaps I should say that his Republican stripes are finally plain for all to see. Exhibit A – he clamed it was a victory when he lost on Tuesday. Exhibit B – Karl Rove is working for him. Exhibit C – the guy is making spurious connections between a terrorist threat from British citizens and the war on Iraq instead of seeing that the war in Iraq is what is inciting the violence against us. He’s too far gone from the Democratic party to understand a thought that involves a layer of complexity.
Pop quiz! Match these quotes to their author, Cheney or Liberman?
”If we just pick up like Ned Lamont wants us to do, get out by a date certain, it will be taken as a tremendous victory by the same people who wanted to blow up these planes in this plot hatched in England. It will strengthen them, and they will strike again.”and
”Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups were counting on Americans to adopt a weaker military posture. Mr. Lamont’s victory … favored that weaker approach.”Answer – do you really care? One was Dick and one was Joe.
Mr. Cheney also lamented Mr. Lieberman’s primary defeat; the two men have been on good terms in the past.Why, I declare! I am overcome with surprise!!
I had a taste of blogging yesterday, and boy it felt good. I feel the need to release all the demons at once, so I'll just plop it down in these pages as quickly as possible and let you sort through the flotsam.
So, I'm reading this article about the total cluelessness of the Bush foreign policy, and I came across something interesting. You know how whenever they're challenged with facts about how much worse things are in Iraq since we invaded, all the right-wingers point their purple-stained fingers to the Iraqi elections and say that's the only evidence needed that things are a million times better? Well, here's a nice response to that bullcrap:
The main thing Iraqis expressed at the ballot box was that Sunnis wanted Sunnis to rule, Shiites wanted Shiites to rule, and Kurds wanted to secede. The election, inspiring as it was to behold, served as little more than an ethnic census. In the absence of democratic institutions to mediate disputes and legitimize outcomes, it might even have hardened the social, political, and religious conflicts that are now—by the testimony of Bush's own top generals—erupting into civil war.
The emergence of democracy marks the starting point of politics. Politics by nature involves conflicts. A democracy thrives or crumbles on how well it deals with those conflicts. There is nothing inherently civilizing about holding elections—nothing unusual, much less contradictory, about a putatively democratic government embroiled in war, civil war, or chaos.
A woman in Wisconsin is about to be excommunicated from the Roman Catholic church for -- get this -- being too into it.
A 64-year-old woman faces excommunication for seeking the priesthood in an unsanctioned ordination ceremony in Pittsburgh last month, the Milwaukee Archibishop said.See, I didn’t know you could get excommunicated so easily. I thought the only things that could get one excommunicated was making ridiculous claims like the earth goes around the sun or totally coveting your neighbor’s Xbox 360. The big things. Obviously diddling little Bobby Jr. for 8 years doesn’t cross the excommunication threshold.
The Roman Catholic Church prohibits women from becoming priests, and Milwaukee Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan said in a statement that it was his duty to notify the Vatican of her action.
Kathy Sullivan Vandenberg and 11 other women took part in an ordination ceremony July 31 conducted by the group Roman Catholic Womenpriests -- eight to become priests and four to become deacons.
"That doesn't mean I'm excluded from the church. Only I can exclude myself," she said.Holy shit. She did not just say that! Listen here, little chickee, if you’re trying to say that your relationship with God is your own, and that the Bishop or Pope Benny can’t affect it in any way, then you have absolutely no place in the Roman Catholic church. Pick up your microscope and your critical thoughts and all the scientific mumbo-jumbo that you’ve probably been picking up over the years, and get the hell outta my cathedral!!
Glenn Greenwald, guest blogging in Salon’s War Room, waxes philosophical about the big Lamont/Lieberman showdown tomorrow.
The supremacy of incumbency has given birth to a more or less permanent Beltway class that views its power as an entitlement, something that its members have the divine right to possess until they choose to relinquish it. It is that aristocratic mindset that explains the bizarre sense of anger and offense triggered among the political and pundit classes -- and within Lieberman himself -- by Ned Lamont's aggressive primary challenge. The effort to defeat Joe Lieberman was considered to be improper, uncouth, even somehow undemocratic by those most entrenched in our stagnant, plodding, virtually immovable political structures.Without going on too long -- since as you know, I barely have time for anything these days -- this harkens back a bit to what a colleague of mine was hopelessly attempting to say last week which is that democracy is super cool and what we have today is doubleplus uncool because it is merely a hazy facsimile of democracy when 98% of incumbents are reelected; when money equals electoral success; when the people are so uninspired such that only 30% of us actually bother to vote; when the votes in congress are controlled by special interest groups and lobbyists; when government contracts are awarded to cronies and insiders instead of the cheapest or most qualified vendors… And so on and so forth...
Beyond striking a blow against the Iraq war and the neoconservatives who are responsible for it, a Lamont victory would deal a hard blow to the power of incumbency and the entitlement mindset it has spawned. It would be seen, rightfully so, as a repudiation of the Beltway pundit and political classes that, from the start and with virtual unanimity, viewed the Lamont challenge with scorn, as a distasteful rebellion by the crazed, dirty, unenlightened masses. The most important impact of a Lamont win is that it would shake the foundations of a self-contained Beltway political structure that is as unresponsive as it is corrupt at its core.
My new favorite thing in the world - the videos at I Humped Your Hummer. In case you are wondering, this a gang of brave vigilantes who roam the city and hump your Hummer against its will and put it on film.
Fucking hilarious.
They're takin' it to the streets in Iraq today. Unfortunately, it's to support Hezbollah:
Tens of thousands of people marched through the streets of Baghdad on Friday, enthusiastically voicing support for Lebanon's Hezbollah militia.
Angry protesters chanted slogans, burned Israeli flags and waved Lebanese and Hezbollah flags in the Iraqi capital's densely populated Shiite enclave of Sadr City. They also held up placards with the portrait of Hassan Nasrallah, head of Hezbollah.
