The Rude Pundit Hates On Charles Payne

Lee Papa savages Charles "Fat Cunt" Payne over Chuckles's ludicrous statements about the (most recent) capitalist tragedy in Bangladesh.  Payne doesn't know shit about shit, but as an African-American he is an especially useful Fox News idiot in the Koch-sucking war on the 99%.  You might be able to feel sorry for that Fat Cunt because he's so painfully ignorant and idiotic except that he's very well paid to be a bootlicking propagandist for the oligarchy, so fuck him. 

Gretchen Carlson: Nefarious Screeching Harpy Of Vacuity

Vile Fox News bimbo Gretchen Carlson manages to sound even more unhinged than a reactionary University of Chicago econ professor on her stupid tee vee show.  Once again, everybody with more than a couple of brain cells to rub together understands that direct transfer payments to people with no other sources of disposable income do more to stimulate the economy than anything else.  In times of economic distress, unemployment insurance and food stamps and other forms of welfare not only reduce suffering for individuals but also stimulate demand for the rest of us.  To say that super-efficient stimulus somehow shrinks the economy or encourages poverty is something so insane that only a jerkoff like Casey Mulligan could think it.  MMFA has more along with the shameful video evidence.

Irin Carmon On Al Sharpton's Show

Irin Carmon could be Shira Toeplitz for the new month.  Ms. Carmon is getting much more comfortable with her tee vee appearances and has an Ivy League Zooey Deschanel thing going on.  As soon as I figure out whether that is a good thing or not, I will let you know. 

I Hates Me Some Ed Rendell

Ed Rendell is a scumbag of titanic proportions, so it is always edifying to see his true motivations exposed for all to see and few to internalize.  Fuck it, at least a few folks like Dr. Black are aware of what is really going on out there in the world of assholes and oligarchs.  

Almost As Entertaining As A Bike Forum

This William Tapley buffoon is pretty fucking amusing, and really, he may be almost as entertaining as the Serotta Forum.  Surely Tapley is kidding, though.  Right??  Anyway, Gen. JC Christian is on the case.  Carry on, General.

Baby Blue Bride

One Year Ago Today

crusty the clown acts up

jezza gets cranky and pisses people off again.  watching the clip, though, he did seem to be mugging quite a bit, going for the edgy quip but not spewing any real venom.  make no mistake, jeremy clarkson is a pampered tory cock--austerity isn't gonna hurt him cuz he's a millionaire and won't depend on disappearing job or pension to get by--and would fit in well with the pathetic galtian douchenozzles on the serotta forum, but he's basically a clown who mostly just wants attention. 

poo-slinging monkeys soil themselves over health care

the sad-sack circle jerk that is the serotta forum takes on the health insurance crisis in the united states and naturally the shit-flinging assholes come out in force to smear their greasy filth all over everything in defence of disinformation, the 1%, and their captive ass lickers.  where else other than the that place can you get such a vigorous fluffing of the dumbest stuff on the planet by people who inherited some money from their father?  well, lots of places, for sure, but not many of those places are as ugly and sick as that shithole.  in truth, the serotta forum is a disgusting symbol for all that is evil in america; the decent folks either have no guts or no interest and the ignorant and evil fucktards spew their crap unchallenged.

maybe those dickheads don't know it, but the canadian health system is in distress because of the conservatives failure to properly fund it.  i don't believe any of those bullshit stories about people who would have died of cancer unless they went to the united states for treatment.  these people are lying.  the canadian system has better outcomes, longer lives, and better quality of life for way less money than the united states spends, so fuck those lying assholes.  the health systems in the united states that have the best outcomes for the least money are medicare, which is single payer, and the veterans administration, which is essentially national health.  i am sickened that too many of my brothers and sisters are too fucking stupid to understand how fucked up our health care system is, and i am disgusted by the sort of evil pampered cocksuckers that you find polluting places like the serotta forum.

watch the night crash down around their ears

reading lee papa's thoughts today, i'm not sure he gets it, atmo.  yes, the assault on the occupy camps was inevitable--and the winter would have been very, very difficult out there--but the assaults did not have to be so completely successful.  certainly a larger, more vigorous movement would have put up more of an obstacle to such tactics.  and yes, the winter is indeed the time to educate, train and organize the movement, but if spring comes and there is not a huge campaign to reoccupy the cities where they were evicted in order to give the movement a public face--and if that occupation is not successful--the movement is dead.  occupy wall street needs to be bigger, stronger and faster in the spring, the six million dollar protest.  i'm not sure if they see that.  i guess we'll find out. 

i work my way backwards using cynicism

nifty article about the occupy wall street movement by stanley w. rogouski on his blog, which i originally saw on the counterpunch site.  much is excellent here, not the least of which is referring to chris hedges as a dissident journalist.  even better though, is the emphasis on the true power of the occupy movement in general: if they can begin to dismantle the arbitrary and artificial divisions erected between the individuals who comprise the 99% of america in the interest of preventing any potential threat to the hegemony of the 1% oligarchy, the movement will indeed be able to overwhelm the scope of police state violence and be the catalyst for legitimate change in the society.

wait, what? l. ron's got a boat?

some things are just not right.  this might be a smallish one, but, still.  fuckin' l. ron hubbard's head in a jar drives a boat around to uninhabited islands and does all sorts of weird shit to mentally imbalanced young women dressed up as xenu's harim?  freeking sick, man.  that makes bill o'reilly's disgusting sexual perversion seem almost wholesome.

Step Forward For Palestine

Today's UN recognition was a small, useful step forward for the people of Palestine.  The UN's action is also sure to boost the fortunes of Mahmoud Abbas in Palestine and abroad.  This will not change the world or get Bibi a death sentence in The Hague, but the fact that Palestine and her allies were able to get this done in the face of American and Israeli intransigence is a good sign for the hope of future progress and justice for in the middle east.

Virag's Movie Reviews: Saved! (2004)

Saved! is a great little movie.  I had never seen it; I'm not much of a consumer of dumb comedies, but little did I know about this flick.  Sure I watched it because of Eva Amurri, but I was quickly taken by the whole thing.  Saved! is the movie Juno could have been if Juno hadn't been insultingly dumb and if Juno hadn't sucked worse than anything had ever sucked before.  Saved! did a great job of portraying people of faith attempting to live their lives with grace and acceptance to the best of their abilities with an amiable shorthand of characterization.  Jena Malone actually sorta looked the part which is a nice change.  Heather Matarazzo, Mary-Louise Parker, and Martin Donovan are all there in the background doing solid work.  Even Macaulay Culkin didn't make you want to slap him silly which is another nice change.  Unlike in Juno, the script was not creepily smarmy or filled with poorly-written characters supposedly too smart to do they idiotic things they did in the movie.  Saved! worked pretty well as a comedy and was not at all dismissive with respect to faith and belief, showing most of the Christians in the film to be decent if sometimes misguided people.  This is a good movie, certainly better than I would have believed it could be.  More like this please, and less inane Junos or heinous Judd Apatow shit.  Thank you.

Last Dancing Daze

Also, Bradley Manning

In the United States, there's not a whole hell of a lot of coverage of the torture of Bradley Manning.  It would be bad for entirety of the American ruling class if Manning's actions and treatment were well-understood by the teeming American underclass.  David Petraeus is a free man.  Dick Cheney has not been subjected to the torture he so richly deserves.  Colin Powell and Condi Rice have never been held accountable for their war crimes.  Lloyd Blankfein has not been kept in Federal prison awaiting charges for his treasonous actions.  But Bradley Manning, he's subjected to the worst torture an imperial police state can dish out because he told an uncomfortable truth.

America.

Fuck. 

Governor Chafee Looked Visibly Sickened By Bill O'Reilly's Stupidity

That poor bastard had to go through life with the name Lincoln, and when he thought that was as bad as it got, he went onto Fox News with Bill O'Reilly.  Chafee looked like he'd just discovered an inflamed, draining pustule on his yambag while O'Reilly was talking.  O'Reilly was belching out such nonsense that Chafee probably wished that he'd followed his dream to be a Parisian street mime just so that he would not have had to spend those horrible minutes listening to someone as batshit crazy and as agonizingly stupid as O'Reilly.  Angry?  O'Reilly's not angry; he's a loathsome, impotent, crazy fucktard.  It's too bad Chafee's distractingly swollen ballsack apparently prevented him from telling that real truth to O'Reilly's face.

Oprah Gangland Style: Susan Rice

The optics of the l'affaire Susan Rice could not be better for Obama: a gaggle of dim-witted, white Republican Senators, including cranky and senile McCain and closeted, queenie, and southern Graham--Huckleberry Closetcase, indeed--out there calling the African-American female diplomat a liar and a dummy all over the tee vee right after Obama skull-fucked the entire Republican party with help of minority and female voters.  Obama could not have possibly been kind enough to kittens in a former life to deserve this good karma.  There have not been enough kittens in the entire 7000 year history of the Earth to generate this much good karma for anyone, but President Obama gets the benefit of Republican malpractice once again.  I don't believe it would be best for him to use a recess appointment to avoid a battle.  That would be a waste.  This is all win for Obama and the Democrats; every 2014 Democratic candidate should want a loud, stupid, and racist--and ultimately ineffectual--assault on Rice by the Republicans and use that as one of the giant, steel tools with which they fuck the Republicans stupid in 2014.

The Reality Of Math And Sciences Makes Conservative Whackjobs Cry

Life is tough these days for wingnut dipshit assholes.  Statistics and polling and Sam Wang made them look like idiots when they either weren't able or weren't willing to understand how political polling and math worked, so they are now looking even stupider by getting all wet and sticky over the crazed lunacy of widespread voting fraud delivering the election to Obama.  This is pretty fucking dumb, but they are nothing if not the slowest of the slow children.  What they call evidence, most other humans call mental illness, but that's never going to interfere with their bizarro-worldview.

Some of the other scary-stupid have different difficulties with the pernicious liberal bias of math and science.  They love them some Jesus more than anything else, and nothing, not geology or biology or physics, is going to trigger their gag reflex and stop them from swallowing their saviour balls-deep.  Reason isn't going to work; science and the scientific method have no meaning in their sad little world, so fuck 'em.  Eventually they are going to be in for a big, funny surprise.

Wingnuts Hate Alan Grayson, And That Makes Me Love Him More

Psycho wingnut assholes really hate Alan Grayson.  Since their favorite Uncle-Tom war criminal Allen West lost it is especially hard for those sorry bastards to see Rep. Grayson living large and having fun working for the people.  He's might be my bestest girl-crush in Congress.

One Year Ago Today

classic bike racing goodness from the hampsten hegemony

the hampsten bikes blog talks up the new 7-11 book and has a link to an old road bike action piece about the old-timey racing bikes they used.  pretty much catnip for the historically-minded bike dweeb. 

hermentum ain't no bubba

hermain cain is a thin-skinned pussy.  bill clinton, shameless hypocrite and hyper-evolved venereal disease vector, would never have let these slatterns derail his bubba-express.  the cain-train is the little engine that couldn't.  hermentum sure needs some kind of boost about now; maybe rush limbaugh will let hermentum break into his personal stash.

a new low for larry o

is there anything more worthless and vapid than lawrence o'donnell and thomas friedman on the tee vee at the same time?  we would be better edified listening to a couple of christmas cacti deconstruct finnegans wake. 

that robot bitch

siri is not a nice robot.  who knew?  makes those shitty android phones look better, i guess.

Gaulzetti's Highly Entertaining Marketing Vs The World's Dumbest Bike Forum Vs Ridley Scandium Geometry

There must be something wrong with me, because I find this fucking amusing for some reason.  Gaulzetti's are fine bikes, on par with other handmade American aluminum road bikes, but the genius was in the marketing bullshit, much in the manner of Richard Sachs.  I have no doubt that everyone who buys a Gaulzetti frame knows of Sr. Jerk or even knows Sr. Jerk and wants in on the mofo mojo of the cult of personality, but so what.  Do what you like, and buy what you like, and hopefully ride the shit out of it.  Craig Gaulzetti and Richard Sachs and Sacha White were able to exploit niche marketing in ways others couldn't, wouldn't or didn't.  No matter, Gaulzetti did it well, as did the others.  Good marketing doesn't equal good bikes--and certainly doesn't mean better--but Gaulzetti, like Sachs and White before him, would not have been successful without a solid product from the start.  If I was in the market, I would consider a Gaulzetti.

Or maybe a Ridley Scandium, which was a Gaulzetti before the Jerk was Gaulzetti.

Why Do We Ever Go Outside Anymore?

Virag's Movie Reviews: A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas (2011)

I was truly surprised at how warm and mild this film was.  There were a few funny meta bits about 3D and the actors' careers, but I was expecting more crude, more funny, and less happy feel good bullshit.  Jim Dangle and the College Humor guy were useless and didn't add anything.  NPH was fine.  The cameos worked.  I really hate body doubles, so either cut the nudity or use actresses with a little commitment.  This movie was ok but could have been epic.  Maybe we'll see that in the fourth one.  Or not.  Also, too: Wafflebot!

Sweet Youth

One Year Ago Today

the next shoe drop in los angeles and philadelphia

the next shoe to drop in los angeles and philadelphia could be very interesting.  non-violent protests that refuse to disperse have an enormous strength, and the duty of police violence is to make the protesters too frightened to understand their power.  instead of the highly likely violence, i would be thrilled to see a crack form in the concerted effort to destroy the movement if one of the mayors embraces the legality and message of the protest.  that's not likely, however, and the occupy movement will instead probably gain another historic victory only after the murder of one of the protesters by the police state. 

walker recall

i have a bad feeling about the walker recall effort.  it would be a great thing for america to get that skeevy creep out of office--and wonderfully entertaining to watch all those koch-sucking sycophants squirming under the weight of failure--but i can see the obama campaign doing all it can to suck the wind out of it in some twisted idea of unity or some such bullshit.  really, if obama had one or more balls and a shred of decency, he'd be doing ads for those people encouraging every good gods-fearing american to take back our liberty and recall that fuckface bastard scott walker, but that ain't gonna happen.  if the recall fails to take off it could make it difficult for all the other useful campaigns out there.  wisconsin is not high on santa's list after they so ostentatiously failed to dispatch one more state senator in the last recall.

billy ray cyrus is the worst person who ever lived

his no-talent mutant spawn has killed the occupy movement.  don't thank her for it, you fucking moron. 

who cares what andrew sullivan says?

and why did anyone ever listen to that fucking chump?  kicking sullivan seems a little too easy.  he's an old tory queen who was responsible for publishing scum-guzzling racist charles murray and loathsome hustler and liar betsy mccaughey, so really fuck him.  just ignore him and leave him to writhe onanisticly in his own fetid offal.

pete dupont for president

in the wake of the hilarious union-leader endorsement of newt gingrich, the local news anchor-clown was practically snickering tonight reporting on it, throwing in the amazingly heinous track record of the dickheads on the aforementioned editorial board. 

since when is kevin drum a major progressive?

sure he writes for mother jones, but that's not the same as mother jones.  he never was more than a comfortable, democratic-establishment, village-idiot wannabe.  it might pay pretty well, but it in no way makes you a progressive, a liberal or anything but a fifth-tier david broder.

barney bids adieu

everyone's favorite purple dinosaur congressman, barney frank, says bye-bye to congress after a real long time.  frank's chief asset is his wise-ass persona, so without frank and anthony's wiener, we will have openings for reliably rock-ribbed centrist democratic congress critters with an ounce or two of personality and disdain for bill o'reilly.  i vote for grayson.

Political Song for Suzanne Venker to Sing

Nice Going, Sluts, You Broke Men!

You whores really fucked up this time!  If you wanna have men who are able to bone a baby into you, you bitches better take off your fucking shoes and get back in the goddamned kitchen! 

Kyrsten Sinema Is An Atheist In Congress?

I may have to revise my second statement in my previous post about Ms. Sinema because I'm developing a serious girl-crush her.  She may or may not be an atheist, but she's about as far from being a sanctimonious god-bothering fundie dipshit as anyone in the next Congress could possibly be, and I am a smitten kitten.  Being cis scum, I'm not the sort she'd go for, but a boy can dream, can't she?

Political Song for Wafflebot to Sing

One Year Ago Today

art laffer is an idiot

sure, you know it, duncan black knows it, and i know it, too, but many of our brothers and sisters are either misinformed or fucking morons.  once we start digging a new circle in hell for art laffer and his followers, it is gonna fill up pretty quick.  

duncan black is shrill

atrios is onto a bigger point that has not really broken into our wider political consciousness.  this long-term economic crisis is destroying lives.  not the lives of the 1% and their mindless servants certainly, but many others are not similarly blessed with secure, high-paying jobs and the best health care (lots of) money can buy.

the passion of mittens

no sane person could hold out any hope for a douche like mittens who is little more than a nominally less-worthless al gore, but when you see these fuckheads so disheartened by the romney nomination, perhaps there is room for optimism.  romney got lucky that perry was even more of an idiot than bush, but his last mission will be the hardest for him since he has never had any visible personality or intelligence.  despite the teabagger nitwits who will never support him, romney will have a chance against obama.  if he governs without the most extreme of the teabaggers and manages to co-opt the obama appartatchiks, america will be better off because it will be the end of the democratic party as we know it, while the mostly hopeless romney policies will be little different than the horrible ones under obama.

Virag's Movie Reviews: Melancholia (2011)

I found this film very difficult to masturbate to;

Or:

Can we please get Lars von Trier to direct The Avengers 2?

Stick A Fork In Fox News

It's over.  They've lost their delight in wallowing in insanity after Obama's reelection.  Now authors come on the network to bitch slap them in front of the world, and all Fox can do is say thanks and move on.  In the old days, the entire network would have leapt into the breach and savaged Thomas Ricks until he was forced to walk it back.  Instead, they just sorta slouched away and went back to whatever their daily memo bullshit was, not really caring that some nobody just pissed all over 'em.

Right Wing Idiots Killed Hostess

I'm sure Koch-suckers like Kirk Pacenti love the idiots who destroyed the Hostess company, but reading the words of former CEO Gregory Rayburn will only make you worried that these assholes are fucking up everything around us.  He really is a douche, blaming the unions for his own incompetence and failure, but the worst are all the right-wing losers who come out on Yahoo news to shit in their own nest and do the bidding of the Galtian overload clowns.  Once again, as a species we are too stupid to live.

History Lesson Part 22

I work my way backwards using cynicism.

You don't have to be a Biblical scholar to understand that using historical justifications for modern colonialist atrocity is bullshit.  Citing the bible does get you the support of the wackiest wackjob fundies from both the old and new testaments, but there's no fucking way that any modern Israeli or American politician believes that nonsense.  The situation in Palestine has nothing to do with history or the Bible and everything to do with American Imperial Politics. 

It's Nice That We Have Such Idiots As Allies

This moron was the genius in charge of Israel's online propaganda war.  If he had the brainpower of half of a potato chip, he would have thought twice about putting such a dumb picture on THE FUCKING INTERNET.  Jesus, couldn't they find someone with just a bit of sense to propagate their lies?  I guess dipshit has a future as the Israeli Dennis Miller.

One Year Ago Today

obama's useless idiots

one of the biggest problems we as americans face in our politics is the phalanx of utterly useless obama apologists who waste a huge amount of space in the hopeless, hard-right center of the democratic party establishment.  these imbeciles are legion and serve no purpose except to battle mindlessly against truth and progress on behalf of the 1% and barack obama's political career.  very simply, they are the canon fodder of the class war, and they serve the interests of our unitary government as marginally more intelligent teabaggers.  while all of them share the characteristics of median-at-best intelligence and analytical skills, blind allegiance to conventional wisdom, and fanatic loyalty to their master, one of the most unsavory of these obama fluffers is imani gandy, the world's worst--and now unemployed--lawyer.  (say what you want about lawyers, but at least her employers were smart enough to can her sorry ass after they found out just how fucking dumb she was!)  i understand hero worship and the comfort of not having to think for yourself, but she is just so offensively stupid and annoyingly vapid; she embodies perhaps the worst of obama's failures.  she will refuse to acknowledge facts or logic or the sunrise if it might possibly diminish obama's politcal shine.  at this point, nobody knows for sure what role the federal government played in the occupy crackdown, if obama was directly complicit, or if they played any official role at all, but when you compare fools like gandy to proper journalists like dave lindorff and alexander cockburn, you see just how diseased our politics is.  who will be doing the actual reporting?  what sort of folks will follow the evidence where ever it leads?  who will admit a truth that may cast aspersions on barack obama?  not gandy and her fellow travelers, that's for sure.  at best, assholes like gandy and josh marshall will be conscripted into the vast governing relatively-moderate right-wing party of president romney after he dispatches the teabagging dipshits, which will allow the (few) decent and left-of-center democrats to begin to build a new and useful party of the left in america.  the gods know full well we don't need contemptible bastards like gandy and her ilk fucking up the important work that needs to be done. 

pink nagasawa

yowza.  in these pictures, the pink looks a bit brighter than the usual nagasawa pink.  i like this color as much as the purple metallic that is so so lovely.  i guess it's not really a nagasawa unless it has orange decals and yellow paint fill.  if only you could still get these in the states...

Political Song for Lilyanne to Sing

Scott DesJarlais: The 2012 Winner Of The Newt Gingrich Memorial Republican Of The Year Award

Rep. Scott DesJarlais is the Newt Gingrich Republican of the year!  More than any other Republican this year he embodies Newt's shameless hypocrisy, stunning ignorance, boundless stupidity, and unchecked evil.  DesJarlais has done much to make Newt proud and make himself deserving of this award.  DesJarlais forced his wife to have not one, but two abortions, abortions he wants to make unsafe and unaffordable to any and all women who will not fuck him.  That's Newt-tastic!  He not only cheated on his wife, but also sexually violated both patients and coworkers, using his position to both break the law by giving drugs to women he wanted to fuck and to intimidate underlings into fucking him.  That sort of shit gives Newt a wicked fucking boner.  I bet Newt wishes he'd become a medical doctor now that he knows you can get junkie trim with prescription drugs!  DesJarlais is every bit as big a piece of shit as Newt Gingrich.  Not even former Rep. Joe Walsh is as big a dirtbag asshole as DesJarlais is.  DesJarlais even makes titanic cockbag adulterer David Petraeus look like a piker!  All hail the 2012 Newt Gingrich Memorial Republican Of The Year Award winner Scott DesJarlais.

Shira Sometimes

Shira Toeplitz has been my favorite young talking head for a while.  I understand that her dream career path would lead her to being a heinous village idiot like Andrea Mitchell, wealthy, eventually married for the second or third time to an even bigger, more famous fucking moron than herself, and spouting vile inanities with the security of Washington privilege, but right now she is especially alluring, like that girl you would meet at Cornell or Penn or Maryland or NYU--or Northwestern, apparently--that girl who is your roommate's girlfriend or fraternity brother's girlfriend, sleeping and fucking in the same room where you sleep and fuck, sharing your couch and your weed, sharing your shower and nonchalantly brushing her teeth while you're taking a dump (or vice versa) and much to your surprise just being cool as hell 24/7, making you question your rules about only having girlfriends that are taller and blonder and hotter than girs who might have been Shira.  She's the girl that you would hang out with on the landing or in the quiet hallway in the aftermath of one epic party night, after your girl and her man passed out, and shoot the shit, talking about everything, laughing and flirting and loving every second of it till the sun comes up, and only realizing just how fucking amazing it was in the days and years that would follow.  She's the girl that after college, if she was still dating your fraternity brother, that would be the reason you made sure you never missed a reunion or summer party.  Of course, she'll get old, turn into Andrea Mitchell, and your memory will falter along with hers, blessedly saving you from both the most scalding regret as well as the heaviest disappointment and saving her from eternal mortification.

Political Song for Miss Sarah to Sing

White Privilege In The Police State

America today: empire abroad and police state at home.  This didn't happen yesterday, but the past generation has seen a tremendous growth of the American Police State.  Both right-wing major political parties have done pretty much everything possible to grow the police state so politics will not be the mechanism to dismantle it.  I wonder if taking on the police state mentality from the perspective of white privilege is not one of the best ways to frame it; attacking privilege in America in the interest of spreading equality is probably a useful (and necessary) first step.  Educating the cracker masses about white privilege is always a good thing when you want to create a more egalitarian society, and that education and discussion should lead right into an analysis of the police state.  Mike King writes about police violence in Counterpunch and how it reflects a history of racist violence in the United States.  The majority in the US needs to educate itself and unite if the society is ever going to advance beyond its Imperial and Fascist reality.

One Year Ago Today

a sad sad muppet

seeing disney associated with the muppets and that stupid new movie is really fucking sad.  what exactly did disney ever do except buy off other people's work and rip off some public-domain classics--other than be an asshole nazi and anti-semite?  very sad that every scrap of children's entertainment probably will have a disney logo any day now.  

michael berube: the apologete of the pennsyltucky vatican

in the spirit of the season, alexander cockburn mercilessly shreds the paterno family professor of literature at the pennsyltucky vatican over his love of war and support for the glorious american empire and her lovely lovely oil.  sweet jesus.  more cockburn--and gibbs--and less berube and his child-raping patrons please.

over oversized lugs and the women who love them

as someone whose latest custom steel frame was built with columbus sp tubing, perhaps i am not the intended client-base for the newish over-oversized lugs and tubing for road bikes.  i am however more curious than i should be.  richard sachs lists the lugs and fd braze-on but no word on tubes or fork crown that i can find.  llewellyn seems to have been on this for a while, but he couldn't be any farther away unless he starts building frames on the moon.  not being a framebuilder, i don't really know how much variety of tubing there really is for these frames and how much tuning can be done.  i would think that even the lightest gauges would be overkill on smaller frames, but i don't know first hand.  i'm also not sure who's done enough of these frames to know the ins 'n outs--probably australia, again, but still wicked far.  is the point light weight or extra rigidity?  are there ever going to be matching fork crowns and enough tubing choices to make it worthwhile?  we may never know the answers to these questions,  but tune in next time for another exciting episode of bullshit or not?

what's the matter with kansas, still

get this girl a scholarship!  let's hope this girl gets herself outa' kansas if she wants.  some of our over-priced selective and not-so-selective private universities on the east coast would benefit from a wise-ass kansas girl.

Hey, The iCarly Finale Really Sucked

Why did I watch this?  Why did i DVR it?  Because shut up, that's why, but jesus, the last show of iCarly was really bad.  For such a weird show--and it was very weird to have a teenage girl living in a huge apartment without any parents or any visible income with boys in and out and no appreciable boundries; teenage life is often pretty messy and Carly and Sam would probably have been pretty socially and sexually active in a more realistic show--it seemed odd that the creator didn't have more of a meta-narrative to wrap and didn't come up with a more creative and satisfying ending.  Yes, I understand it was a stupid kid's show filled with goofy, pointless comedy, but some of the aspects of the series were so astoundingly odd that it appeared for a while the Dan Schneider may have been telling a more interesting story, but apparently not.  Add Dan Schnieder to the list of notable TV idiots like Ronald D. Moore, Chris Carter, Rick Berman, JJ Abrahms, Brannon Braga, and Steven Moffat who in the end had nothing to say.  Sure those morons worked in scifi/fantasy, but iCarly was certainly a fantasy show more than anything else; if it had tried for even a smidge of reality, both Carly and Sam would have had discount cards for Planned Parenthood in Seattle and the show would never have worked as children's show and would probably have gotten Schneider dragged on with Nancy Grace if it managed to air on HBO or Showtime.  With suspension of disbelief in full effect, I was expecting to have some of the many loose ends wrapped up.  I thought that maybe the show would end with some real changes for the main characters.  Probably the only way that would have made sense would have been the end of the show coincide with their highschool graduation and with Carly and Freddie and Sam and Spencer ending up together, all of them growing up and moving on with their lives.  Instead, nothing changed and Sam rode off to a short-lived spinoff.  I also thought that the biggest loose end, Carly and Spencer's father, would get wrapped up in some clever way and explain the overarching giant plot question regarding Carly's inexplicable family circumstances, but it didn't happen; at the end he was back doing whatever dumb shit he was doing before.  I also thought that the father would have been played by some bigtime actor, maybe a George Clooney or a John Cusack or a Jon Hamm or a Kyle Gass.  I guess it could have been worse; Paul Giamatti could have played Col. Shay.  In the end, the end of iCarly was lame and pointless and, almost impossibly, made the whole series look less interesting and clever.

Virag's Movie Reviews: This Means War (2012)

If your date picked this movie for you to watch, it is quite possible your date hates you.  If your date liked this movie, it is a given that you hate the person you are dating.  Not a single change could have made this film any worse.  Certain things would have made the movie just as bad but not appreciably worse.  The cast was not only not believable in the film but also had absolutely no chemistry.  If for some reason you had decided to film this idiotic script and hired an incompetent and unimaginative director, as someone did, obviously, then the only hope for the film was the cast.  Oops.  What the fuck was Angela Bassett doing in this crap?  I guess the check didn't bounce.  If you have no humor and bad acting and a dumb script, well maybe the director can really do something amazing and stage some action set pieces that elevate the art of cinema.  Sure, maybe, but not here, not with the asshole directing This Means War.

I was probably wrong in one respect; there was a singular choice that actually could have made this horrible artifact even more detestable: they could have put Paul Giamatti in it.

Political Song for Pat Roberston to Sing

Virag's Movie Reviews: Red (2010)

PG-13.  Jesus Frakking Christ.  Whatever possibility of accidental amusement was smothered in its dogbed by the goddamned PG-13 rating.  Red is an odd film, an almost completely hollow enterprise with what should be a compelling cast which is unfortunately flat and lifeless.  I guess I didn't see the point of this film.  It looked like a mashup of deleted scenes from Burn After Reading.

One Year Ago Today

occupy saab

i'm not sure this is gonna help.

 

thankfully shrill: dave lindorff

something tells me dave lindorff will not be out bringing out the vote for obama next year.

Hurricane Sandy Sez: Welcome To The New Normal

The message should be pretty clear by now.  This is the new normal.  What was once an anomaly will now be a regular occurrence.  It is not important now whether it is man made, sun spots, ocean cycles or divine malfeasance.  It is getting warmer, and the atmosphere is a heat engine.  Warmer means more energy to drive storms and ocean currents.  The water will be warmer, and the storms will be stronger, and the sea levels will be higher.  That means more wind, higher storm surges, more flooding, more damage.  If the pattern manifests itself as a Sandy-style storm every year--and it doesn't matter what fools like Joe Bastardi think; a 10 or 20 year cycle will be just as disastrous as a 1000 year cycle--then there will be no more New York City, at least not where it is now.  There is massive damage, disease, wreckage and suffering.  The news coverage may have been pretty much toast after a month, but the damage will take 10 time longer to repair than most people think, and if there's another storm next year and the year after that, billions of dollars of real estate along the Atlantic coast will be a wasteland.  If I were Binghamton, I'd be pretty worried about New York City showing up one day and taking all my shit and sending me packing off to Saskatoon at the point of 50,000 NYPD guns.

Uri Avnery and Hammas Hope in Gaza

Uri Avnery is pretty bullish in this Counterpunch piece on progress in Palestine after the rise of Hamas and Egyptian President Morrissey Morsi in the wake of yet another Israeli defeat.  Avnery is emphatic that Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas must be bolstered in order to maintain stability in the rest of Palestinian leadership.  Let's hope this is indeed the start of newly powerful international support of freedom for Palestine, and a the start of a newly powerful Palestinian leadership leading to a final defeat for the Israel: one man/one woman, one vote in Israel and Palestine.

Rude Pundit Makes A Point

A good one.  These right-wing cockbags are getting all bent over some idiot and her idiot picture.  Really, for someone like Lindsey Stone to lose her job and become a public disgrace when Dick Cheney and Jamie Dimon walk around loose is beyond farce.  If we really gave a fuck about justice and decency, we'd focus on the big stuff first and not worry about harmless clowns we disagree with.  The internet is not just a porn delivery system, it is, like other mass-media before it, a breeding ground for inane distractions designed to prevent the growth of a more intelligent and wise human society.

John Doe's Black Horse

One Year Ago Today

something in the water

 

history says, there's always got to be a fall guy

i guess this should only elicit an ironic no shit, but it does tell you just how far we have to go before we root out the all the toady scum at all levels of society that fight against liberty and fairness every day on behalf of the 1%.  of course, seeing linda katehi forced to resign would be a fine thing, but it's really only one small step for mankind.  

the empire strikes back, again

less money for people and more money for oil companies, that's the true mission of our imperial adventure in libya.  now libya has traded one set of problems for a whole new set, courtesy of freedom bombs and oil companies, and every one of these insights into the true aims of american imperial activity also tells us important stories about the workings of the oligarchy here at home.  each and every dollar that western oil companies can liberate from the domestic economy in libya will be delivered to the economy of the 1%; regard for libyan health, literacy, education and domestic stability does not enter into the equation.  in the same way, the goal of radical wealth redistribution to the top 1% in the united states will continue without pause if the current officials in both major parties remain in office.  far from being a method of defending some inane concept of liberty or freedom, our imperial wars are only waged to capture more of the world's wealth resources on behalf of the oligarchy.  maybe some of our more honorable politicians should start acknowledging this reality and begin the education of the american people at large.

Think Pink

Top Gear: Apocalypse

Awful, just awful.  The worst thing that ever happened to Top Gear was when they realized they could rake in real money in the United States.  It was good to bring back those 10-year-old episodes that they had never shown, but the clip shows and bullshit that Jeremy Clarkson couldn't be bothered with have sucked hella bad.  Much of the normal Top Gear shows work very well as an entertaining dysfunctional sit-com featuring truly reprehensible people, but these fillers have been shitty.

Eat Me, Pilgrim

The Reason For The Season

One Year Ago Today

ignore the human sacrifice

just look at this scary fucking shit and you'll get a thousand reasons to not do anything these jerkoffs tell you.  the 'about the author' on this nonsense is especially rich.  i'm pretty sure any asshole this stupid is beyond any meaningful redemption. 

better at free throws than chris dudley, too

john kitzhaber not only makes a better governor than irredeemable fuckwad chris dudley could ever hope to, but i bet he can make a free throw occasionally as well.

digby hearts lil luke russert

digby continues to be the world's finest resource for the always crucial resource: righteous pissing all over luke russert. dylan ratigan is a fatuous turd himself, so he and russert get along fine, just fine. 

fukushima mon amie

the fukushima disaster may have disappeared from the discourse and the imagination in most of the united states, but the whole situation will defy easy solutions for many years.  too cheap to meter, indeed, asshole.

jeannie longo's freedom toast

i have no idea if longo is 100% clean or doped to the gills or just tweaked, but she's still out there getting it done somehow.  no amount of doping makes the pedals turn on their own.  she's one of the world's truly remarkable athletes.  

with prostitutes skilled in the arts

hahahahahaha.  sarah palin isn't even a very good whore.  you would never see the more skilled whores like hannity or o'reilly doing anything to betray roger ailes or rupert murdoch.  those cheap sluts would never spit out anything that belonged to ailes or murdoch on another john's show.  palin clearly can't do anything right.  she'll be back on the corner after fox news dumps her onto the street.

t-bowed

elway, successful quaterback, reactionary douchebag and not the father of eric cartman, tries to be reasonable about tim tebow, but he can't bring himself to embrace the idea of a quarterback who can't throw a football.  plus, i'd imagine that tebow is so fucking annoying and ignorant that even a tool like elway can't stomach him.  maybe jesus will order tebow to change positions.

Chris Christie Countdown: How Long Till He Becomes A Democrat

6XL fleece-wearing tub o' lard Chris Christie is on his way to becoming a Democrat.  It only remains to be seen how long it will take him to understand that he will never win a primary contest for President in the Republican party.  Once he does, he'll waddle his way across the aisle because he really wants to be the most ginormous modern US President.  He won't win in either party, but it would be fab to make him go on a very public apology tour and kiss the rings of half a dozen important Democratic Party constituencies.  At least that way Moby's Dick will give us some amusement.  If he shows sufficient fealty, then the Democrats can make him their thin-skinned, camera-hogging blowhard attack whale.

One Year Ago Today

cognitive dissonance @ yahoo news

yahoo news is kinda sorta trying to get to the big picture about spending cuts and austerity in a piece about impending cuts in the wake of the super committee, but it ain't easy for 'em.  they can't quite go all the way in reporting the bigger picture, but the effort has gotta be worth something.  the conversation about spending and economic activity is certainly necessary and valuable; the comments on that story show just how fucking stupid so many of our brothers and sisters really are.  cutting off unemployment and cutting social security payments is incredibly foolish given our current situation; any direct payments to citizens, especially those without other income, are fantastic stimulus to the local, ground-level economy, so continuing unemployment benefits and other transfer payments should be lauded and used as a primary economic stimulus policy by both parties.  that, of course, is impossible when most of our elected officials are walking cockbags and koch-suckers, but it doesn't change the reality of the situation.  atrios's helicopter drop schtick is not completely a joke. 

grove innovations x frame. also, too.

unlike this guy, i would love to have a grove innovations x frame.  it is wicked wicked and all business for the pennsylvania/new york state/new england type of trail riding.  they look great out on the trails; i used to see two of them regularly way back when (when i was bopping around on the world famous diamond back apex).  really, i think a tweaked and updated--maybe with a lefty up front--x frame would be a fantastic modern frame, and like some other things a real refreshing break from the same old bullshit.

time machine time share

this guy might be willing to pony up for a time share of a tardis.

the big stick

the coup in honduras is one of the innumerable shameful failures of obama's hope and change promises that tends to get lost among the wars and the lifeless economy and the popular uprising, but it's still an ongoing tragedy for the people suffering through our destructive policy down there.  good job, mr. president.

a newt has a tiny brain

every newt has a tiny brain.  this cockhead is what happens to pass for an idea-man amongst the republicans.  it's great.  privatizing social security.  gingrich couldn't be any more of a cheap pandering slut if he was volunteering to be the center of attention at lloyd blankfein and jamie dimon's bukkake christmas party.  

sooper dooper

the super committee was a bullshit exercise from the start, and its failure is a good thing in every way.  it won't matter much in the long run because obama and most of the democrats and republicans in congress are on the same page and are hell bent on fucking things up with tax cuts and welfare money for the 1% paid for with tax increases and cuts for the 99%, but now at least we will get a smidge more transparency and accountability.

yeti ultimate. why not?

as long as i'm jonesing for an off road toad or an eastern woods, why don't i just go all-in with obscure mountain bike action-style play bikes and lust after a yeti ultimate.  i mean, getting the time machine to work the first time is probably the hardest part, so once you're cool, you can just wind up and go.

jake plummer gets it, atmo

pretty reasonable jake plummer on tebow and his faux-christian bullshit.  plummer strikes a good tone in support of the broncos and whatever gets them a win, while his tebow slam is nicely restrained, considering. 

bernie sanders is not all bad

senator bernie sanders is not all bad, i guess.  he is one of the better senators we have, though that is not at all a compliment.  in reality, he's just the sort of center-left politician who would be barely tolerated in a true left of center major party, but compared to what we have now he looks like eugene v. debs.

by the way, nobody should ever be within a thousand meters of wolf 'the voice of israel' blitzer without mentioning the magic words jerusalem post.

norman finkelstein is an american treasure.

trouble down south

spain is the fourth-largest economy in the eurozone, and they are in deep trouble with their moribund economy and horrendous unemployment problems.  they've now traded obama-esque corporatist incompetence for some right-wing culture war bullshit generously ladled all over the top of another corporatist jerkoff by that cocksucker the popenfurher and their very own native backward-ass, woman-hating teabagger types.  the austerity cuts and following economic collapse are coming here soon, and we can expect the same sort of political results and absolute failure to address the actual problems as the parties rise and fall in each subsequent election when they are blamed for ongoing economic crisises. 

slightly south of the border

if this sort of shit had happened to the unfortunate wives of bush and cheney, fox news would have michelle malkin and black ann coulter on the air 24 hours a day screaming for drone attacks and summary executions. 

josh marshall: will be another dim bulb on fox soon

tpm's josh marshall is not exactly a deep thinker.  his analysis is usually simplistic and kneejerk beltway conventional wisdom compatible nonsense; he's desperate to get his top-level village idiot credentials, and like a good village idiot, he's almost always wrong.  his belief that the violence against the occupy movement is somehow a threat to the greater message is asinine.  the unfortunate reality is that any publicity is good publicity and the mounting violence will aid in forcing the message of economic and social inequality into our political and cultural discourse.  distrust of the police and fear of police violence are important touchstones for many of the 99%, and the majority of the currently politically-active americans are not as easily distracted as josh marshall would like.  common experience is a powerful educator and motivator; it will help the 99% move together.