Step Down

Listening to Obama and Hillary talking today, I think more people should employ diplomatic language when dealing with sticky situations. (Click.)

A Little Less Vitriolic

I don't have much to add to the conversation on the events of this weekend, other than crazy people will find a way to be crazy, with or without "vitriolic political discourse" and with or without guns.

I'm no Gadsden Flag waver. I actually prefer the Washington's Cruisers design. But I might fly this new one I made for my countrymen prone to party in the tea way.

Originally posted at Radio Free Babylon, which may soon become the only place I blog.

Make Him Stop!

Sorry, I'm such a sucker for 4th grade humor. (And I love dogs.)

Available at the store.

Hope and Change Again

Pick Your Poison

If you're a Fox Nut or an MSNBC Drone, this is your button today.

I Was Wrong About This Guy

A long time ago I gave Dennis Miller a hard time. I still believe that the "Just For Men" thing in the beard was bad and made him look like a Saudi royal walking through a flowerbed holding hands with George W. Bush, but I have adjusted my views on his talents. I thought of Miller in the same way you think of a washed-up rock act that turns to country music because it's easy money; kind of like what Skynyrd is doing hanging around with Hannity. I thought, "Oh, failed comedian turns to the right wing for an audience that will lap up some easy jokes and give him a paycheck."

He didn't work out on Monday Night Football, where his obscure cultural references and intellectually-tinged asides were lost on his co-hosts and most of the audience. He didn't work out in his own late-night TV talk show. So it seemed like Dennis was grabbing for whatever he could when he showed up as a right-leaning talk-radio host.

But I've been listening to him every day during "exercise time" on the Blowflex out in the garage, and the guy - as he himself might say - "has some chops." He still has that funny habit of referring to men as "cats" and addressing women as "doll-face," but those idiosyncrasies are as endearing as they are goofy and they're part of the Miller shtick. What makes his show unique is that he (for the most part) refuses to tow the party line. He still comes from a conservative POV and is as critical as any pundit on the right of the administration and its allies in Congress, but he won't do the knee-jerk thing, and more importantly, he doesn't stoop to the demonizing rhetoric so popular among his right-side cohorts like Hannity, Crowley, Levin, Ingraham, Savage, Beck, Bortz or Limbaugh. I think that's because he's smarter than them and can actually think through an issue or the daily talking point issued by the spin firm of Gingrich, Rove & Associates. What's more, he hasn't lost the cutting-edge humor that made him popular years ago on SNL. He's almost like a Jon Stewart for the right, where politics and entertainment meet at that great intersection called comedy. 

There need to be more Dennis Millers. He can make you think, and he will engage someone with an opposing viewpoint without calling them names or labeling them insane. It's a shame his show isn't more popular. It sure should be.

The Spin!

Volume something, number something, I'm too lazy to look it up right now. (Click for big.)

Crossposted to Radio Free Babylon

Dale Peterson is Gonna Kick Some Ass

UPDATE: I would've lost that money I was going to place on Dale. Seems he got his ass kicked. Disregard this entire post.

I've been away for a week, so apologies if I'm posting something everyone else already has. (When I'm gone that long, I tend to mark all RSS items as "read" as I don't have the patience to sift through the thousands of things I missed.)

Via Dan Eck came this gem in my inbox for Alabama candidate for Agricultural Commissioner Dale Peterson. From the grand cinematic score to the veiled threats to calling his opponent a dummy, this guy should be a shoe-in for what he calls one of the most powerful positions in Alabama. Dog tags and Marine Corps insignia over the Constitution. Cowboy hat. Every cliche is covered. (Correction: He didn't include an American flag. Missed an opportunity there.) Every hot button hit. Via The Washington Post comes this quote: "Republican consultants are conspiring feverishly" to produce more such ads in order to "cross the Rachel Maddow Threshold and get mocked by liberals." I'm not mocking. What Rachel and the Screaming Left don't get is that this stuff works. This is advertising at its most effective. (Some guy who thinks he's funny has created a spoof of this. It's lame.) A commenter at that same WaPo link says, "It's ironic that some of the enlightened elite don't realize that Dale is in on the joke." The rifle is the perfect touch at the end. I'd put money on Peterson winning this primary on June 1.

A Discussion Over a Disc

Whether you watch it Fair and Balanced or prefer The Place for Politics, there's no getting away from The Spin. And it drifts into your own conversations, as these two dear friends discover. (Click for the large)

Yeah - I Think That About Says It

Made a poster to amuse myself.

Our Good Friends, the House of Saud

A country based on Sharia law. An Islamic monarchy. A country where women can not vote. A country where there are no opposition parties. A country whose inhabitants are 100% Muslim, and a country where preaching anything other than Islam is punishable by death. (Facts all found here.)

Let's forget about all those things. Advertising is about how to spin your service or product for the good. They put together a pretty ad that makes them seem like a progressive and cool place to do business.

Crossposted to Radio Free Babylon.

About That Tim Tebow Anti-Abortion SuperBowl Ad

 

(click)

Tea Party Patriots

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Crossposted to Radio Free Babylon.

Face It, Orlando: You're a One-Trick Town

Let's just give it up. We are known for Disney. Enough pretending to be a world-class city. We fail every time we try. We are known for the Mouse (and as the place where babies disappear in the care of white-trash parents).

While some will argue that a game in the mud is a fun and watchable throwback to the good old days of football, the rest will counter that in today's environment, where turf management is a disciplined practice, if not a science, a field that disappears after a little rain is reason enough for some sorry-ass stadium manager to lose his job. The stadium is city-owned, which pretty much explains the problem.

And they still hope that this field hosts qualifying matches for the World Cup. 

A bunch of muddy dudes help a guy named McCray up off a field of shit that made 

Orlando look like a cow town unable and undeserving of hosting a bowl game.

The Great Beyond

Much Bigger

This is My Rifle

Make the Image Bigger

Note: This is not a Second Amendment statement. I'm fine with guns. It's a statement on the idiocy of people who bring loaded weapons to town hall meetings about healthcare.

Original 1967 ad found here.

Land of the Spin, Home of the Talking Point

I don't know how they can even call it a debate anymore. It's beyond hopeless. If you're not disgusted, you're not paying attention. I need a long vacation away from my country. When I come back, I fully expect it will be worse.

Click for the larger, stealable version.

Crossposted to Radio Free Babylon.

Be a Tea Bag Designer in Your Spare Time

A career with a promising future in today's America is banner ad designer for the right wing mob. I just threw this one together in about five minutes. I think it says everything they want me to say.

I love how the mob yells, "Do you want the government deciding who your doctor is? Do you want the government deciding what procedures you can get?"

Well, right now United Healthcare decides those things for me...at an exorbitant rate.

Or this is one of their favorites: "What has the government ever run right?"

Aren't these the same folks that love "our men and women in uniform" more than you or me? I'm pretty sure they'd have a hard time saying the military, a government entity, is shoddily run.

Now I need to make one showing him as the foreign-born Muslim prince boy, puppet of the Illuminati, destroyer of all we hold dear. Crushing baby skulls and lifting the dress of Lady Liberty while he urinates on Old Glory. Yeah.

We're All Deranged

If you enjoy satire or if the recent election left you spinning in a dizzy way, you might like Matt Taibbi's book The Great Derangement.

Going undercover in a Texas church, the author gets baptized, fakes speaking in tongues and makes friends with some lonely folks. While I found this technique evilly deceptive, the author balances his right-wing exposé with one as equally indicting of the left. Infiltrating some 9/11 Truth groups, he cleverly debunks their theories with an imaginary scene involving Cheney and crew as they mastermind an impossible scheme to take down the twin towers.

Taibbi is a bastard, but he is a truthful bastard, and this book, while disheartening, is also enlightening. In an outing to the mall with his church friends to "witness" to the masses, he is appalled at the desire of random strangers to unload their troubles on him, surmising:.

"No creature on earth is more inclined to public verbal diarrhea than a modern American; whether it's the AA culture, or the post-Me Generation emphasis on "finding yourself", or all those new-Woody Allens confessing to their therapists, or just too many damn people fantasizing about telling the audience of Oprah what influenced their latest album ("In the fourth track, I'm trying to share the sacred message of His Holiness the Dalai Lama..."), we live in a country where people believe implicitly in their right to bore the living shit out of absolutely everybody within haranguing distance with tales of their miserable, lonely, and inevitably self-deluding searches for personal fulfillment in the emotional desert that is our crass commercial culture."

In between ranting at (and sympathizing with) the hard left and the hard right, Taibbi skewers the process we call government, showing it for the back-room, lobbyist-driven sham that it is, regardless of which party is in power. The paperback edition has a September, 2008 afterword in which the author is even more disgusted at the tone of the McCain/Obama contest than he was with the do-nothing Democrats who took power under Pelosi.

He concludes that this fractured nation, and our ability to pick and choose and create our own customized news tailored to our prejudices and fears, has turned us into haters. We go to the polls to vote against someone, not for someone, and that person we vote against is the embodiment of all that is evil and corrupt - and we do so in the name of patriotism. Whether you're a Texas Christian convinced that Pelosi and Obama are tools of Satan, or you're a 9/11 Truther convinced that Cheney is the evil Illuminati's instrument for a new world government, you're both on the far fringes of reality, and you might do well to shut off your Internet for awhile and stop attending meetings that reinforce lies.

With a new cover by hipster illustrator Shephard Fairey, he of the iconic Obama art.

Crossposted to Radio Free Babylon.

Sanford's Options

I don't know who is managing Governor of South Carolina Mark Sanford's public relations, but he's really blowing it with the wishy-washy statements. First he confesses in a weird ramble, then he confesses that his confession wasn't exactly true, now he refuses to speak to the media.

I've drafted two statements for you, Governor. Quit being a clown and choose one.

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