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Archive for the 'willful ignorance' Category
Finally, someone is standing up to this wingnut piffle and calling it what it is: vile, contemptible nonsense!
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Back, by popular demand…
• You have to watch this video to the bitter end to catch the real money quote (after a bunch of clips of Fox”News,” talking heads discussing quid pro quo with regard to the two journalists who were just released from Korea, thanks to Bill Clinton’s efforts, there appears a photo of Oliver North):
You mean kinda like a quid pro quo like an American government would sell arms to an outlaw regime to secure the release of hostages, and then take that money to fund a bloody Central American war, and then have this guy lie to Congress about it? Because if that’s the kind of stuff you’re worried about, you should really ask that guy about it, ’cause he’s got a show on your fucking network!
• Web of Deception has the dirt on so many people you know and love (to hate?). Who knew that Lou “I’m not a racist!” Dobbs pays so little tax on so much property in New Jersey!
• Speaking of Lou… On the Birthers: the stupidity of this “controversy” might be merely amusing, if it weren’t for the way the Republican party still coddles scary racists. But then again, maybe Barack Obama is the anti-christ and maybe he does want to kill Sarah Palin’s baby.
• Why am I keeping my fingers crossed (while eating well and exercising every day)? Because I have United Health Care insurance, so if I get sick (or pregnant, god forbid!), I might just be screwed. But then again, I’m one of the lucky Americans, because I have coverage.
• The Republican response? Obstruction. Violence. Fakery (to put it nicely). Stupidity. Incoherence. But no real plan for fixing health care. But then again, the blue dog democrats aren’t exactly moving things along either (and where’s Obama?).
• And, while we’re at it, why do these people freak out when they hear the truth? Stupid is as stupid does.
• On the lighter side, check out this interloper squirrel.
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But this is going a bit far. How does something this unbelievably obtuse make it past all the filters that are supposed to protect the center of a show from looking so pathetically foolish?
It’s been a while and these things do pile up…
• How The Average U.S. Consumer Spends Their Paycheck — this is an interesting chart. We’re by no means average (we’ve never carried a car loan, for one thing, and we probably spend more on food and alcohol, even though we don’t eat out much), but the proportions seem to be generally true.
• Have you tried goofram yet? It’s a combination of google and wolfram|alpha.
• Think you’re a geek? Have you mastered the essential skills?
• The Young Republicans have elected an Aryan as their leader.
• Barney Frank visited the Daily Show last week.
• Just how rich is Fitzwilliam Darcy? (Here’s an interesting bit of trivia: Pride and Prejudice is not only my favorite novel, it’s also the first book I ever read aloud to Emmie — starting when she was about a week old.) And speaking of Jane Austen, today is the anniversary of her death.
• How’s your sense of pitch? (I scored a 26 out of 26 — which, if you’ve ever heard me sing, you know must mean that I hear pitch perfectly — I just can’t produce it that way.)
• Local coverage of Zach Wamp’s psooper psekret christian adultery cult (read about yet another C Street philanderer here — and here!).
• You Suck at Craig’s List is pretty funny (via Joe. My. God.).
• Badass of the Week, featuring Blenda, the Viking Heroine!
• Rick Perry is apparently rethinking that whole Texas-as-a-country thing (seriously — who voted for this guy?).
• If you want to see the Great Barrier Reef, you better go soon.
• Can someone find Glenn Beck a nice small room with soft walls and a good therapist?
• … and speaking of health care (that’s what set Beck off)… Glenn doesn’t have it quite right when it comes to France’s system. The current American system is fine until you get sick, but will the next one be any better?
• This can’t be said enough times: the only thing abstinence-only “education” produces is unbelievably stupid kids.
• I loves me some Usain Bolt footage. He makes all the other best runners in the world look like my grandma.
• And finally, Pat Buchanan: he really stepped in it this week — even more than usual!
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Here’s a real hodgepodge from the past week!
• And you thought Episode I was bad? Check out an early draft of the original Star Wars.
• These two girls totally outdo Robert Loggia and Tom Hanks, but then again, they’re not supposedly improvising.
• Things disappear! Like the Aral Sea and the Amazon Rainforest — and beyond that, farms sink!
• Food from around the world: in hospitals and in schools (and speaking of school lunches, there’s this too)!
• How much do we love to defend marriage?? Oh, so much that the fun overflowed from one video into another! Also, we like to mock Pat Robertson with beautiful music videos.
• In medical and curing blindness news, this is really awesome.
• Do you like to have pictures with your data? Something to make it seem less dry and less science-y? Then you’re going to like these sites.
• Did you have a video made of your wedding? If so, it’s going to seem so incredibly lame after you watch this one.
• Watch out, all you greedy, overbearing religious cult-like groups! Scientology has Scientologists have been banned, and those awful Mormons have been taken down another notch. Ha.
• Attention Ferris Fans! Cameron’s home is for sale!
• And finally, some quotes for the week (we’ll start with the icky and work our way to the more reasonable):
Let’s hope that the key conferences aren’t when she’s menstruating or something, or just before she’s going to menstruate.
– G. Gordon Liddy, troglodyte, doing an awfully good job of making the other neanderthals of his ilk look almost human by comparison. (Update: and there’s always the problem of bears.)
Honestly folks. If we paid as much attention to the sexual activities of Catholic priests as we do to homosexuals wanting to marry, we probably could have saved a lot of children from years of guilt, shame, anger and pain.
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…And Tax Day will perhaps be forever changed…
Everybody’s talking about teabagging this week (much to Rachel’s amusement!). Even Chattanoogans, who are notoriously non-activist, had some tea parties today. Events all over the country have been getting a lot of media coverage, but I wonder if at least part of the reason for that is the fact that protesters’ choice of language is providing so much amusement for people (and giving at least one poor old woman asthma attacks!).
But besides their unfortunate use of language — which is a place they keep going back to (more here), deliciously — conservatives might also be hurting their reputation in another way: their choice of metaphor just doesn’t ring true, and so it leaves them looking clueless and petulant. The “tea party” is, I gather, supposed to refer back to the Boston Tea Party (where they dumped chests, not bags, of tea into the harbor (not on the sidewalk) — tea which had been siezed, not purchased at the nearest Wal-Mart Asian Import Store). The 1773 Tea Party was part of a protest of the the fact that colonists were being asked to pay levies while not being allowed representation by the taxing authority — but sadly, the reference is willfully ignorant.
The events across the country were not being put together by people who suffer from a lack of representation by the taxing authority. Today’s demonstrators had the opportunity to vote for their representatives in government just last fall. I can only assume that these activists took advantage of that civic opportunity, so at this point, they’re really just being sore losers. These people put politicians in power who demonstrated an incredible incompetence at running a government over a number of recent years, and then they suffered terrific losses at the polls as a result. That is what makes today’s protests not so much like an iconic event that might change the course of history and more like a toddler’s tantrum — complete with the red face, teary eyes, and bulging diaper — after just 86 days in the minority. As Joe says:
I’m all for fighting against big government. My only question is: why just now? With a few exceptions, where have you guys been?
And, I might add, where are your suggestions as to an alternative course? (Come on, be serious — if all you’re going to say is “shut down the government,” then, really, how is that helping?) Given where we are, how should we proceed?
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First the original ad, created by the forces of wing-nuttia, or the National Organization for Marriage (Oh, the gays! If they can get married, then my life will be ruined!!!! And the sky is falling!!!):
And then came the truth…
Continue reading ‘Nom, Nom, Nom-nom!’
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This has to be the worst pope in modern history.
On the way to sub-Saharan Africa, the most AIDS-ravaged place on the planet, the Pope is telling people that condom use increases the spread of AIDS. How many of Africa’s 130 million Catholics will die because of this Pope?
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Here’s juicy bit: “The government doesn’t create jobs. Let’s get this notion out of our heads that the government creates jobs. Not in the history of mankind has the government ever created a job.” — Michael Steele, current chair of the RNC
We saw that on TV one evening this past week and G-Dog, who is a professor and has been employed by the University of Tennessee for close to 20 years, turned to me and said merely, “oh, really?”
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About
Hello! I'm Alice, which is my real name (most of the other names here have been changed, though, to protect the innocent). I live in an almost-100-year-old house in downtown Chattanooga, TN with my first husband, G-Dog (who is from New Canaan, CT), and a cockapoo named Nonnie (the moniker comes from a Laurens van der Post book). We have one kid (that we know of) -- a daughter, Emmie, who plays a supporting role on the blog. She's off being a student, but she pops in often enough to keep things interesting.
I originally hale from Batavia, NY, a quiet little town in rural western New York. G-Dog and I met while attending college in Carlisle, PA, and then moved on to Chapel Hill, NC together before finally settling in Tennessee. Other places we've lived in long enough to have a mailing address include London and San Francisco.
This blog is about a lot of things -- the places I visit, things I cook, people I meet, photos I take, things I read, and -- of course, politics. I'm an unrepentant, arugula-eating, progressive, liberal, lefty, euro-loving, educated elitist and I'm looking forward to an administration that doesn't raise my blood pressure quite as often as the outgoing one did...
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