It all starts with bureaucracy, of course. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, which has "Firearms" right there in its name, regulates ammunition based on laws passed by Congress. One of those laws, the Law Enforcement Officers Protection Act of 1986, which passed 400-21 in the House and 97-1 in the Senate and was signed by God Reagan, says that any ammunition that "may be used in a handgun," is made of certain materials, like steel, and can pierce body armor can be banned. That's in the actual law. In fact, if the ATF didn't seek to ban those kinds of bullets, it would be violating the law. Pretty simple, no? Pretty cut and dried, no? If Congress doesn't like it, it can change the law.
So now there's this ammo, 5.56mm constituent projectiles of SS109 and M855 cartridges, which had been exempt from the law because they weren't used in handguns. This was the "sporting purposes" exception to the law. But now there are handguns that can fire these steel-tipped, armor-piercing bullets. The ATF is proposing banning the manufacture, sale and import of them. You can keep all the ones you have or will buy in your hording frenzy. But after that, the law says, the safety of police officers comes before your desire to hunt deer wearing bulletproof vests.
Of course, the gun-fellating right has lost its mind over this proposal because the ATF is part of the executive branch and that means the Negro communist Muslim president who hates America must want to kill all the white people and take their guns in order to burn the Constitution and install a Sharia law caliphate in the country. Or something like that.
"Obama to ban bullets by executive action," says the headline at the Washington Examiner (motto: "If you think the Washington Times is batshit crazy, you haven't met us"). "It's starting," the paper warns, "As promised, President Obama is using executive actions to impose gun control on the nation, targeting the top-selling rifle in the country, the AR-15 style semi-automatic, with a ban on one of the most-used AR bullets by sportsmen and target shooters." Which would be true except for the part where President Obama is not involved at all in this decision and has signed no executive action on it.
Yes, the ammo is used by the AR-15 rifle, the one beloved by mass shooters and men with tiny penises (sometimes one and the same). The NRA gets all folksy about the threat: "If they can’t ban the pie, so the thinking apparently goes, they might at least get the apples." That metaphor would work if there were only one kind of bullet or apple. If it turns out Macouns were poisonous when baked in a pie, you'd probably just say, "Well, screw it. Time to use Cortlands." You wouldn't gripe, "I'll never be able to make pie again."
The attitude of the gun-huffers is best exemplified by obvious sportsman Rush Limbaugh, who said on his show, Flabby the Deaf Clown's Masturbatorium of Hate, "It's the first. It's the beginning. You don't think all bullets except those held by the military and the cops are the objective? This is how we end up losing these...[Obama] wants to take guns out of everybody's hands, and if he can't do that, he's gonna take the bullets that go in the guns out of everybody's hands, and he's just begun that process today." Anyone who believes that deserves to be a shut-in with only one station available on his tiny radio.
The Rude Pundit's favorite comments came from a lackadaisical gun store owner in Springfield, Missouri, who is a former cop. He doesn't think the ban will happen; however, "Gun people tend to create their own drama," he said. "If we freaked out every time BATF discusses something we'd be freaking out on this all the time. Sometimes gun owners are their own worst enemy."
As for the usefulness of the ammo? While you'll hear a bunch about how popular the bullets are, this Springfield store owner said that "most of the target ranges his customers use have steel targets that can be damaged by the steel-tipped rounds so they don't buy that kind of ammunition."
They do like using it for "plinking," which is shooting bottles and crap, although unless those bottles have vests on, you could probably use something else. Also, they like it for home defense. What's more likely? Your home being invaded by murderers wearing body armor? Or some criminal using the bullets in an AR pistol to take out a cop?
2/26/2015
Texas Conservatives Celebrate Hating Gays in an Incredibly Gay Way
That pink-decorated cake being sliced by men holding hands is not for the joyous occasion of two of those fellows getting married. Oh, no. That was an event to mark the 10th anniversary of the amendment to the Texas constitution that declared "Marriage in this state shall consist only of the union of one man and one woman." It also added, dickishly, "This state or a political subdivision of this state may not create or recognize any legal status identical or similar to marriage."
You might say, "Oh, sweet Rude Pundit, why would you think this looks like a pair of gay men cutting cake after taking their vows?" And the Rude Pundit would show you this:
These pictures couldn't be queerer if under the table was another dude blowing the big guy with the cake knife. (And, for the record, it totally looks like that big guy is being blown by a dude under the table while his new husband looks on approvingly.)
It was actually part of "Faith and Family Day," obviously the one day a year that Texans can express how much they love their god and how much they care about their families. The other 364? Fuck 'em raw.
Faith and Family Day involves a murder of nutter right-wing groups coming together to tell you how much they hate, hate, hate shit while telling you how much you need to love, love, love their GodJeebus. If you went, you got to hear Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick tell the gathered families, "We can be the leader in education, we can be the leader in creating jobs, we can be the leader in all that stuff, but we really need to be the leader for Christ. That’s the answer, that’s the hope that this state and country must look to...I don’t know if the end days are today, or a thousand years from now. That’s why we have to stand for Christ in all that we do." Obviously, inclusiveness was the message he wanted to impart: we'll include anyone who sniffs Christ's filthy feet. Muslims, Jews, atheists, and assorted heathens need not apply.
By the way, this speech followed Rep. Jeff Leach imploring everyone not to allow Sharia law to take over. That sound you hear is Jesus slapping his forehead as he thinks, "Irony just got crucified in the Lone Star State."
2/25/2015
Ben Carson Goes Down on Phyllis Schlafly
In a clusterfuck of stupid and deranged, Ben Carson, that black guy conservatives like, has written a bewilderingly naive piece praising anti-women's rights activist Phyllis Schlafly, who, yes, is still alive after 90 years of polluting the earth, demonstrating quite clearly that there is no God. The occasion is that Schlafly will be given some goddamned award at the Conservative Political Action Conference, an orgy of lunatic right-wing activists finger fucking each other, submissive politicians begging for a spanking, and slavering hordes of onlookers hoping to take a selfie masturbating near their nutzoid kings and queens.
Carson pulls down Schlafly's threadbare white underwear, licks his lips, parts the folds, and gets to work: "[S]he has been a tireless advocate for the nuclear family, for traditional marriage and for common-sense conservatism that resists injecting government into every aspect of our lives." Carson, being a doctor, is skilled at flicking his tongue in a way that makes Schlafly twitch with pleasure: "Schlafly succeeded because she was intellectually honest, impassioned and skilled in not only communicating the fight, but also in waging it. Likewise, she has relentlessly fought for life, recognizing early on that the Roe v. Wade decision would be one of the Supreme Court's worst decisions." And he brings her to screaming orgasm as he goes in hard on that droopy nub: "Her voice is as relevant and strong today as it was more than a half-century ago."
Indeed, Schlafly did more to set back the cause of women's rights than just about anyone, presenting herself as the anti-Steinem, the anti-Abzug, the very anti-Friedan, a Coulter before Coulter was cool, cruelly condemning single women and the LGBT community for undermining her rigid patriarchal understanding of the world. And even today she fearlessly treads into controversial waters with the batshit confidence of those who fight the lumbering beast of progress.
In January of this year, she offered her take on rape on college campuses: "The imbalance of far more women than men at colleges has been a factor in the various sex scandals that have made news in the last couple of years." Yes, yes, because there's just too much pussy being flaunted in weak men's faces that they have no choice but to do some raping.
Shortly after that profound reasoning, Schlafly took on same-sex marriage, comparing it to abortion, which, if you think about it, you shouldn't. She's got an awesome solution for the nation should the Supreme Court let the gays get all connubial: "Congress should enact laws denying funding and withholding jurisdiction from enforcement of any redefinition of marriage by the federal judiciary." That's known as "The Hissy Fit Strategem" or "Where's My Wubbie?"
So, yes, the Rude Pundit joins Ben Carson in saluting Phyllis Schlafly. For something like 400 years, she's been a consistent, festering boil on the low part of the right ass cheek of freedom. Whether she's warning college graduates not to date feminists, even the pretty ones, or attacking pre-K education because it allows women to work, she has been the doyenne of bullshit misogyny and given comfort to sexist motherfuckers everywhere.
Carson pulls down Schlafly's threadbare white underwear, licks his lips, parts the folds, and gets to work: "[S]he has been a tireless advocate for the nuclear family, for traditional marriage and for common-sense conservatism that resists injecting government into every aspect of our lives." Carson, being a doctor, is skilled at flicking his tongue in a way that makes Schlafly twitch with pleasure: "Schlafly succeeded because she was intellectually honest, impassioned and skilled in not only communicating the fight, but also in waging it. Likewise, she has relentlessly fought for life, recognizing early on that the Roe v. Wade decision would be one of the Supreme Court's worst decisions." And he brings her to screaming orgasm as he goes in hard on that droopy nub: "Her voice is as relevant and strong today as it was more than a half-century ago."
Indeed, Schlafly did more to set back the cause of women's rights than just about anyone, presenting herself as the anti-Steinem, the anti-Abzug, the very anti-Friedan, a Coulter before Coulter was cool, cruelly condemning single women and the LGBT community for undermining her rigid patriarchal understanding of the world. And even today she fearlessly treads into controversial waters with the batshit confidence of those who fight the lumbering beast of progress.
In January of this year, she offered her take on rape on college campuses: "The imbalance of far more women than men at colleges has been a factor in the various sex scandals that have made news in the last couple of years." Yes, yes, because there's just too much pussy being flaunted in weak men's faces that they have no choice but to do some raping.
Shortly after that profound reasoning, Schlafly took on same-sex marriage, comparing it to abortion, which, if you think about it, you shouldn't. She's got an awesome solution for the nation should the Supreme Court let the gays get all connubial: "Congress should enact laws denying funding and withholding jurisdiction from enforcement of any redefinition of marriage by the federal judiciary." That's known as "The Hissy Fit Strategem" or "Where's My Wubbie?"
So, yes, the Rude Pundit joins Ben Carson in saluting Phyllis Schlafly. For something like 400 years, she's been a consistent, festering boil on the low part of the right ass cheek of freedom. Whether she's warning college graduates not to date feminists, even the pretty ones, or attacking pre-K education because it allows women to work, she has been the doyenne of bullshit misogyny and given comfort to sexist motherfuckers everywhere.
Late, Late Post Today
Had to break out the old slingshot to take down a giant. Cleaning up because that fucker bled.
Back soon with more motivational rudeness.
2/24/2015
Can We Stop Pretending Anything Will Happen to Bill O'Reilly?
Yes, yes, yes, David Corn, you are correct: Fox "news" serial felcher Bill O'Reilly exaggerated his reporting from a "war zone" during the Falkland Islands conflict. At best, he was at a carnival that lost control. You got him, man, caught him dead to rights. He is a lying motherfucker who only compounds his crimes by insisting that he's not lying. He is a hypocritical cockhead, a bullying shitheel, and a fraudulent, petty bitch. And, yeah, yeah, his lies are worse than Brian Williams's because at least the NBC anchor didn't pretend to have saved somebody's life.
So the fuck what? All that reporting and two bucks will get you a tall Starbucks that tastes like bitter defeat (the new flavor for the end of winter).
The Rude Pundit's been there, Mother Jones. He had proof, backed up by the analysis of others, including Murdoch's own New York Post, that Ann Coulter was a lazy plagiarist. And we never heard from her again, right?
No one on the right cares about right-wing liars. They just don't. When is the last time a conservative was forced into the wilderness because they lied? Drug addict Rush Limbaugh was barely scratched when his oxy abuse and doctor shopping were revealed. Oliver North and G. Gordon Liddy are legit filthy criminals who have had large followings. Even in politics, David Vitter can do scat games and infant role-play with a whore, and he's not only still a senator, but he'll probably become governor of Louisiana. The only time a Republican is sent to the boneyard is if he gets some hot gay action, like poor Larry Craig.
And lying? Shit, if conservatives didn't lie, radio stations would go dead and Fox "news" would be five minutes of Shep Smith and hours of blonde women staring at the camera, smiling, hoping sweet death takes them soon. Lies are the fuel that runs the outrage engine that gets the base amped up and ready to vote for idiots. Lies are the titty milk to red state babies, needing to be nuzzled and told their fears and hatred have a basis in reality.
There's an entire industry devoted to proving that the right-wing media lies constantly. Has it driven a single person off the air because of the sheer weight of lies? Last time the Rude Pundit checked, Sean Hannity, Hugh Hewitt, Laura Ingraham, and the rest are still out there, peddling the same worn out lies. That's because the core audience fuckin' loves it. They lap up the lies with more intensity than we lap up the revelation of the lies. As long as there's cash to provide Roger Ailes with taint powder and man-boob slings, nothing's gonna change.
Bill O'Reilly could be telling us about how he single-handedly defeated Chang Kai-shek with a bamboo spear while getting a blow job from a grateful female SVA soldier, he could say how he was driving the van that took the trapped Argo gang to the Tehran airport, he could tell us that he faced down an angry Predator in the jungles of Nicaragua while ripping out the throats of Sandinistas and tossing their steaming guts at the monster, and most of the shut-ins, droolers, and maniacs watching would insist that anyone questioning him is a liberal asshat who is only jealous of O'Reilly's manly manliness. It's only sweeter when he threatens people with the wandering producer of justice.
So, sorry, everyone. Find another issue to hump. Bill O'Reilly will be on the air as long as there's breath in his body and blackness in his heart.
So the fuck what? All that reporting and two bucks will get you a tall Starbucks that tastes like bitter defeat (the new flavor for the end of winter).
The Rude Pundit's been there, Mother Jones. He had proof, backed up by the analysis of others, including Murdoch's own New York Post, that Ann Coulter was a lazy plagiarist. And we never heard from her again, right?
No one on the right cares about right-wing liars. They just don't. When is the last time a conservative was forced into the wilderness because they lied? Drug addict Rush Limbaugh was barely scratched when his oxy abuse and doctor shopping were revealed. Oliver North and G. Gordon Liddy are legit filthy criminals who have had large followings. Even in politics, David Vitter can do scat games and infant role-play with a whore, and he's not only still a senator, but he'll probably become governor of Louisiana. The only time a Republican is sent to the boneyard is if he gets some hot gay action, like poor Larry Craig.
And lying? Shit, if conservatives didn't lie, radio stations would go dead and Fox "news" would be five minutes of Shep Smith and hours of blonde women staring at the camera, smiling, hoping sweet death takes them soon. Lies are the fuel that runs the outrage engine that gets the base amped up and ready to vote for idiots. Lies are the titty milk to red state babies, needing to be nuzzled and told their fears and hatred have a basis in reality.
There's an entire industry devoted to proving that the right-wing media lies constantly. Has it driven a single person off the air because of the sheer weight of lies? Last time the Rude Pundit checked, Sean Hannity, Hugh Hewitt, Laura Ingraham, and the rest are still out there, peddling the same worn out lies. That's because the core audience fuckin' loves it. They lap up the lies with more intensity than we lap up the revelation of the lies. As long as there's cash to provide Roger Ailes with taint powder and man-boob slings, nothing's gonna change.
Bill O'Reilly could be telling us about how he single-handedly defeated Chang Kai-shek with a bamboo spear while getting a blow job from a grateful female SVA soldier, he could say how he was driving the van that took the trapped Argo gang to the Tehran airport, he could tell us that he faced down an angry Predator in the jungles of Nicaragua while ripping out the throats of Sandinistas and tossing their steaming guts at the monster, and most of the shut-ins, droolers, and maniacs watching would insist that anyone questioning him is a liberal asshat who is only jealous of O'Reilly's manly manliness. It's only sweeter when he threatens people with the wandering producer of justice.
So, sorry, everyone. Find another issue to hump. Bill O'Reilly will be on the air as long as there's breath in his body and blackness in his heart.
2/23/2015
Cold Here? It's Crazy Fuckin' Hot Down Under
You want climate change evidence? There's your fuckin' climate change evidence, numbnuts. That's a chart of the number of days per year where temperatures were above the 99th percentile for average temperatures in Australia. In other words, the number of days that were in the warmest 1% recorded between 1910 and 2013. Now, the Rude Pundit is no mad statistician, but he can spot a trend. In fact, things have gotten so fucked that half of those days have occurred in the last 20 years.
But, no, really, let's burn some more fossil fuel and dig for coal for shits and giggles.
Australia is in the midst of another heat wave season. Some areas got some relief this week, but that's only because they were hit by a pair of tropical cyclones. Of course, they didn't hit where the massive bushfires are, but that's because Nature is a tricky bitch. The smoke from those fires in Western Australia has almost reached Antarctica.
An independent, crowd-funded group, the Climate Council, released a report this month detailing how fucked beyond fucked Australia is by global warming. Some of its findings, reached by synthesizing existing information, include:
"The number of heatwave days has increased over much of Australia, particularly the eastern half."
"Heatwaves are occurring more frequently in terms of the number of heatwave events per summer."
"The duration of the longest yearly heatwave is increasing."
"The first heatwave in the season is occurring earlier over almost all of Australia."
"The hottest day in a heatwave – its peak – is becoming even hotter over almost all of Australia below the tropics."
Even more particularly: In Sydney, heatwaves now start 19 days earlier than they did in 1950. In Adelaide, heatwaves are 4.3C degrees hotter, and there's double the number of heat wave days. "Heat wave" here means it reaches 40C, easily. Oh, that's 104 degrees Fahrenheit. Often it's 116 or pushing 120.
By the way, the reason that the Climate Council had to be independently funded is because Australia's Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, is basically George W. Bush without the charm. Yeah, he abolished the government's Climate Commission, which had been charged with looking into ways to avert climate change. He did this in September 2013, during the hottest year ever in Australia. In fact, in 2013, Australia had its hottest day, hottest month, and hottest season ever, too. The good news is that people are generally sick of Abbott, so he might be out of office soon. It remains to be seen if he's replaced politicians who are willing to do something about the climate down under, which, by 2090, if we do nothing, could make The Road Warrior look like a pleasant weekend with friends.
Yeah, it's colder than fuck this winter up here in the states. We just wanna stay indoors. But, holy shit, if you were in Australia, you'd be diving into the ocean, sharks or not.
2/20/2015
One More Thing About Giuliani Regarding Obama, America, and Pogroms
When disturbed nad gnasher Rudy Giuliani went bugfuck insane and said President Obama doesn't love America, which is totally why Obama wanted to be president of, you know, America, there's one thing he said that has been little discussed while everyone was having a worthless discussion on whether or not Obama loves the country. Citing one of the reasons he was ever elected mayor of New York City, Giuliani said, "I thought the Crown Heights riots were a pogrom because you’re going out trying to kill Jews. Why is [Obama] incapable of saying that? You’ve got to be able to
criticize Islam for the parts of Islam that are wrong. You criticize
Christianity for the part of Christianity that is wrong."
Rudy was referring to the 1991 incident when a Jewish man crashed his car onto a sidewalk in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, resulting in the death of an African American child. Three days of rioting followed, targeting Jews and Jewish buildings, including the stabbing death of a Jewish man. Mayor David Dinkins, who is black, was criticized for his handling of the riots, and, as a candidate for the office in 1993, Giuliani humped the Crown Heights riots like they were hookers named 9 and 11. He exploited the shit out of them, using the word "pogrom" and using it to turn whites against blacks in the city, including the black mayor.
Now Giuliani is bragging about his mighty and courageous honesty, but let's be clear here: At no point did Giuliani ever criticize a religion. At no point did he ever say that "radical Christians" were responsible for the violence against Jews. (And historically, you know, it was Christians in Russia who went all pogrom on the Jews.) Also, at no point did Giuliani even have the balls to say that "radical blacks" were rioting. He didn't do it because it would have been a political death sentence, and it would have exacerbated an already volatile situation. All mighty and courageous Rudy Giuliani did by calling the riots a "pogrom" was to say the victims were Jewish. Well, no fucking shit, Mr. Prosecutor.
So, actually, in talking about the victims of violence while not labeling the terrorists "Islamists" or some such shit, Obama is acting just like Giuliani.
The most pathetic part of this whole episode is that someone thought that future presidential candidate Scott Walker needed some of the Giuliani shine to rub off on him. That's right: there are people who still believe that cowardly asshole who gobbles air time like a horny power bottom gobbles cock on a Fire Island weekend is relevant, that he's not just a worn-out anus who needs to use bigger and spikier dildos to feel anything. We probably need to count Giuliani's continued presence on the national stage as one of the worst things terrorists did to us on 9/11.
Rudy was referring to the 1991 incident when a Jewish man crashed his car onto a sidewalk in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, resulting in the death of an African American child. Three days of rioting followed, targeting Jews and Jewish buildings, including the stabbing death of a Jewish man. Mayor David Dinkins, who is black, was criticized for his handling of the riots, and, as a candidate for the office in 1993, Giuliani humped the Crown Heights riots like they were hookers named 9 and 11. He exploited the shit out of them, using the word "pogrom" and using it to turn whites against blacks in the city, including the black mayor.
Now Giuliani is bragging about his mighty and courageous honesty, but let's be clear here: At no point did Giuliani ever criticize a religion. At no point did he ever say that "radical Christians" were responsible for the violence against Jews. (And historically, you know, it was Christians in Russia who went all pogrom on the Jews.) Also, at no point did Giuliani even have the balls to say that "radical blacks" were rioting. He didn't do it because it would have been a political death sentence, and it would have exacerbated an already volatile situation. All mighty and courageous Rudy Giuliani did by calling the riots a "pogrom" was to say the victims were Jewish. Well, no fucking shit, Mr. Prosecutor.
So, actually, in talking about the victims of violence while not labeling the terrorists "Islamists" or some such shit, Obama is acting just like Giuliani.
The most pathetic part of this whole episode is that someone thought that future presidential candidate Scott Walker needed some of the Giuliani shine to rub off on him. That's right: there are people who still believe that cowardly asshole who gobbles air time like a horny power bottom gobbles cock on a Fire Island weekend is relevant, that he's not just a worn-out anus who needs to use bigger and spikier dildos to feel anything. We probably need to count Giuliani's continued presence on the national stage as one of the worst things terrorists did to us on 9/11.
2/19/2015
A Brief Note on Rudy Giuliani's Mad Rant
Gleeful, garishly grinning ghoul Rudy Giuliani was speaking at a dinner for inbred-eyed Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker when he proclaimed, "I do not believe, and I know this is a horrible thing to say, but I do not believe that the president loves America." Then he added, "He doesn’t love you. And he doesn’t love me. He wasn’t brought up the way you were brought up and I was brought up through love of this country," which is just a really long way to say, "Coon."
Giuliani expanded today, "What I’m saying is, in his rhetoric, I very rarely hear the things that I used to hear Ronald Reagan say, the things that I used to hear Bill Clinton say about how much he loves America." The Rude Pundit isn't sure who Giuliani is talking about, but it sure as hell ain't President Obama.
Want some examples?
Barack Obama, February 18, 2015: "[M]ay we all do our part to carry forward the work of perfecting this country that we love."
Barack Obama, February 5, 2015: "May the Lord bless you and keep you, and may He bless this precious country that we love."
Barack Obama, January 28, 2015: "Thank you. God bless you. God bless this country we love."
Wanna keep going? Google is a bountiful bastard...
Barack Obama, September 11, 2013: [We pray for] "our men and women in uniform who defend this country that we love."
Barack Obama, September 11, 2010: "This is how we will preserve and protect the country that we love."
Really, this is just one phrase, not even variations. We could go back further:
Barack Obama, June 3, 2008: [This is] "our time to offer a new direction for this country that we love."
Need it more personal?
Barack Obama, March 18, 2008: "[T]hey are a part of America, this country that I love."
If President Obama said he loved this country any more, we'd tell him he was smothering us.
And Giuliani? Dude, you're a corpse. Go back to your tomb and stop polluting the air the rest of us breathe. You never loved America. You only loved yourself.
Giuliani expanded today, "What I’m saying is, in his rhetoric, I very rarely hear the things that I used to hear Ronald Reagan say, the things that I used to hear Bill Clinton say about how much he loves America." The Rude Pundit isn't sure who Giuliani is talking about, but it sure as hell ain't President Obama.
Want some examples?
Barack Obama, February 18, 2015: "[M]ay we all do our part to carry forward the work of perfecting this country that we love."
Barack Obama, February 5, 2015: "May the Lord bless you and keep you, and may He bless this precious country that we love."
Barack Obama, January 28, 2015: "Thank you. God bless you. God bless this country we love."
Wanna keep going? Google is a bountiful bastard...
Barack Obama, September 11, 2013: [We pray for] "our men and women in uniform who defend this country that we love."
Barack Obama, September 11, 2010: "This is how we will preserve and protect the country that we love."
Really, this is just one phrase, not even variations. We could go back further:
Barack Obama, June 3, 2008: [This is] "our time to offer a new direction for this country that we love."
Need it more personal?
Barack Obama, March 18, 2008: "[T]hey are a part of America, this country that I love."
If President Obama said he loved this country any more, we'd tell him he was smothering us.
And Giuliani? Dude, you're a corpse. Go back to your tomb and stop polluting the air the rest of us breathe. You never loved America. You only loved yourself.
2/18/2015
Very Brief: Shut the Fuck Up, Scott Walker
(Wow, where the hell did this day go? Anyways...)
When asked by noted Fox "news" chief blonde Megyn Kelly about never having graduated from college, the Republican governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker, a man who looks like he's constantly getting a blow job from an enthusiastic schnauzer, could have taken the high road and merely brushed off any criticism. He could have said that it wasn't right for him and then encouraged others to get an education. He could have done that. Or he could have been a total twat. Guess what he chose?
"That's the kind of elitist, government-knows-best, top-down approach we've had for years," Walker said. "I'd rather have a fighter who's proven he can take on the big government interests and win." First off, what the fuck does one have to do with the other? And, once again, going to college ain't elitist. Sitting there from a position of power and wealth and saying Americans shouldn't get an education actually is pretty goddamned elitist.
As if that wasn't dumbass enough, he added, "I think people want to judge what have you done lately." Yes, just like no one paid attention to Bill Clinton's affairs, George W. Bush's military record, or Barack Obama's neighbors. No one judges you by your past.
Shut the fuck up, you fuckin' uneducated yokel.
When asked by noted Fox "news" chief blonde Megyn Kelly about never having graduated from college, the Republican governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker, a man who looks like he's constantly getting a blow job from an enthusiastic schnauzer, could have taken the high road and merely brushed off any criticism. He could have said that it wasn't right for him and then encouraged others to get an education. He could have done that. Or he could have been a total twat. Guess what he chose?
"That's the kind of elitist, government-knows-best, top-down approach we've had for years," Walker said. "I'd rather have a fighter who's proven he can take on the big government interests and win." First off, what the fuck does one have to do with the other? And, once again, going to college ain't elitist. Sitting there from a position of power and wealth and saying Americans shouldn't get an education actually is pretty goddamned elitist.
As if that wasn't dumbass enough, he added, "I think people want to judge what have you done lately." Yes, just like no one paid attention to Bill Clinton's affairs, George W. Bush's military record, or Barack Obama's neighbors. No one judges you by your past.
Shut the fuck up, you fuckin' uneducated yokel.
Late Post Today
The Upstarts are asking for a beating today, so gotta get the gang together to take them on.
Back later with more mutant rudeness.
Back later with more mutant rudeness.
2/17/2015
Scott Walker Doesn't Have a College Degree, But You Should
The Rude Pundit is going to play his professor card, something that he reserves for special occasions, to talk about Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, a man who looks like what you get when a prairie vole fucks a water shrew. The probable 2016 Republican presidential candidate never finished college at Marquette University, and right-wingers have rushed to defend him, despite the fact that he's had a government job since 1993, when he was elected to his first office. Walker has been living off Wisconsin's tax dollars for over 20 years.
From saggy-titted Rush Limbaugh to purposeless Breitbart to whoever the fuck is pretending to be a writer at the National Review, conservatives want you to know that, holy cow, you don't need a college degree to be president. And they're right. You don't. Like him or not, Walker has a shit-ton of experience in politics since it's the only thing he's really done in his adult life. That kind of thing used to drive conservatives bonkers but obviously not anymore.
But where all of these assaults on the academy go wrong is in assuming that there is only one type of college experience. The most egregious of these comes from an actual professor, Glenn Reynolds, he of Instapundit bloggery and a law prof at the University of Tennessee (which is where the Rude Pundit got his big ol' doctorate). Writing in USA Today, Reynolds, hyping his own book, mostly, tells us that leftist elitists from the Ivy League have fucked us over. See, all of us with degrees are just snobs: "Over the past few years in America, a college degree has become something valued more as a class signifier than as a source of useful knowledge." Then Reynolds goes totally dickish, adding, "When Democratic spokesman Howard Dean (who himself was born into wealth) suggested that Walker's lack of a degree made him unsuitable for the White House, what he really meant was that Walker is 'not our kind, dear' — lacking the credential that many elite Americans today regard as essential to respectable status."
See, to conservatives, "college" is itself a signifier of "indoctrinated into leftist beliefs." And, of course, "college" only means the Ivy League. Says Reynolds, after listing the Harvard, Yale, et al credentials of President Obama and the Supreme Court, "All this credentialism means that we should have the best, most efficiently and intelligently run government ever, right? Well, just look around. Anyone who has ever attended a faculty meeting should recognize that more education doesn't produce better decision makers, and our educated mandarinate doesn't seem to have done much for the country." Serious question: Is Reynolds a total cock at his own faculty meetings? And the Rude Pundit has long believed that Ivy League incest has harmed the nation. But the solution is not to say, "Well, obviously, college makes people dumb." It's to say, "Hey, how about some leaders who came from state schools?"
Reynolds so devalues the college experience that, after informing us that most people don't have degrees, he scoffs, "But where 50 years or 100 years ago they might not have cared, many now feel inferior to those who possess a degree. But without much reason, as many college degrees don't signify much besides a limited ability to show up on time most of the time, and avoid getting so falling-down-drunk that you flunk out."
And this is where the Rude Pundit would like to address Reynolds directly, professor to professor:
"Motherfucker, I teach at a school where many of the students are the first in their family to go to college. Their parents want their kids to get a degree so they can have more comfortable lives. The students come to classes ready to learn, open-minded, and, far more often than not, conscientious and prepared. The hardest part is having to compensate for the shitty education system created by politicians and business people that has dicked over students for knowing anything beyond what was on a goddamned test. You know what's elitist? Pretending that college doesn't matter. Pretending that all schools are like Harvard or even fuckin' UTK, where, yeah, the drunk thing is a factor. But that's not the vast majority of colleges and universities. It ain't the vast majority of students. Mine work full time, take classes full time, and sometimes have kids to take care of. Many of them know what the world is like for people without degrees. You know what the diploma indicates, asshole? That you stuck with something and succeeded. That you spent time with people who are different than you. That you learned some things that you perhaps wouldn't have learned. And, despite the bullshit you cite, study after study proves that you earn more with a college education than without. I've been wanting to say this to your worthless ass for years: Fuck you, man. Grow the fuck up."
Damn, that felt good. One other note here: As the Rude Pundit has said before, if you believe that colleges are merely bastions of bolshevik liberalism, spend some time with professors in the business majors or, really, the STEM profs. Oh, wait. They believe in science, so maybe not.
As for Scott Walker, let's dismiss his inability to answer a question about evolution as craven political expedience. What does matter is, as governor, he has bought into the right-wing attack on higher education and he wants to fuck the universities of his state with huge budget cuts, just like Bobby Jindal in Louisiana. That shit looks sketchy, especially when you don't have a degree.
If you can be successful at something without a diploma, good on you, future Bill Gates or Louis CK or Oprah. Obviously, people can be just like you. Except for the almost everyone who can't.
From saggy-titted Rush Limbaugh to purposeless Breitbart to whoever the fuck is pretending to be a writer at the National Review, conservatives want you to know that, holy cow, you don't need a college degree to be president. And they're right. You don't. Like him or not, Walker has a shit-ton of experience in politics since it's the only thing he's really done in his adult life. That kind of thing used to drive conservatives bonkers but obviously not anymore.
But where all of these assaults on the academy go wrong is in assuming that there is only one type of college experience. The most egregious of these comes from an actual professor, Glenn Reynolds, he of Instapundit bloggery and a law prof at the University of Tennessee (which is where the Rude Pundit got his big ol' doctorate). Writing in USA Today, Reynolds, hyping his own book, mostly, tells us that leftist elitists from the Ivy League have fucked us over. See, all of us with degrees are just snobs: "Over the past few years in America, a college degree has become something valued more as a class signifier than as a source of useful knowledge." Then Reynolds goes totally dickish, adding, "When Democratic spokesman Howard Dean (who himself was born into wealth) suggested that Walker's lack of a degree made him unsuitable for the White House, what he really meant was that Walker is 'not our kind, dear' — lacking the credential that many elite Americans today regard as essential to respectable status."
See, to conservatives, "college" is itself a signifier of "indoctrinated into leftist beliefs." And, of course, "college" only means the Ivy League. Says Reynolds, after listing the Harvard, Yale, et al credentials of President Obama and the Supreme Court, "All this credentialism means that we should have the best, most efficiently and intelligently run government ever, right? Well, just look around. Anyone who has ever attended a faculty meeting should recognize that more education doesn't produce better decision makers, and our educated mandarinate doesn't seem to have done much for the country." Serious question: Is Reynolds a total cock at his own faculty meetings? And the Rude Pundit has long believed that Ivy League incest has harmed the nation. But the solution is not to say, "Well, obviously, college makes people dumb." It's to say, "Hey, how about some leaders who came from state schools?"
Reynolds so devalues the college experience that, after informing us that most people don't have degrees, he scoffs, "But where 50 years or 100 years ago they might not have cared, many now feel inferior to those who possess a degree. But without much reason, as many college degrees don't signify much besides a limited ability to show up on time most of the time, and avoid getting so falling-down-drunk that you flunk out."
And this is where the Rude Pundit would like to address Reynolds directly, professor to professor:
"Motherfucker, I teach at a school where many of the students are the first in their family to go to college. Their parents want their kids to get a degree so they can have more comfortable lives. The students come to classes ready to learn, open-minded, and, far more often than not, conscientious and prepared. The hardest part is having to compensate for the shitty education system created by politicians and business people that has dicked over students for knowing anything beyond what was on a goddamned test. You know what's elitist? Pretending that college doesn't matter. Pretending that all schools are like Harvard or even fuckin' UTK, where, yeah, the drunk thing is a factor. But that's not the vast majority of colleges and universities. It ain't the vast majority of students. Mine work full time, take classes full time, and sometimes have kids to take care of. Many of them know what the world is like for people without degrees. You know what the diploma indicates, asshole? That you stuck with something and succeeded. That you spent time with people who are different than you. That you learned some things that you perhaps wouldn't have learned. And, despite the bullshit you cite, study after study proves that you earn more with a college education than without. I've been wanting to say this to your worthless ass for years: Fuck you, man. Grow the fuck up."
Damn, that felt good. One other note here: As the Rude Pundit has said before, if you believe that colleges are merely bastions of bolshevik liberalism, spend some time with professors in the business majors or, really, the STEM profs. Oh, wait. They believe in science, so maybe not.
As for Scott Walker, let's dismiss his inability to answer a question about evolution as craven political expedience. What does matter is, as governor, he has bought into the right-wing attack on higher education and he wants to fuck the universities of his state with huge budget cuts, just like Bobby Jindal in Louisiana. That shit looks sketchy, especially when you don't have a degree.
If you can be successful at something without a diploma, good on you, future Bill Gates or Louis CK or Oprah. Obviously, people can be just like you. Except for the almost everyone who can't.
2/16/2015
Abraham Lincoln Would Still Fuck Tea Partiers Shit Up (Immigration Edition)
Yeah, yeah, Abraham Lincoln wasn't really thinking about immigrants from Mexico when he talked up the good of diversifying our population through an influx of newbies. But considering that whole freeing-the-slaves thing, there's a good chance he wouldn't have cared where the immigrants came from. In fact, regarding freeing slaves, during a speech in Chicago on July 10, 1858, he responded to his opponent for the Senate, Stephen Douglas, by kicking him in the taint with those long legs: "I protest, now and forever, against that counterfeit logic which presumes that because I did not want a negro woman for a slave, I do necessarily want her for a wife. My understanding is that I need not have her for either, but, as, God made us separate, we can leave one another alone, and do one another much good thereby." This is followed by some uncomfortable talk about mixed-race marriages, but at least Lincoln put himself and the "negro woman" on equal footing.
In that same speech, given as part of 4th of July celebrations, in a section that is often cited by conservatives for its affirmation of the principles of the Declaration of Independence, Lincoln lays down some logs of truth about the necessity of immigrants to the still-growing country:
"We are now a mighty nation; we are thirty, or about thirty, millions of people, and we own and inhabit about one-fifteenth part of the dry land of the whole earth. We run our memory back over the pages of history for about eighty-two years, and we discover that we were then a very small people in point of numbers, vastly inferior to what we are now, with a vastly less extent of country, with vastly less of everything we deem desirable among men; we look upon the change as exceedingly advantageous to us and to our posterity, and we fix upon something that happened away back, as in some way or other being connected with this rise of prosperity. We find a race of men living in that day whom we claim as our fathers and grandfathers; they were iron men; they fought for the principle that they were contending for; and we understood that by what they then did it has followed that the degree of prosperity which we now enjoy has come to us.
"We hold this annual celebration to remind ourselves of all the good done in this process of time, of how it was done and who did it, and how we are historically connected with it; and we go from these meetings in better humor with ourselves, we feel more attached the one to the other, and more firmly bound to the country we inhabit. In every way we are better men in the age, and race, and country in which we live, for these celebrations. But after we have done all this we have not yet reached the whole. There is something else connected with it. We have besides these, men descended by blood from our ancestors—among us, perhaps half our people, who are not descendants at all of these men; they are men who have come from Europe—German, Irish, French and Scandinavian—men that have come from Europe themselves, or whose ancestors have come hither and settled here, finding themselves our equals in all things.
"If they look back through this history to trace their connection with those days by blood, they find they have none, they cannot carry themselves back into that glorious epoch and make themselves feel that they are part of us, but when they look through that old Declaration of Independence, they find that those old men say that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal;” and then they feel that that moral sentiment taught in that day evidences their relation to those men, that it is the father of all moral principle in them, and that they have a right to claim it as though they were blood of the blood, and flesh of the flesh, of the men who wrote that Declaration; and so they are. That is the electric cord in that Declaration that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together, that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world."
A little later, after saying that he disagreed with the Dred Scott decision, Lincoln added, "I should like to know if, taking this old Declaration of Independence, which declares that all men are equal upon principle, and making exceptions to it, where will it stop? If one man says it does not mean a negro, why not another say it does not mean some other man? If that declaration is not the truth, let us get the Statute book, in which we find it, and tear it out! Who is so bold as to do it? If it is not true let us tear it out! (The audience yelled, 'No') Let us stick to it, then; let us stand firmly by it, then." Lincoln believed, and he expressed it often, that you either mean "equal" or you don't and can go fuck yourself.
But the tall man with squeaky voice didn't just talk the talk. As president, he called on Congress to pass legislation to encourage immigration. When he was nominated for reelection in 1864, the Republican Party platform contained this resolution: "That foreign immigration, which in the past has added so much to the wealth, development of resources and increase of power to this nation, the asylum of the oppressed of all nations, should be fostered and encouraged by a liberal and just policy." The act was passed, which allowed Lincoln to appoint a Commissioner of Immigration.
And in his final annual message to Congress, Lincoln wrote, "The act passed at the last session for the encouragement of immigration has so far as was possible been put into operation. It seems to need amendment which will enable the officers of the Government to prevent the practice of frauds against the immigrants while on their way and on their arrival in the ports, so as to secure them here a free choice of avocations and places of settlement. A liberal disposition toward this great national policy is manifested by most of the European States, and ought to be reciprocated on our part by giving the immigrants effective national protection. I regard our immigrants as one of the principal replenishing streams which are appointed by Providence to repair the ravages of internal war and its wastes of national strength and health. All that is necessary is to secure the flow of that stream in its present fullness, and to that end the Government must in every way make it manifest that it neither needs nor designs to impose involuntary military service upon those who come from other lands to cast their lot in our country."
Now, you can also argue that Lincoln was talking about legal immigration, but, actually, he was for creating a system to make immigration easier and to treat those who came here with dignity. Republicans, of course, won't talk about that Lincoln.
In that same speech, given as part of 4th of July celebrations, in a section that is often cited by conservatives for its affirmation of the principles of the Declaration of Independence, Lincoln lays down some logs of truth about the necessity of immigrants to the still-growing country:
"We are now a mighty nation; we are thirty, or about thirty, millions of people, and we own and inhabit about one-fifteenth part of the dry land of the whole earth. We run our memory back over the pages of history for about eighty-two years, and we discover that we were then a very small people in point of numbers, vastly inferior to what we are now, with a vastly less extent of country, with vastly less of everything we deem desirable among men; we look upon the change as exceedingly advantageous to us and to our posterity, and we fix upon something that happened away back, as in some way or other being connected with this rise of prosperity. We find a race of men living in that day whom we claim as our fathers and grandfathers; they were iron men; they fought for the principle that they were contending for; and we understood that by what they then did it has followed that the degree of prosperity which we now enjoy has come to us.
"We hold this annual celebration to remind ourselves of all the good done in this process of time, of how it was done and who did it, and how we are historically connected with it; and we go from these meetings in better humor with ourselves, we feel more attached the one to the other, and more firmly bound to the country we inhabit. In every way we are better men in the age, and race, and country in which we live, for these celebrations. But after we have done all this we have not yet reached the whole. There is something else connected with it. We have besides these, men descended by blood from our ancestors—among us, perhaps half our people, who are not descendants at all of these men; they are men who have come from Europe—German, Irish, French and Scandinavian—men that have come from Europe themselves, or whose ancestors have come hither and settled here, finding themselves our equals in all things.
"If they look back through this history to trace their connection with those days by blood, they find they have none, they cannot carry themselves back into that glorious epoch and make themselves feel that they are part of us, but when they look through that old Declaration of Independence, they find that those old men say that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal;” and then they feel that that moral sentiment taught in that day evidences their relation to those men, that it is the father of all moral principle in them, and that they have a right to claim it as though they were blood of the blood, and flesh of the flesh, of the men who wrote that Declaration; and so they are. That is the electric cord in that Declaration that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together, that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world."
A little later, after saying that he disagreed with the Dred Scott decision, Lincoln added, "I should like to know if, taking this old Declaration of Independence, which declares that all men are equal upon principle, and making exceptions to it, where will it stop? If one man says it does not mean a negro, why not another say it does not mean some other man? If that declaration is not the truth, let us get the Statute book, in which we find it, and tear it out! Who is so bold as to do it? If it is not true let us tear it out! (The audience yelled, 'No') Let us stick to it, then; let us stand firmly by it, then." Lincoln believed, and he expressed it often, that you either mean "equal" or you don't and can go fuck yourself.
But the tall man with squeaky voice didn't just talk the talk. As president, he called on Congress to pass legislation to encourage immigration. When he was nominated for reelection in 1864, the Republican Party platform contained this resolution: "That foreign immigration, which in the past has added so much to the wealth, development of resources and increase of power to this nation, the asylum of the oppressed of all nations, should be fostered and encouraged by a liberal and just policy." The act was passed, which allowed Lincoln to appoint a Commissioner of Immigration.
And in his final annual message to Congress, Lincoln wrote, "The act passed at the last session for the encouragement of immigration has so far as was possible been put into operation. It seems to need amendment which will enable the officers of the Government to prevent the practice of frauds against the immigrants while on their way and on their arrival in the ports, so as to secure them here a free choice of avocations and places of settlement. A liberal disposition toward this great national policy is manifested by most of the European States, and ought to be reciprocated on our part by giving the immigrants effective national protection. I regard our immigrants as one of the principal replenishing streams which are appointed by Providence to repair the ravages of internal war and its wastes of national strength and health. All that is necessary is to secure the flow of that stream in its present fullness, and to that end the Government must in every way make it manifest that it neither needs nor designs to impose involuntary military service upon those who come from other lands to cast their lot in our country."
Now, you can also argue that Lincoln was talking about legal immigration, but, actually, he was for creating a system to make immigration easier and to treat those who came here with dignity. Republicans, of course, won't talk about that Lincoln.
2/13/2015
Photos That Make the Rude Pundit Want to Break Out His Joe Hill Songbook
That's a big bunch of oil workers from the United Steelworkers union on strike at a refinery in Kentucky. They and thousands of others at refineries and chemical plants in Texas, California, and Washington are staging the first USW walkouts since 1980. And they're doing it not just for wages, but for one of the reasons why unions started in the first place: worker safety. And they're striking against the biggest oil conglomerates - Chevron, Shell, and others.
Yeah, it seems you can only have so many years of industrial accidents, explosions, and general catastrophes, due often to worn out equipment and cost-cutting measures that have left workers exposed to greater risks. As one refinery worker writes in The Guardian, "It’s frustrating. We know the refineries aren’t doing enough. At Tesoro, the explosion in 2010 didn’t come as a real surprise. The equipment that failed had a history of leaks and fires."
Seven people died in that Tesoro refinery in Washington, and at one in California, the California Nurses Association joined the oil workers on the picket line. Said a CNA spokeswoman, "We stand in solidarity over their safety concerns and the fact that they are the front-line workers who are going to see when something is wrong." She demanded that whistleblower protection be written into the contracts, too.
Right now, the strike by 5200 workers is affecting 13% of the fuel output of the United States. If the full USW went out, it would affect 64%. You'd feel that. Every now and then, it's good to be reminded that some good can come of something that the right has successfully vilified, nearly into non-existence.
But unions are still here. And they still demand to be heard.
That One Time I Got to Talk to David Carr
Insightful as hell, incisive without being cruel, Carr will be sorely missed. Even in brief conversation, the man was a mensch. This took place outside a theater in Minneapolis in August 2008, while the Republican Convention was in town.
2/12/2015
Pennsylvania Town Erects the Most Redundant Sign in the Nation
A week ago, Conoy Township, located in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania - you know, the place where everyone goes to gawk at the Amish like its a freak show and then eat their yummy baked goods - started erecting signs on every road leading into town:
That says, "Welcome to Conoy Twp. This is not a gun free zone." First of all, if you don't put a fuckin' hyphen between "gun" and "free," as in "gun-free," then your sign could be interpreted to be saying the exact opposite of what you're intending, as in "not a free zone for guns." Also, it's America, motherfuckers. No town is free of guns. If your town doesn't have guns, put up a goddamn sign to announce that. Otherwise, we all understand that you have guns.
That fine gentleman holding onto the sign like it's a giraffe's dick is Conoy Township Supervisor Stephen Mohr, who came up with the brilliant idea. He took it to the board of supervisors who, probably thinking, "Christ, just fuckin' do what Steve wants or we'll never hear the end of it," voted unanimously to erect them. Said Mohr, "You have to realize that to most people in this township, God, guns, family and friends are the four most important things." Imagine that thought process: In between going to church, shooting shit, and masturbating to stump porn, a light bulb went off in Mohr's head: "Obama is gonna take our guns. We need our guns because of all the meth around here. Let's let the bad guys know shit'll get real if they fuck with Conoy."
Local attorney (and the rude tipster on this story) Mitchell Sommers wrote in the local paper, "[I]t flirts with vigilantism. It’s a public declaration of defiance, made with township money, without any sense of whether the residents of the township even wanted this." As Sommers points out, they do have cops in Conoy. Those cops do, in fact, have guns.
Yesterday, a tragedy happened and someone vandalized the signs:
Other signs had peace symbols or the word "not" painted on them, although the Borat-like joke there seems odd. Steve Mohr knows what's up. He knows who is responsible: "That tells me their grandparents were at Woodstock...They are probably from the left wing, liberal-thinking and against guns." Indeed. Never fear the hippies, though. Fine Conroyvians have already cleaned the paint from the signs.
By the way, Conoy is taking vandalemons and making vandalemonade. Yeah, the town is looking into copyrighting the message and selling merch to individuals and other cities for a tidy profit for the town.
Also, Mohr is delighted that the British newspaper the Daily Mail picked up the story. In a fundamental misunderstanding of other countries, Mohr opined, "Those people are envious of us. They are not allowed to have firearms."
Yes, certainly, England wants thousands more gun murders. They are so jealous.
That says, "Welcome to Conoy Twp. This is not a gun free zone." First of all, if you don't put a fuckin' hyphen between "gun" and "free," as in "gun-free," then your sign could be interpreted to be saying the exact opposite of what you're intending, as in "not a free zone for guns." Also, it's America, motherfuckers. No town is free of guns. If your town doesn't have guns, put up a goddamn sign to announce that. Otherwise, we all understand that you have guns.
That fine gentleman holding onto the sign like it's a giraffe's dick is Conoy Township Supervisor Stephen Mohr, who came up with the brilliant idea. He took it to the board of supervisors who, probably thinking, "Christ, just fuckin' do what Steve wants or we'll never hear the end of it," voted unanimously to erect them. Said Mohr, "You have to realize that to most people in this township, God, guns, family and friends are the four most important things." Imagine that thought process: In between going to church, shooting shit, and masturbating to stump porn, a light bulb went off in Mohr's head: "Obama is gonna take our guns. We need our guns because of all the meth around here. Let's let the bad guys know shit'll get real if they fuck with Conoy."
Local attorney (and the rude tipster on this story) Mitchell Sommers wrote in the local paper, "[I]t flirts with vigilantism. It’s a public declaration of defiance, made with township money, without any sense of whether the residents of the township even wanted this." As Sommers points out, they do have cops in Conoy. Those cops do, in fact, have guns.
Yesterday, a tragedy happened and someone vandalized the signs:
Other signs had peace symbols or the word "not" painted on them, although the Borat-like joke there seems odd. Steve Mohr knows what's up. He knows who is responsible: "That tells me their grandparents were at Woodstock...They are probably from the left wing, liberal-thinking and against guns." Indeed. Never fear the hippies, though. Fine Conroyvians have already cleaned the paint from the signs.
By the way, Conoy is taking vandalemons and making vandalemonade. Yeah, the town is looking into copyrighting the message and selling merch to individuals and other cities for a tidy profit for the town.
Also, Mohr is delighted that the British newspaper the Daily Mail picked up the story. In a fundamental misunderstanding of other countries, Mohr opined, "Those people are envious of us. They are not allowed to have firearms."
Yes, certainly, England wants thousands more gun murders. They are so jealous.
2/11/2015
Budget Problems Causing Your State to Collapse? Look! A Gay Squirrel!
Kansas Governor, and a sexual position just waiting to be defined, Sam Brownback has decided that the best way to distract everyone from the fiscal fisting of his economic policies is to remind everyone that queers are icky and no one should be forced to work in the same building with them. Brownback (definition: fucking in a bed after a diarrhea accident there) issued an executive order that rescinded protections for LGBT state employees, and he did it in the pussiest way possible: not by outright saying, "Man, fuck those fags," but by saying who is protected and excluding the Kansans who are friends or lovers of Dorothy.
To go further with his wimpy stab at equal rights, Brownback (definition: two partners take a bunch of Ex-Lax and then use a double-sided dildo to go ass-to-ass) claimed that the former governor, Kathleen Sebelius, was wrong in using an executive order to expand job protections. So, in his statement on his order, he said, "Any such expansion of ‘protected classes’ should be done by the legislature and not through unilateral action." That's some courageous ass-covering there.
So if you're trans and work for the glamorous Kansas State Child Death Board, for instance, you can be fired if your supervisor thinks you wear those earrings better than her. And there's nothing you can do about it because you're not protected.
It's so appalling that even some Republicans have a problem with the decision by Brownback (definition: when you're fucking in a field and roll into cow shit, but you don't stop fucking). Said one GOP legislator, "No one should be made to feel ashamed of who they are and I don’t think anyone should ever lose their job for being gay." Yeah, well, whatcha gonna do about it? Legislate? Someone's gonna be primaried.
Just to be clear: Kansas is so broke because of the tax cuts passed by the governor and his radicals in the legislature a couple of years ago that, in this fiscal year, $28 million will be taken away from public schools, starting on March 7. But it's more important right now to allow homophobes to treat people unfairly and possibly upend a bunch of lives. Man, some people have Jesus shoved so far up their asses that they can feel his crown of thorns on their uvulas.
Maybe a Brownback is actually when the state of Kansas just takes unending dumps on you.
To go further with his wimpy stab at equal rights, Brownback (definition: two partners take a bunch of Ex-Lax and then use a double-sided dildo to go ass-to-ass) claimed that the former governor, Kathleen Sebelius, was wrong in using an executive order to expand job protections. So, in his statement on his order, he said, "Any such expansion of ‘protected classes’ should be done by the legislature and not through unilateral action." That's some courageous ass-covering there.
So if you're trans and work for the glamorous Kansas State Child Death Board, for instance, you can be fired if your supervisor thinks you wear those earrings better than her. And there's nothing you can do about it because you're not protected.
It's so appalling that even some Republicans have a problem with the decision by Brownback (definition: when you're fucking in a field and roll into cow shit, but you don't stop fucking). Said one GOP legislator, "No one should be made to feel ashamed of who they are and I don’t think anyone should ever lose their job for being gay." Yeah, well, whatcha gonna do about it? Legislate? Someone's gonna be primaried.
Just to be clear: Kansas is so broke because of the tax cuts passed by the governor and his radicals in the legislature a couple of years ago that, in this fiscal year, $28 million will be taken away from public schools, starting on March 7. But it's more important right now to allow homophobes to treat people unfairly and possibly upend a bunch of lives. Man, some people have Jesus shoved so far up their asses that they can feel his crown of thorns on their uvulas.
Maybe a Brownback is actually when the state of Kansas just takes unending dumps on you.
The Rude Pundit on BBC Radio, Talking Jon Stewart
The Rude Pundit was going to wait until The Daily Show's Jon Stewart had actually left before he eulogized about it. But when the BBC beckons and you get to talk to people who sound so much smarter than we do here in the colonies, well, it was impossible to resist. So, whiskey in hand, a little after midnight, he spoke to Nuala McGovern:
Back later with more less mournful rudeness.
(Note: The BBC World Service Radio page on Soundcloud says that the Rude Pundit worked at The Daily Show. That is an error, not a Brian Williams-esque self-inflation, aka "lie." The Rude Pundit told the BBC that he had the privilege to work with Daily Show co-creator Lizz Winstead on another project, which is totally true and apparently not-so-easily condensed. Hopefully, it will be corrected soon.)
Back later with more less mournful rudeness.
(Note: The BBC World Service Radio page on Soundcloud says that the Rude Pundit worked at The Daily Show. That is an error, not a Brian Williams-esque self-inflation, aka "lie." The Rude Pundit told the BBC that he had the privilege to work with Daily Show co-creator Lizz Winstead on another project, which is totally true and apparently not-so-easily condensed. Hopefully, it will be corrected soon.)
2/10/2015
In Brief: Tom Cotton's Gitmo Blues
Republican Representative Tom Cotton of Arkansas said on Fox "news", "We should be proud for the way we treated these savages at Guantanamo Bay." He was referring to the foreign detainees at the naval base prison, most of whom have been there for more than a decade without charge or trial. At its peak in 2002, the prison - sorry, detention camp - no, fuck it, prison held 722 men. We're down to 122. 54 of those have been cleared for release by the U.S. government. So we're down to 68 savages. Less than 10% of the original number, mostly men who wouldn't qualify as ill-mannered, let alone "savage."
Cotton, who is about as conservative a cocksucker as you could create, thought he was making a mighty point at a hearing last week when he went nutso on a Department of Defense undersecretary. He pressed the dude, asking him how many people were at Gitmo when other terrorist attacks occurred before 2002, like in 1998 or 1993 or 1979 (only 2 of the ones he mentioned took place in the United States). The answer, of course, was "none" because the fuckin' place wasn't open yet. "Ah-ha!" Cotton practically announced, the thumping under his table getting louder at each question. "In my opinion the only problem with Guantanamo Bay is there are too many empty beds and cells there right now. We should be sending more terrorists there for further interrogation to keep this country safe. As far as I’m concerned every last one of them can rot in Hell, but as long as they don’t do that they can rot in Guantanamo Bay," he really did say.
You got that? Over 600 people were held for years, many tortured, and Tom Cotton can count how many fucks he gives on no fingers. Innocent people can rot because Tom Cotton is afraid they might become terrorists one day, despite the fact that only 1% of those released returned to the battlefield (whatever that might be in this "war"). Or 30%, if your sources come from dead Breitbart or live Twitchy. Frankly, we're lucky more haven't thought, "Yeah, I think I wanna blow shit up in that country that force-fed me through my asshole." Frankly, when it comes to those innocent people, Gitmo has made us terrorists. Frankly, fuck Tom Cotton in his smug, stupid face.
By the way, 9 men have died at Gitmo from suicide or natural causes. So, if we go by the Obama administration's numbers, more detainees have died than have returned to the battlefield. And that's why pride is a sin, motherfucker.
But, congratulations, GOPers (and enabling Democrats) in Congress. You've made it so that most of the nation just doesn't think about Gitmo. It's down the rabbit hole of history. You'll get your rotting corpses. Maybe we can prop one up in each of your offices.
Cotton, who is about as conservative a cocksucker as you could create, thought he was making a mighty point at a hearing last week when he went nutso on a Department of Defense undersecretary. He pressed the dude, asking him how many people were at Gitmo when other terrorist attacks occurred before 2002, like in 1998 or 1993 or 1979 (only 2 of the ones he mentioned took place in the United States). The answer, of course, was "none" because the fuckin' place wasn't open yet. "Ah-ha!" Cotton practically announced, the thumping under his table getting louder at each question. "In my opinion the only problem with Guantanamo Bay is there are too many empty beds and cells there right now. We should be sending more terrorists there for further interrogation to keep this country safe. As far as I’m concerned every last one of them can rot in Hell, but as long as they don’t do that they can rot in Guantanamo Bay," he really did say.
You got that? Over 600 people were held for years, many tortured, and Tom Cotton can count how many fucks he gives on no fingers. Innocent people can rot because Tom Cotton is afraid they might become terrorists one day, despite the fact that only 1% of those released returned to the battlefield (whatever that might be in this "war"). Or 30%, if your sources come from dead Breitbart or live Twitchy. Frankly, we're lucky more haven't thought, "Yeah, I think I wanna blow shit up in that country that force-fed me through my asshole." Frankly, when it comes to those innocent people, Gitmo has made us terrorists. Frankly, fuck Tom Cotton in his smug, stupid face.
By the way, 9 men have died at Gitmo from suicide or natural causes. So, if we go by the Obama administration's numbers, more detainees have died than have returned to the battlefield. And that's why pride is a sin, motherfucker.
But, congratulations, GOPers (and enabling Democrats) in Congress. You've made it so that most of the nation just doesn't think about Gitmo. It's down the rabbit hole of history. You'll get your rotting corpses. Maybe we can prop one up in each of your offices.
2/09/2015
Your State Sucks: Alabama Sucks Because Some of Its Judges Believe in Religion Over Law
That is Alabama, a state in the southern United States. Whenever anyone is thinking, "I believe the South is filled with toothless white hicks who speak something that sounds like English, but not quite; who fuck their relatives with reckless abandon; who are poor and dumb and hate big guv'mint and love guns and meth and meth and guns; who love football and hate black people except the black people who play football, until they lose" the shorthand version is, in most cases, "Alabama." Or "Mississippi." But that's Alabama up there.
The color code is fascinating. 'Cause, see, a federal court declared that people of the same sex can get married in Alabama. And the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court said, "Fuck it. Go ahead" in declining to delay the decision. Then Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore, he of the big fuckin' Ten Commandments monument and removal from office, later reelected because Jesus or Moses or something, told the probate judges in the state that no-way, no-how are they to issue marriage licenses to the gays.
And so some of the judges said, "Yeah, blow me, Roy, blow me hard." They started issuing the licenses. Those'd be the green counties. Some others said, "Yeah, I'll blow you, Roy. I'll blow you hard." They won't sign off on same sex marriages. Those'd be the ones in, you know, red. Finally, some judges said, "I don't know what to do with all these dicks, so fuck all y'all" and just stopped issuing marriage licenses altogether, gay and not. That'd be the yellow, with the orange ones accepting applications but not giving out licenses.
In other words, Alabama right now is a confused clusterfuck of religious and judicial turmoil. Frankly, Moore should be arrested and dragged to jail, along with any probate judge who won't enforce a federal court's order, 'cause this is Sharia law shit, except replace "Sharia" with"biblical." Let's have a showdown, Eisenhower-style. Gov. Bentley can even do some George Wallace schtick and stand in front of a courthouse with his arms crossed.
If you were wondering, "What could make this whole situation even more annoying?" then you can thank Justice Clarence Thomas. Generally Silent Bob to Scalia's Jay, Thomas issued a dissent on the Supreme Court's refusal to stay the federal court decision. Thomas must have thought that he should say something, it being Black History Month and all. "This acquiescence may well be seen as a signal of the Court’s intended resolution of that question. This is not the proper way to discharge our Article III responsibilities. And, it is indecorous for this Court to pretend that it is," wrote that model of sleepy decorum, totally giving away that the Supreme Court is gonna allow Ls and Gs and Bs and Ts to marry like crazy fools in love.
Oh, Alabama, can't you just let lovers love? Can't you just get the fuck out of the way for once?
2/06/2015
Learn Your American History: Christianity and Slavery's Fucked-Up Relationship
It was such an inevitable reaction that you gotta figure President Barack Obama was just trolling for shits and giggles. At the National Prayer Breakfast (motto: "I guess I gotta pretend I'm not an atheist for a little while"), Obama made a speech that was full of the kind of humility that, you know, the Bible asks of people. He said that Christians need to stop being such smug fucks about the superiority of their faith over Islam: "And lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ."
Of course, the nutzoid right lost its goddamned mind. Whether it was the accusation that Obama was comparing "Christianity to ISIL" (which he quite specifically was not) or dismissing it with "the Crusades were almost a thousand years ago" or saying something along the lines of "Well, the Crusades were really a retaliation for Islamic incursions into Christian territory," everything said by the insulted Jesus fellaters pretty much proved what Obama was actually saying: All religions have their crazies and their violence. Don't think you're so fuckin' special. And the fact that the violence is part of the religion doesn't make the religion all bullshit. (Note: All religions are bullshit, but let's pretend.)
Maybe a history lesson is in order here. 'Cause, see, in the United States, Christianity wasn't just used to justify slavery. It was a key component to the maintenance of the slave system and a reason why the Civil War was fought. Don't believe the Rude Pundit. Believe fuckin' history, man.
For instance, here's James Henry Thornwell, a South Carolina Presbyterian minister, writing in 1861:
"[W]e cannot but accept it as a gracious providence that [slaves] have been brought in such numbers to our shores and redeemed from the bondage of barbarism and sin. Slavery to them has certainly been overruled for the greatest good. It has been a link in the wondrous chain of providence, through which many sons and daughters have been made heirs of the heavenly inheritance... As long as that race, in its comparative degradation, coexists, side by side with the white, bondage is its normal condition."
You got that? It's awesome that whites enslaved millions of people because it gave them a chance to hang out with the invisible sky wizard after they die. In fact, the promise of an eternity of cloud beds and good food and no whipping was used as a way to coerce slaves into behaving (although, we know, many slaves were smart enough to know it was bullshit).
Or, hey, how about this from Robert Lewis Dabney from the same time period, about how to apply the Golden Rule to slavery? It's a magnificent clusterfuck of tautology and sophistry: "Surely the principle of the Golden Rule binds the slave just as much as the master. If the desire which one would feel..must govern each man's conduct, then the slave may be very sure that, were he the master, he would naturally desire to retain the services of the slaves who were his lawful property. Therefore, according to. this abolition rule, he is morally bound to decline his own liberty; i.e., to act towards his master as he, were he the master, would desire his slave to act." See? If you were a master, you'd want slaves. Love Jesus. Good night. That is quoted regularly on white supremacist websites.
Of course, this could go on for a very long time. It could include the bible verses that talk about how slaves should be cool with their masters. It could include the ways that hateful people opposed to civil right used religion to justify that hate. Shit, the KKK lynched and burned black people and said it was cool because of Christian belief. That is ISIS-like terrorism, and it wasn't a long, long time ago.
The right-wing Christian reaction (and even the reaction of some on the left, like Lawrence O'Donnell) misses the point. It's not that evil shit was done 800 or 150 years ago. It's that shit was done. Period. And that doesn't excuse the evil shit being done now. It just gives perspective: as much as Christianity was used to perpetrate evil, it was used to make things right, especially with African Americans.
And, frankly, what the upset Christians are implying in their desire to pin the crimes of ISIS and al-Qaeda on Islam as a whole is that we need a religious war. Which means, of course, that atrocities will be committed in the name of Christ. Followed by more atrocities in the name of Allah. Followed by...
Of course, the nutzoid right lost its goddamned mind. Whether it was the accusation that Obama was comparing "Christianity to ISIL" (which he quite specifically was not) or dismissing it with "the Crusades were almost a thousand years ago" or saying something along the lines of "Well, the Crusades were really a retaliation for Islamic incursions into Christian territory," everything said by the insulted Jesus fellaters pretty much proved what Obama was actually saying: All religions have their crazies and their violence. Don't think you're so fuckin' special. And the fact that the violence is part of the religion doesn't make the religion all bullshit. (Note: All religions are bullshit, but let's pretend.)
Maybe a history lesson is in order here. 'Cause, see, in the United States, Christianity wasn't just used to justify slavery. It was a key component to the maintenance of the slave system and a reason why the Civil War was fought. Don't believe the Rude Pundit. Believe fuckin' history, man.
For instance, here's James Henry Thornwell, a South Carolina Presbyterian minister, writing in 1861:
"[W]e cannot but accept it as a gracious providence that [slaves] have been brought in such numbers to our shores and redeemed from the bondage of barbarism and sin. Slavery to them has certainly been overruled for the greatest good. It has been a link in the wondrous chain of providence, through which many sons and daughters have been made heirs of the heavenly inheritance... As long as that race, in its comparative degradation, coexists, side by side with the white, bondage is its normal condition."
You got that? It's awesome that whites enslaved millions of people because it gave them a chance to hang out with the invisible sky wizard after they die. In fact, the promise of an eternity of cloud beds and good food and no whipping was used as a way to coerce slaves into behaving (although, we know, many slaves were smart enough to know it was bullshit).
Or, hey, how about this from Robert Lewis Dabney from the same time period, about how to apply the Golden Rule to slavery? It's a magnificent clusterfuck of tautology and sophistry: "Surely the principle of the Golden Rule binds the slave just as much as the master. If the desire which one would feel..must govern each man's conduct, then the slave may be very sure that, were he the master, he would naturally desire to retain the services of the slaves who were his lawful property. Therefore, according to. this abolition rule, he is morally bound to decline his own liberty; i.e., to act towards his master as he, were he the master, would desire his slave to act." See? If you were a master, you'd want slaves. Love Jesus. Good night. That is quoted regularly on white supremacist websites.
Of course, this could go on for a very long time. It could include the bible verses that talk about how slaves should be cool with their masters. It could include the ways that hateful people opposed to civil right used religion to justify that hate. Shit, the KKK lynched and burned black people and said it was cool because of Christian belief. That is ISIS-like terrorism, and it wasn't a long, long time ago.
The right-wing Christian reaction (and even the reaction of some on the left, like Lawrence O'Donnell) misses the point. It's not that evil shit was done 800 or 150 years ago. It's that shit was done. Period. And that doesn't excuse the evil shit being done now. It just gives perspective: as much as Christianity was used to perpetrate evil, it was used to make things right, especially with African Americans.
And, frankly, what the upset Christians are implying in their desire to pin the crimes of ISIS and al-Qaeda on Islam as a whole is that we need a religious war. Which means, of course, that atrocities will be committed in the name of Christ. Followed by more atrocities in the name of Allah. Followed by...
2/05/2015
Indiana Woman Guilty of Miscarriage
This time of year, Granger, Indiana, nestled just under the taint of Michigan, is an ugly, flat, grey place. Right now Granger's trees are bare and the fields around are long past harvest. It's bereft of color, with the pale sky bleeding into the pale landscape. Down a little south and a little west is South Bend, not a big place, but a metropolis compared to Granger. And it's there that Granger resident Purvi Patel was just yesterday found guilty of the seemingly conflicting charges of feticide and child neglect and faces decades in prison.
The 33 year-old woman was hiding her pregnancy from her Hindu parents. According to Patel's text messages, she ordered abortifacient drugs online, but she was 24 weeks along. According to Patel, she didn't take the drugs, but she miscarried and delivered a stillborn fetus that she put in a dumpster before going to a hospital emergency room for bleeding. According to prosecutors, the baby was alive, and Patel left it to die. No drugs were found in her blood because it's difficult to test for the specific type, according to a toxicologist. In a hospital interview with detectives, Patel answered all questions, even when a detective told her she could tell him to leave the maternity ward where she was resting. Patel said she was in her room at home when the miscarriage happened and she tried to resuscitate the baby. She said she was in shock and put the body in a plastic bag that she then disposed of in a dumpster behind her parents' restaurant, a Moe's burrito joint. Patel worked there seven days a week.
Imagine that: An adult woman miscarrying and then going, bleeding, to the filthy bin in back of a fast-food place to throw out the fetus because of religion-induced fear and then being arrested and tried for the death based on a law that was created to punish, we were told, abusive fathers. Goddamn, the Fetus Supremacists are terrible human beings.
Indiana's feticide law says it occurs when a someone "knowingly or intentionally terminates a human pregnancy with an intention other than to produce a live birth or to remove a dead fetus." The police and prosecutor insist that Patel took the abortion drugs, but there is no medical evidence. Just a hunch and some texts. In fact, as one OB-GYN wrote, "Many (if not most) online pharmacies selling 'abortion' drugs are profiting from counterfeit medication, sugar pills, expired product, or even an entirely different drug altogether." Even if she had taken the drugs, Indiana's criminal code says that "the law does not apply to an abortion." Unless, of course, you're now talking about an illegal abortion, which answers the question of whether you would punish the mother for that. Otherwise, Patel is guilty of a poorly-timed miscarriage.
In 2013, Indiana wasn't able to get a conviction for a woman accused of murder and attempted feticide. Bai Bai Fushai tried to kill herself by ingesting rat poison. She was pregnant, and she ended up giving birth a week later to a baby that died 4 days later. In a different county, injustice has prevailed.
This is where we are in our unending abortion battle, treating women as murderers when a sane nation would offer them care and comfort. We are not that sane nation.
The 33 year-old woman was hiding her pregnancy from her Hindu parents. According to Patel's text messages, she ordered abortifacient drugs online, but she was 24 weeks along. According to Patel, she didn't take the drugs, but she miscarried and delivered a stillborn fetus that she put in a dumpster before going to a hospital emergency room for bleeding. According to prosecutors, the baby was alive, and Patel left it to die. No drugs were found in her blood because it's difficult to test for the specific type, according to a toxicologist. In a hospital interview with detectives, Patel answered all questions, even when a detective told her she could tell him to leave the maternity ward where she was resting. Patel said she was in her room at home when the miscarriage happened and she tried to resuscitate the baby. She said she was in shock and put the body in a plastic bag that she then disposed of in a dumpster behind her parents' restaurant, a Moe's burrito joint. Patel worked there seven days a week.
Imagine that: An adult woman miscarrying and then going, bleeding, to the filthy bin in back of a fast-food place to throw out the fetus because of religion-induced fear and then being arrested and tried for the death based on a law that was created to punish, we were told, abusive fathers. Goddamn, the Fetus Supremacists are terrible human beings.
Indiana's feticide law says it occurs when a someone "knowingly or intentionally terminates a human pregnancy with an intention other than to produce a live birth or to remove a dead fetus." The police and prosecutor insist that Patel took the abortion drugs, but there is no medical evidence. Just a hunch and some texts. In fact, as one OB-GYN wrote, "Many (if not most) online pharmacies selling 'abortion' drugs are profiting from counterfeit medication, sugar pills, expired product, or even an entirely different drug altogether." Even if she had taken the drugs, Indiana's criminal code says that "the law does not apply to an abortion." Unless, of course, you're now talking about an illegal abortion, which answers the question of whether you would punish the mother for that. Otherwise, Patel is guilty of a poorly-timed miscarriage.
In 2013, Indiana wasn't able to get a conviction for a woman accused of murder and attempted feticide. Bai Bai Fushai tried to kill herself by ingesting rat poison. She was pregnant, and she ended up giving birth a week later to a baby that died 4 days later. In a different county, injustice has prevailed.
This is where we are in our unending abortion battle, treating women as murderers when a sane nation would offer them care and comfort. We are not that sane nation.
2/04/2015
In Brief: Bloodthirsty Fox "News" Needs More Blood
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That's a screenshot of the Fox "news" website. It is the start of the entire 22 minute video made and edited by the Islamic State, and it shows the execution by burning of Lt. Moaz al-Kasassbeh of Jordan. It is a recruitment film, it is propaganda, and Fox just gave it the biggest audience in ISIS's history (the Rude Pundit won't link to it because fuck ISIS).
Now, this blog post is not to condemn Fox for spreading ISIS's message. It is to condemn Fox for being hypocritical little bitches. 'Cause, see, this would be the same Fox "news" that sternly refused to show the caskets of Americans killed in the "wars" in Iraq and Afghanistan.They didn't want your delicate sensibilities offended by such sadness.
Or maybe it's just that Fox so desperately wants to fan the flames of war in order to, what? profit Murdoch more? Rupert needs a scrotum tuck?, that they will give you the appalling violence without showing the consequences on Americans. They want ground troops, damnit, and they want blood.
Freedom of the press lets them show the video. Freedom of speech lets us say they are dog-fucking bottom feeders.
2/03/2015
People Who Doubt Vaccines Need to Be Shamed
We're told we must be nice. We're told that, if we're too forceful, we're bullying. We're told that we need to be willing to listen and understand and not risk alienating others. "When they get defensive they carry their campaign more fervently, and that has the chance of poisoning other people," said David Ropeik, a "risk communication expert," which is apparently a thing you can be. Ropeik is talking about people who believe that vaccinating children ought to be optional or that it's outright dangerous and should be banned. We who believe that things like science and facts aren't open for your opinion need to be cautious not to insult those who are afraid of shots. "Imagine what calling people selfish and dumb can do," said Brendan Nyhan, who is pro-vaccine but anti-insult.
What the nice brigade doesn't get is that being "nice" got us where we currently are: actually having a debate on whether or not to vaccinate kids. Rand Paul, a man who looks like he just finished porking a teddy bear, is concerned that vaccines can cause "profound mental disorders," which would explain the popularity of Rand Paul. He's for vaccinating, but he thinks it should be voluntary or, poof, Hitler. He doesn't say what we should do by mixing the immunized and the non-immunized, but, hey, government ain't gonna tell me what to do with my babies.
The only fun part of this year of the measles outbreak (and whooping cough - that's coming back, too) is that we're getting to see that the anti-vaxxer community is not just made up of privileged pukes in Park Slope or Marin County. It ain't just hippies who think the Man is always out to get them with their big corporate conspiracy to put chemicals into babies. No, the conservative right's libertarian streak compels some Republican politicians to say shit like this: "I know my kids best. I know what morals and values are right for my children. I think we should not have an oppressive state telling us what to do." That's Rep. Sean Duffy from Wisconsin. In case you're wondering, Duffy is a former prosecutor who was on MTV's The Real World: Boston and was a commentator on ESPN. In other words, he's not a doctor. He ain't even an ophthalmologist. He's a reality TV guy who went to law school. When it comes to medical needs, he quite specifically does not know what's best for his kids. But here he is, mouthing off about it.
Is it possible to talk about Sean Duffy's beliefs without using the words "dumb," "misinformed," "fucktarded," or "ass backwards"? Maybe you could leave out one or two, but, no, it's not possible. Because Duffy's idiotic views should be put in rhetorical stocks so the rest of us can throw rotting fruits of truth at it. He should be pantsed and whipped into the night, bemoaning that he ever doubted reality. And if some future opponent hasn't already made a commercial using the footage of him saying that it's an "oppressive state" that wants to prevent polio, Wisconsin Democrats should just close up shop.
Round and round we go. The corpse of Pat Robertson waved a skeletal finger and declared, "I don’t think any parent should be forced by the government to vaccinate." And then he said fluoride is suspicious, too (yeah, he did). And there's a chance that this will be an issue for the 2016 presidential election, the campaign for which started in, oh, probably 2009.
The reason why we're pretending this is even a debate is that we're not willing to say, flatly, that some things aren't worth talking about. We give in, again, to the mania for giving multiple sides equal time, or any time, even if one of those sides is barking, fucking mad. That's not polite discourse. That's insanity. That's suicide.
(Note: Let's be honest here. Much of the right-wing opposition to vaccines also has to do with the HPV shots. They think that when the teens get them, they're just gonna go crazy with the fucking. The other opposition has to do with allowing exemptions for beliefs so that they can cram through other kinds of exemptions, like for wedding cake bakers or what the fuck ever.)
What the nice brigade doesn't get is that being "nice" got us where we currently are: actually having a debate on whether or not to vaccinate kids. Rand Paul, a man who looks like he just finished porking a teddy bear, is concerned that vaccines can cause "profound mental disorders," which would explain the popularity of Rand Paul. He's for vaccinating, but he thinks it should be voluntary or, poof, Hitler. He doesn't say what we should do by mixing the immunized and the non-immunized, but, hey, government ain't gonna tell me what to do with my babies.
The only fun part of this year of the measles outbreak (and whooping cough - that's coming back, too) is that we're getting to see that the anti-vaxxer community is not just made up of privileged pukes in Park Slope or Marin County. It ain't just hippies who think the Man is always out to get them with their big corporate conspiracy to put chemicals into babies. No, the conservative right's libertarian streak compels some Republican politicians to say shit like this: "I know my kids best. I know what morals and values are right for my children. I think we should not have an oppressive state telling us what to do." That's Rep. Sean Duffy from Wisconsin. In case you're wondering, Duffy is a former prosecutor who was on MTV's The Real World: Boston and was a commentator on ESPN. In other words, he's not a doctor. He ain't even an ophthalmologist. He's a reality TV guy who went to law school. When it comes to medical needs, he quite specifically does not know what's best for his kids. But here he is, mouthing off about it.
Is it possible to talk about Sean Duffy's beliefs without using the words "dumb," "misinformed," "fucktarded," or "ass backwards"? Maybe you could leave out one or two, but, no, it's not possible. Because Duffy's idiotic views should be put in rhetorical stocks so the rest of us can throw rotting fruits of truth at it. He should be pantsed and whipped into the night, bemoaning that he ever doubted reality. And if some future opponent hasn't already made a commercial using the footage of him saying that it's an "oppressive state" that wants to prevent polio, Wisconsin Democrats should just close up shop.
Round and round we go. The corpse of Pat Robertson waved a skeletal finger and declared, "I don’t think any parent should be forced by the government to vaccinate." And then he said fluoride is suspicious, too (yeah, he did). And there's a chance that this will be an issue for the 2016 presidential election, the campaign for which started in, oh, probably 2009.
The reason why we're pretending this is even a debate is that we're not willing to say, flatly, that some things aren't worth talking about. We give in, again, to the mania for giving multiple sides equal time, or any time, even if one of those sides is barking, fucking mad. That's not polite discourse. That's insanity. That's suicide.
(Note: Let's be honest here. Much of the right-wing opposition to vaccines also has to do with the HPV shots. They think that when the teens get them, they're just gonna go crazy with the fucking. The other opposition has to do with allowing exemptions for beliefs so that they can cram through other kinds of exemptions, like for wedding cake bakers or what the fuck ever.)
2/02/2015
Vaccinate Your Fucking Kids
Here's a conversation the Rude Pundit had a few years back with then-expectant parents he is close to:
EMother: I'm having serious doubts about getting the baby vaccinated.
RP: What? That's dumb. Vaccinate your fuckin' kid.
EFather: But have you heard about these studies that said mercury in them causes autism?
RP: Fuck that. One bullshit study. Have you heard of small pox lately? No? Vaccinate your fuckin' kid.
EM: I'm not sure.
RP: Did you get all your shots?
EF and EM: Yes.
RP: Did you have a choice?
EF: No.
RP: Vaccinate your fuckin' kid. Or start a colony of people who don't vaccinate and stay the fuck away from everyone else's kids.
EM: You don't have to be an asshole about it. We're just discussing it.
RP: And that's the problem.
Refusing to get your children immunized against measles, mumps, rubella, chicken pox, whooping cough, hepatitis, diphtheria, fuckin' polio, and other nasty shit is one of the great expressions of bourgeois decadence in the latter days of this dying empire. It is a ludicrous convergence of voodoo-like pseudoscience, worship of individuality, and selfish helicopter parenting. You do not get to have an "opinion" on vaccinations because your failure to act has an effect on everyone else. The science on vaccines is so overwhelmingly in favor of making sure your kids get them that, qualitatively, there is no difference between the anti-vaxxers and climate change denialists.
This is where we stand right now, in 2015:
- The CDC is worried about a large-scale measles outbreak in the United States. In 2000, measles had been thought eradicated from the country. In 2008, there was an outbreak. And now? Over 100 cases. (And, by the way, measles is actually not a disease to be fucked with. It's way worse than some red dots on a cartoon cat's face.)
- 21% of 18-29 year-old Americans think that vaccines might or does cause autism, proving that all those education budget cuts across the country have worked as intended in stupiding people.
- America's angriest deflated ball, Chris Christie, had to walk back comments where he suggested that it was cool if parents didn't inoculate their kids. Meanwhile, President Obama said, more or less, "Vaccinate your fucking kids."
- And we get the parade of pathetic parents, smugly justifying their "choice" not to get their children immunized, like the California mom who "meditated on it a lot" before deciding to forgo shots for her son. When the daughter of another parent said she'd just get the measles shot rather than be forced to stay home from high school during this outbreak, her delusional mother said, "I’d rather you miss an entire semester than you get the shot."
- Or the Arizona father who said, "It's not my responsibility to inject my child with chemicals in order for [another child] to be supposedly healthy." Because he wasn't enough of a bastard, he added about a child going through chemotherapy who was susceptible to preventable diseases, "As far as I'm concerned, it's very likely that her leukemia is from vaccinations in the first place." And then, because if you're gonna be a motherfucker, you may as well fuck all the mothers, he said, "It's not my responsibility to be protecting their child." Finally, as if he decided that he was going to be just an irredeemable cunt about everything, he remarked, "It's an unfortunate thing that people die, but people die. I'm not going to put my child at risk to save another child." Remember: the "risk" is getting a few shots that almost everyone gets.
Swear to fuck, if any of these parents who don't vaccinate their kids utter the phrase, "It takes a village," they should be sent to real fuckin' villages, like in areas of Africa. These are places on earth where parents are begging for shots to keep preventable diseases from killing or seriously harming their children.
Those are people lined up in the sun and dirt last year during a war in the Central African Republic so the World Health Organization could immunize their children from measles. The WHO inoculated over 110,000 children in just one month. Those parents didn't give a fuck about a discredited Lancet study or piles of utter bullshit posted on Facebook. They didn't fuckin' meditate on it while worrying about gluten and GMOs. They only knew that their kids have a better chance of staying alive if they get their shots.
You either live in this society or you create one of your own. It's something people on the left and right forget all the time: Your stupidity, your ignorance, your fear is not just your own when others have to suffer for it. Societies are supposed to have unspoken agreements among the people living there. We live in a country where the air is poisoned, the land is fracked to shit, and the water is one chemical spill away from undrinkable. And you think you're protecting your kids by not giving them the one thing that we know for sure works to protect them? It'd be laughable if you weren't fucking with the lives of everyone else.
(Note: The Rude Pundit is still friends with the parents up top, and he loves the hell out of their vaccinated kids.)
(Note 2: Don't send the Rude Pundit all your fuckin' links to all your bullshit websites that prove whatever ignorant point you want to make about the "dangers" of vaccines.)
(Note 3: Yeah, the Rude Pundit knows lots of kids on the autism spectrum. None of their parents blame the shots.)
(Note 4: Yeah, vaccinations should be mandatory for your kid to go to school, with only medical exceptions that doctors certify for reasons like cancer treatment.)
EMother: I'm having serious doubts about getting the baby vaccinated.
RP: What? That's dumb. Vaccinate your fuckin' kid.
EFather: But have you heard about these studies that said mercury in them causes autism?
RP: Fuck that. One bullshit study. Have you heard of small pox lately? No? Vaccinate your fuckin' kid.
EM: I'm not sure.
RP: Did you get all your shots?
EF and EM: Yes.
RP: Did you have a choice?
EF: No.
RP: Vaccinate your fuckin' kid. Or start a colony of people who don't vaccinate and stay the fuck away from everyone else's kids.
EM: You don't have to be an asshole about it. We're just discussing it.
RP: And that's the problem.
Refusing to get your children immunized against measles, mumps, rubella, chicken pox, whooping cough, hepatitis, diphtheria, fuckin' polio, and other nasty shit is one of the great expressions of bourgeois decadence in the latter days of this dying empire. It is a ludicrous convergence of voodoo-like pseudoscience, worship of individuality, and selfish helicopter parenting. You do not get to have an "opinion" on vaccinations because your failure to act has an effect on everyone else. The science on vaccines is so overwhelmingly in favor of making sure your kids get them that, qualitatively, there is no difference between the anti-vaxxers and climate change denialists.
This is where we stand right now, in 2015:
- The CDC is worried about a large-scale measles outbreak in the United States. In 2000, measles had been thought eradicated from the country. In 2008, there was an outbreak. And now? Over 100 cases. (And, by the way, measles is actually not a disease to be fucked with. It's way worse than some red dots on a cartoon cat's face.)
- 21% of 18-29 year-old Americans think that vaccines might or does cause autism, proving that all those education budget cuts across the country have worked as intended in stupiding people.
- America's angriest deflated ball, Chris Christie, had to walk back comments where he suggested that it was cool if parents didn't inoculate their kids. Meanwhile, President Obama said, more or less, "Vaccinate your fucking kids."
- And we get the parade of pathetic parents, smugly justifying their "choice" not to get their children immunized, like the California mom who "meditated on it a lot" before deciding to forgo shots for her son. When the daughter of another parent said she'd just get the measles shot rather than be forced to stay home from high school during this outbreak, her delusional mother said, "I’d rather you miss an entire semester than you get the shot."
- Or the Arizona father who said, "It's not my responsibility to inject my child with chemicals in order for [another child] to be supposedly healthy." Because he wasn't enough of a bastard, he added about a child going through chemotherapy who was susceptible to preventable diseases, "As far as I'm concerned, it's very likely that her leukemia is from vaccinations in the first place." And then, because if you're gonna be a motherfucker, you may as well fuck all the mothers, he said, "It's not my responsibility to be protecting their child." Finally, as if he decided that he was going to be just an irredeemable cunt about everything, he remarked, "It's an unfortunate thing that people die, but people die. I'm not going to put my child at risk to save another child." Remember: the "risk" is getting a few shots that almost everyone gets.
Swear to fuck, if any of these parents who don't vaccinate their kids utter the phrase, "It takes a village," they should be sent to real fuckin' villages, like in areas of Africa. These are places on earth where parents are begging for shots to keep preventable diseases from killing or seriously harming their children.
Those are people lined up in the sun and dirt last year during a war in the Central African Republic so the World Health Organization could immunize their children from measles. The WHO inoculated over 110,000 children in just one month. Those parents didn't give a fuck about a discredited Lancet study or piles of utter bullshit posted on Facebook. They didn't fuckin' meditate on it while worrying about gluten and GMOs. They only knew that their kids have a better chance of staying alive if they get their shots.
You either live in this society or you create one of your own. It's something people on the left and right forget all the time: Your stupidity, your ignorance, your fear is not just your own when others have to suffer for it. Societies are supposed to have unspoken agreements among the people living there. We live in a country where the air is poisoned, the land is fracked to shit, and the water is one chemical spill away from undrinkable. And you think you're protecting your kids by not giving them the one thing that we know for sure works to protect them? It'd be laughable if you weren't fucking with the lives of everyone else.
(Note: The Rude Pundit is still friends with the parents up top, and he loves the hell out of their vaccinated kids.)
(Note 2: Don't send the Rude Pundit all your fuckin' links to all your bullshit websites that prove whatever ignorant point you want to make about the "dangers" of vaccines.)
(Note 3: Yeah, the Rude Pundit knows lots of kids on the autism spectrum. None of their parents blame the shots.)
(Note 4: Yeah, vaccinations should be mandatory for your kid to go to school, with only medical exceptions that doctors certify for reasons like cancer treatment.)
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