If You Don’t Do It My Way It Doesn’t Count

The Colorado decision to kick Trump off the ballot has brought a whole bunch of picky-ass institutionalists out frum under their rocks.

There are two things that are both true:

First, there is no wrong way to defeat Trump. Vote him out? Great. Throw his ass in jail? Great. Kick him off the ballot for being an insurrectionist? Great. Convince everyone that he smells like spoiled cottage cheese? Great.

Anyone who tells you that any of these methods are so superior to the others that the rest should be discarded has a firm belief that America is fine and its systems will work they way they learned about them in Schoolhouse Rock, and they should be jettisoned into the sun with all the other fuckheads.

That said, a second thing is ALSO true - that none of these methods are a sure thing. You can’t count on any of them, because all the systems involved - voting, criminal justice, the courts in general, and the media are broken, probably beyond repair, and if they manage to eventually barely work, like they did in 2020, we’ll all breathe a sigh of relief and our unearned, undeserved confidence in their continued value and efficacy will be renewed. 

But just because you can’t count on Merrick Garland, or Robert Mueller, or Jack Smith, or various Secretaries of States to stop Trump for you, you also can’t count on the voters. So all of these things should stay on the table. All of these things should be pushed and supported - not out of a sense of hope, but because collectively, they create a continuing, ongoing narrative that Trump and the people that support him are bad people and shouldn’t be in charge of anything.

When you’re dismissive of any of it, you’re working against it, and you’ve deluded yourself into thinking you’re helping.

ADDENDUM: There are also zero unintended consequences to ANY of this that’s worse letting a dementia-addled, turd-smnellin’ Hitler fan run this place for a SECOND TIME. Stop pretending we’re playing chess when we’re in an existential bare knuckle brawl with the dumist fascists in recorded history.

Current Environment

Just saying, if I were piloting the Goodyear Blimp today, I’d see if it had any chaff launchers. 

Carl Fredricksen already learned this lesson the hard way.

Fucking Buffoonery

Marjorie Taylor Greene, sneering and giving a thumbs down, in what can only be described as an Apartheid Cruella DeVille coat, during the State of the Union address, is now normal behavior. It's fucking buffoonery, but fucking buffoonery is normal.

This all started 14 years ago, when Joe Wilson shouted "YOU LIE" at Obama during that State of the Union address. It's no surprise that the first major crack in this particular decorum dam involved a white dude yelling at a black dude.

Wilson suffered no consequences for his outburst, got a lot of attention for it, and after that, it was that thing that's played out over and over again. Republicans break an unwritten or unenforced rule. Democrats try to bring the rule back by... still following it even though breaking it gets rewarded and also wagging their fingers and sighing. And so, here we are. Non-stop fucking buffoonery where we used to have nice things. Well, OK. Fucking boring pointless things, but fucking boring pointless things where it was generally considered gauche to make an ass of yourself. 

The honesty would be refreshing, except that the system once again has been gamed and eroded into a raw exercise of numerical power where boorishness, stupidity, sex crimes, and a literal entire fabricated life prior to winning election are all acceptable as long as it means they have one more Aye or Nay button to push than the other guys.

The honesty would be refreshing, except that no amount of boorishness, stupidity, sex crimes, and literal fabricated lives will stop the political press from pretending the system is the same one we all learned about in Schoolhouse Rock and everything is totally fine and none of this is a problem.

And thus, an ever-deeper shit-show of non-stop Fucking Buffoonery.

Why We're Hosed, Part 857

Memo to Bob Jones: YOU ARE DUMB.

This was originally going to be a short bit, but once I got into it, I realized it was deserving of a whole column. If any of your friends are Bush-voting moderates, show them this to remind them that they voted for the kind of mentality that Bob Jones represents. You remember Bob Jones. He has that university, you know, the completely fucking racist one that's terrified of interracial dating? The one where all the prominent Republicans go to speak at to remind the guys with Confederate flags on everything they own that Republicans still want their vote? That Bob Jones. Bob sent a congratulatory letter to President Bush on white, white paper, and these were his heartfelt, stirring words. Yes, it's ACTUAL QUOTE DAY!

"In your re-election, God has graciously granted America-though she doesn't deserve it-a reprieve from the agenda of paganism."

See, this just goes to show you how insular the world of the Jesus-Freak is. If Bob Jones actually got outside his Ku Klux EnKlave and met some pagans, he'd understand that the Pagan Agenda, such as it is, consists solely of buying lots of stupid bumper stickers and calling God "she" around non-pagans in the hopes of impressing them with Paganic Weirdness and Specialositude. Pagans are also a convenient resource if you cannot remember the difference between solstice and equinox, but so is Google, and Google won't waste a half hour of your life telling you what it'll be doing in the solstice.

"You have been given a mandate. We the people expect your voice to be like the clear and certain sound of a trumpet. Because you seek the Lord daily, we who know the Lord will follow that kind of voice eagerly."

Apparently, They Who Know The Lord think that trumpets can't get through two sentences without fucking up a word. Bush's voice is really more like a bassoon. It's tricky, fussy, and with an idiot controlling it, makes the most awful noises known to man.

"Don't equivocate. Put your agenda on the front burner and let it boil. You owe the liberals nothing. They despise you because they despise your Christ. Honor the Lord, and He will honor you."

Oh, please. I'm about the most extreme, atheistic, lefty motherfucker I know, and I don't hate Bush because I hate Christ. But then, people like Bob Jones have always had a tough time with the whole "correlation is not causation" thing. For me, Christ is kind of like John Carpenter. I really like a couple of the things he's put out, but a lot of it is crap, and his die-hard fans are seriously fucked-up.

"Had your opponent won, I would have still given thanks, because the Bible says I must (I Thessalonians 5:18). It would have been hard, but because the Lord lifts up whom He will and pulls down whom He will, I would have done it. It is easy to rejoice today, because Christ has allowed you to be His servant in this nation for another presidential term."

Apparently, Thessalonicans 5:18 reads "LIKE HELL YE WOULD HAVE, YOU SANCTIMONIOUS FUCK!". And if Christ was determining the outcome of the election, you'd think, since he apparently lives within each of us, he'd have arranged for more than a three percent margin, and would have allowed His Flock to get to bed at a decent hour on Election Day. Jesus is such a drama queen.

"Undoubtedly, you will have opportunity to appoint many conservative judges and exercise forceful leadership with the Congress in passing legislation that is defined by biblical norm regarding the family, sexuality, sanctity of life, religious freedom, freedom of speech, and limited government. You have four years-a brief time only-to leave an imprint for righteousness upon this nation that brings with it the blessings of Almighty God."

Welcome to your theocracy, you so-called moderate, security-mom fuckwads. Bob Jones is urging Bush to pass laws on RELIGIOUS FREEDOM that are defined by BIBLICAL NORM. You know what the biblical norm is for religious freedom? "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." Hope you like your next tax cut, because all you'll be allowed to spend it on are those little figurines of Jesus playing soccer with white children. This is the reason I had to get the whole letter, and do the column on the whole letter, because this paragraph is the single most appalling thing I've read from the right since the election, and I haven't seen a single story about the letter quote it. The. Fucking. Un. Mitigated. Gall.

"The student body, faculty, and staff at Bob Jones University commit ourselves to pray for you-that you would do right and honor the Savior. Pull out all the stops and make a difference. If you have weaklings around you who do not share your biblical values, shed yourself of them. Conservative Americans would love to see one president who doesn't care whether he is liked, but cares infinitely that he does right.

I can already hear the counterargument. He's an extremist. Bush probably didn't even read his letter. Bush probably COULDN'T even read his letter. But these are the people that came out in droves last week. These are the people whose stigmata make the red states red. Bob Jones did not send this letter thinking it would fall on deaf ears. Just dumb ones.

Cranium... Or Lawn Sprinkler?

he Olympics are over, and I have to say, I'm relieved.

I don't really mind the Olympics per se, it's just that there are certain things you can't escape while they're around. Rampant jingoism. An emphasis on winning at any cost. Tales of struggle and hardship manipulated by cold, uncaring speakers in order to win over your support. Steroid abuse. The corrupting influence of money. And the general jock locker-room "we're number one" atmosphere.

Yep, luckily, we can put all that behind us as we head into the Republican... National... Convention... fuck.

Luckily, I have prepared for this eventuality, and had my science friends whip me up a handy Aneurysmometer.

It monitors my stress level, my blood pressure, and the strength of my arterial walls, and converts all those readings to an easy-to-understand modified Richter scale. As you can see, my normal, early-morning level of hate and rage puts me at about a 3.1, which for me is just that background dish-rattling tremor that, being used to it, I pay no mind to. As the convention progresses, however, certain events will increase the Aneurysmometer, and if I'm not well into the red "spurty zone" by Friday, we'll all be a bit surprised.

The meter will, in all likelihood, go up whenever:

• A commentator or anchorman refers to John McCain as a "maverick", a "moderate", or "independent".I've already filled space with one picture today, so you won't get one of any number of pictures of McCain dry-humping Dubya on the campaign trail, but I think we all know how I feel about the one member of the Keating Five who still has a career.
• Every time Arnold Schwarzenegger flashes that shit-eating grin of his. By fuck, that's irritating. Because you know what that smile says? When Arnie smiles like that, and you look it up in the Smile - English dictionary, the entry reads "I'm a rich, cigar-chomping Neanderthal whose gender politics alternate between 1952 and 1971. And I'm the MODERATE." Also, please allow for a slight uptick in the meter anytime some wag uses the term "Governator". We all are aware that Arnold portrayed a killer robot from the future in three films, a theme park ride, and innumerable shitty videogames. We do not need to be reminded by a nickname even Jay Leno finds a bit stale.
• Every single time Republican metaphorical schlong uses the gaping hole at Ground Zero as its own personal ten-dollar whore. With New York as the venue, and Giuliana stepping up to the podium tonight, and hey, look at that calendar, it's obscenely obvious to everyone that the unofficial theme of RNC this year is "Re-Elect This Fucking Chimp Or You're Gonna Lose A Few More Skyscrapers".
• Every single, interminable second I'm reminded of Zell Miller's existence. Self-explanatory, I'd assume.

But don't worry, there are a few things that could happen during the RNC that will cause the meter to drop, possibly sparing my carpets from an expensive cleaning bill.

• Every time Dubya fucks up during his acceptance speech. Sure, it's probably pre-recorded, edited, and synced up to an animatronic control chip in his jaw, but that hasn't stopped him from flubbing his lines in the past.
• Every single time one of the cable news channels puts a Democratic rapid-response representative on-air right after a Republican speaks. You know, just like they did during the entirety of the DNC coverage. They've got to treat both sides equally, right? Right?

Who am I kidding. I should get Rug Doctor on speed-dial.

Clang Clang Whoops Too Late

Man, I sure hope Dubya isn't a robot.

Follow me here. You know how, in all the movies and TV and whatnot, when a robot starts to malfunction? It starts making small mistakes, then it makes bigger and bigger ones, then it starts shouting incoherent nonsense, then it sparks, and then it explodes? Usually 'cause Kirk told it that up was down or some other bullshit?

Man, I sure hope Dubya isn't a robot.

'Cause first there was that whole harming America thing, which we touched on last Friday. I mean, even for Bush, that was a pretty significant fuckup, mostly because he didn't pause, he didn't stammer, he didn't appear to say something he didn't mean to, he just appeared to have an obviously badly-written speech prepared.

Then, he started talking about maybe "abolishing the IRS", and replacing income taxes with some regressive, flat-tax, national sales tax delusion, which is the kind of campaign rhetoric that is usually reserved for the LaRouches, the Perots, the Keyeses... you know. Only the completely bat-shit crazy candidates run on a "flat tax". If Dubya were a robot, I'd suspect deterioration of the logic centers.

And then, after that, he started telling people in speeches that we can't raise taxes on the wealthy, because they just find ways to get out of it anyway. Which makes no sense, because if all those ultra-rich people weren't paying any taxes anyway, why were they giving thousands and thousands of dollars to get Bush elected so he could (and did) CUT THEIR TAXES? Fuckers are probably getting refunds on their zero taxes paid and due. Either that, or, again, Dubya is a robot and is quickly spiraling into a feedback loop of sparking and smoke and exploding and shrapnel and carnage everywhere.

Now, all of these things could be explained by Dubya being an idiot, a desperate Republican flagging in the polls, and a complete asshole respectively. So I'm afraid Ockham's Razor slices through the robot theory like a knife through warm bullshit. But if you take Bush's most recent TV ad into account, the robot theory engages some kind of diagnostic self-repair routine and comes roaring back for a second look. Yes, the metaphor is a smidge on the shaky side, but bear with me. Here's the text of the ad, with commentary.

"I'm George W. Bush, and I approve this message."

Now, I know this is required by the new campaign laws, and I support it in principle, but assuming the message is delivered either by a rapidly deteriorating psychotic robot OR a retarded, desperate asshole, the fact that he approves of his own ravings is of little comfort in this cold, cold world.

"My most solemn duty is to lead our nation to protect ourselves."

Fair enough, although really, his job is more to lead some of the people, the trained ones with the guns, to protect the rest of the people, the untrained ones with or without guns. As far as the "protecting myself" part goes, I think I'll try and manage that one on my own, 'cause if someone hits me in the face, odds are, I won't kick the guy four seats over in the groin.

"I can't imagine the great agony of a mom or a dad having to make the decision about which child to pick up first on September the 11th."

Oh, I know, I myself have often wondered.... WHAT THE FUCK?! What dilemma is this? Who faced that agony? The World Trade Center was not a day care facility. It was not some kind of forty-story Montessori school. This makes no sense. All the news stories about this ad, by the way, merely quote this sentence without explaining what the FUCK our "leader" is talking about here. Which means either it's obvious, or they don't understand it either, and don't want to admit it. I know where I'm placing my bet. Which child to pick up first? How about whichever one gets out first? Or whichever one is closest? Or whichever one isn't on the way to the store? What agony, George?

This oughta be the first question in all three presidential debates. The first words out of the moderator's mouth after "Let's begin" need to be "Mr. President, in that ad... the one with the picking up the children and the agony? Do you have any idea what you meant by that? Because we've been trying to puzzle it out for a month or so now, and frankly, we're stumped." Is it too much to ask for a President that, in a scripted, rehearsed, filmed, and edited television appearance, does not spout complete incomprehensible nonsense? Yes, it apparently is.

There's another sentence of bullshit after that, but this is the point at which the Exploding Robot Theory really kicks into high. Those of you with Lexis/Nexis access may want to start keeping an eye out for occurrences of phrases like "DANGER", "ILLOGICAL", "DOES NOT COMPUTE", or "KILL ALL HUMANS" cropping up at campaign stops. Just saying.

Either that, or Bush has hired Halle Berry as his new speechwriter.

Comedy Death Blossom

This doesn't even qualify as a Spastic Topic Monkey Friday. It's been a solid week, comedy flowing like sweet sweet wine, but I'm tired and spent. So here's a bunch of crap that's crossed my mind in the last 24 hours.

- I saw Joan Rivers on Graham Norton last night. I've decided, now that Bob Hope has finally passed on that Joan Rivers is the celebrity who should just fucking die already, please. Useless protoplasmic cyborg bitchsack. All she's done for the past two decades is provide surgeons with boats. She's had so much work done that she now looks like the Spitting Image puppet of herself. Wayland Flowers keeps putting his hand up her ass by MISTAKE. Skynet learned to make Terminators from her fucking X-Rays.

- A commercial claims that Joel Siegel claims that nobody watching the Manchurian Candidate will be able to exhale during the last 30 minutes of the film. I assume that's some sort of compliment. The movie is so good it turns your lungs into Bags Of Holding. You can inhale all you want, but you can't exhale. It's like Hotel California with oxygen molecules replacing Don Henley. Normally, I would be 100% behind any circumstance in which Don Henley is replaced by free-floating molecules of oxygen, but come on. Better pray for immortality, Siegel, because Pauline Kael is waiting in the afterlife with a spiked club and a long memory.

- Your Compassionate Conservatism Moment: "Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy, or go on Prozac?" Bush campaign assistant Susan Sheybani. Sheybani made the comment while transferring a phone call from a reporter asking about poor-quality jobs. The bad news is, she didn't think the reporter could hear her, and he could. The GOOD news is, he works for USA Today, and they needed someone to replace Ann Coulter with anyway. Thank you. I've been here all week. Try the veal. Next week on Leno, Ben Affleck.

I mean, come ON. How many times does the veil need to slip off before we realize under the flimsy fabric of "compassionate conservativism" are a whole bunch of greedy assholes who've gotten theirs and only pretend to give a shit about other people because it's good P.R.? The Democrats care about people's suffering*. All they pretend is that they can do something about it. It's part of their broader plan of pretending, in general, that they can do something.

- "Revenge Of The Sith". Yay. Here's my prediction. Over the next however many months before Episode III comes out, I will occasionally mention to my geek friends, nerd aquaintances, and probably within earshot of creepy stinky guys in comic shops, that I will not be bothering to see Episode III. I base this decision on Episode I being shit and Episode II being shittier. Dungfests. Craporama. Even discounting Jar-Jar. Even discounting Jimmy Smits infamous-only-to-me-and-people-around-me-a-couple-of-years-ago crocheted neck doily. I ain't going. And every single one of those people are going to tell me "But you GOTTA."

Why? Am I somehow not going to hear what happens in it? Will I be bereft entirely of Star Wars, at least in non-toy, non-videogame, non-three-minute-not-sucking-animated-shorts, non-napkin, non-shitty-Kevin-J-Anderson-novel form? Why do I gotta? No, screw that. I know why I don't gotta. Why do YOU gotta? Look within, young retardawan. Find that within yourself which blinds you to history and reason. Find it, and stab it in the gut with your mechanical pencil and leave it bleeding in the gutter. And then we'll go see Serenity again. You'll be happier. I'll be happier. We can hear about how that whiny pudpuller gets his black suit on the Internet in three minutes if you're that desperate to know.

- Fuck "bounce". For the rest of the campaign, if you hear anyone using the word "bounce" in regards to the election or polling, they are to be considered a fuckhead and not worthy of your attention or trust. Especially if they're predicting a bounce. Especially especially if they're comparing actual bounce to their prediction. Especially especially ESPECIALLY if they're comparing actual bounce to someone ELSE's predictions. It's bad enough that we have reports of meaningless, barely accurate polls every single day. Now, suddenly, it's a story when the numbers in these meaningless, barely accurate polls do not match up with politically-motivated predictions pulled out of the major-party asses?

Does nobody in the media evaluate ANYTHING? It's not as if the motivations behind "bounce prediction" are even remotely opaque. Political parties low-balling their own or high-balling their opponent's expectations is just noise. Everybody knows this. Five-year-olds can figure this out. Yet, seemingly, nobody is actually willing to make the decision that yes, this whole thing is bullshit, and we have an obligation, as journalists, to NOT SPREAD BULLSHIT.

Oh, wait, I'm hearing from Fox News that, counter to Karl Rove's predictions, John Kerry was not immediately carried off into Heaven to replace God Almighty Himself on his throne following his acceptance speech last night. That has to be a major blow for the Kerry campaign. Coming up next, Bush and a puppy!

* OK, Lieberman doesn't. But he's an ass.

He Taxes Me, And I Will Have Him

Memo to Tax Whiners: YOU ARE DUMB.

Seriously. Shut your suburban gobs. Shove some more fucking Cheesecake Factory in there or something. Stop bitching. Stop writing letters to the editor. We do not care about your so-called "views" on the tax code, so either keep them to yourself, or... actually, there IS no or, because let's face it, if you were the type to actually build a bunker and fend off armed IRS agents with a flare gun, you'd have done it already, you pussy.

If I hear the "my money" or "our money" rhetorical phrase one more time, I'm going to track down the one remaining blood vessel in my body that hasn't already popped from barely-repressed rage, and I'm going to take pliers to it until it joins its brethren. It's not your money. It barely ever WAS your money. It's the government's money. It's society's money. They take it from you because you fucking well LIVE HERE, and they will do whatever they want with it because THEY CAN, and until you can afford your own island country to move all your assets into, you're stuck with it.

It's as if a vast percentage of people in this country, despite over 200 years of an essentially unchanged social contract that itself builds upon a few thousand years of civilization-managing, somehow manage to miss the fucking point. It's possible that all these people are simply stupid. If so, this column won't help them, but it will make me feel better to explain, in as simple a phrasing as I can manage, that paying your taxes is not, as a transaction, equivalent to buying a muffin.

You'd think this would be obvious. When I want to buy a muffin, there are no forms involved. I do not need to list all the muffins I have bought in the past year. I don't need to calculate how much of the muffin I give to my (hypothetical) children. You cannot get a muffin at H.R. Block.

Well, OK. You can. But if you try, learn from my mistake, and have an answer prepared when they ask you "Excuse me, what are you doing in our break room?"

When you give money to the government in tax form, you will not receive an equivalent value of goods and services in return. If you pay taxes and have no children, some of your money will still pay for schools. If you are a dirty stinking hippie and you pay taxes, some of your money will pay for nuclear warheads. If you tool around the Twin Cities in your H2 and pay taxes, some of your money will still pay for bus drivers. Taxation is not, and never has been, a zero-sum game, so take your faux-libertarian posing and shove it up your ass.

In case you're wondering if there was one particular scrotal wart that sparked my ire, huzzah, there was! Doug Clemens of Bloomington, who, in the Saturday letters to the editor, actually wrote:

"I resent the Star Tribune's implication that when I get some of my tax money back it is somehow a deceitful or treacherous act. I have paid a ton of taxes in my lifetime, and now there's a little something for me. For this newspaper to suggest that this is all due to trickery and dishonesty is hurtful. The Star Tribune owes me an apology.

The Star Tribune owes you a whack upside the head with a rolled-up Sunday Edition. Don't give us that fucking line about how you've gotten NOTHING from a lifetime of paying taxes, you half-wit ingrate. You've gotten stuff. Other people have gotten stuff. Maybe not the best stuff, maybe not the stuff you'd want, but that's what you get for voting in these idiots every time you go to the polls. Since you obviously don't have the courage of your convictions, and sign your 1040 every year like a good boy, all you're doing now is whining. Go away.

The only advantage of the state economies being deeply in the hole is that we don't have to hear this "our money" shit about surpluses, which aren't usually surpluses anyway. The instant the government predicts it may end up collecting a bit more money from people than they predict they'll spend, that's when the Carnation Instant Libertarians start lining up for their checks, yapping about "their money" like it was gold coin snatched from their hands by Alan Rickman instead of passing ephemerally from their employer to the IRS without them ever really knowing it was there.

Now if you'll excuse me, I just saw an accountant run past, and I need me some baked goods.

Today's Proctological Roundup

It's Monday, and it's time for the Asshole Roundup! Get out your lassos and your cowboy hats... wait. That would make you an asshole. So let's just have the roundup without the trappings. Git along, little dipshits!

We should start with the 6,500,000 assholes, because they'll take a while to round up. That's how many assholes who, assuming an average $8 ticket price, went to see "I, Robot" this weekend. They need to be rounded up for their own good, frankly, because "Well, we saw I, Robot last week; Catwoman can't be that much worse, can it?" is an awfully compelling argument... if you're an asshole.

Of course, when it comes to assholery, you can't get much bigger than Arnie. Arnie made it into the news this weekend because, in a speech in California, he called Democrats opposing his budget plans... "girlie-men". GIRLIE-MEN. He's such an asshole. Not for openly mocking his opposition in a childish way. I think he should do that more often. That's why you Californians elected him, right? So that he could make one-liners like that at press conferences. You apparently wanted a dimwitted, combative, barely-comprehensible thick fuck ruling you like some kind of retarded clown, so obviously the system works.

No, he's an asshole for continuing to fucking appropriate the Hanz and Franz material. Hello? Arnold? You never said "girlie-man". It's a lot like "pump [clap] you up", which you used during the campaign. I know it's difficult for you to understand, but it wasn't you who said these things.

That was someone making fun of you for being a thick fuck retardoclown. Did you accidentally eat some of Reagan's brain? Did you do it on purpose? Stick to stealing from your own repertoire of "snappy" one-liners. You didn't write any of those either, but at least you said them, albeit after flubbing 40 takes and making two interns cry.

Hey! Politics! Today's Obvious Segue Moment brings us to political convention time. That's like Asshole Roundup without any of the actual work. All the assholes just round themselves up. Following some strange, innate herding instinct, all the Democrat assholes are striding across the plains to Boston, and the Republican assholes to New York. Zell Miller's going to New York too, but that's OK. When he gets there, the Republicans will gather around, sniff his butt, and realize he's one of their own.

Still, there is one group I'd like to split off from the herd for special attention: Protest Warriors. Like "Ushers of the Eucharist", calling your group "Protest Warriors" automatically makes you an asshole. No further exposition necessary. It's like driving an H2. You see a "Protest Warrior", you've got an asshole. That's not to say that further exposition won't be FUN, of course.

The Protest Warriors are Republicans. Add another 62% to the asshole quotient. They protest... other protests. They plan to be at the Republican National Convention to protest people who are protesting Republicans. That goes beyond "asshole". That's like some kind of prolapsed rectum, right there. Rectum The Edmund Fitzgerald, even. And while that horrific pun seeps into your skull, I will, because I am a gracious host, provide your brain with the sweet comedy balm that is ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"We are the right-wing freedom fighters - we are out there and are just as animated as the protesters can be." - Jason Sager, Protest Warrior. It's actually reassuring to know that if there are "right-wing freedom fighters" in this country, they're a bunch of assholes with signs in New York, and not 400 white guys in Montana with camo pants and assault rifles. America is safer.

"Conservatives by nature are not protesters... they curse at the evening news but that voice is never heard. We are rookies in the protest world, so yes, we are uneducated in how protests work." - Sager again, who is either lying out of his ass or is ignorant on the kind of level that Jessica Simpson only dreams of achieving some day. Either way, I'd love to see him locked in a room with a dozen or so Planned Parenthood employees who could educate him, between repeated boots to the gut, just how much protesting conservatives actually do. Asshole.

Democrats

 Memo to the Democrats: YOU ARE DUMB.

You know why? Because they've been handed the means to win every single funding argument for the next ten years in the court of public opinion, and you just know they won't have the cojones to use it.

Oh, sure, the Dems -seem- to be growing a big pair of Rocky Mountain Donkey Eggs, with Nancy Pelosi calling Bush "incompetent", and all, but that's just the hyena mentality. Dubya's already given himself a bad leg and a wicked case of the mange, so that's why you see the Pelosis of the world closing in.

But seriously. Whenever something Republicans usually bitch about comes up for funding, the Dems now have comebacks of EPIC proportions. Let's say, for example, that the government wants to take some tax money and give it to poor people so they can eat. Republicans hate it when poor people eat, so they start blathering on about bootstraps and personal responsibility and "welfare cheats" abusing the system who in reality make up a tiny fraction of the people receiving the service.

And then, some brave Democrat, possibly possessed by the soul of Paul Wellstone, only having been dead and out of Minnesota for a couple of years, the Wellsoul no longer has any compunctions about being friendly and nice, and says, "Where do you fucks get off trying to tell other people, either the Congress or people on welfare, how to spend money? You're the people who gave $340,000 a month to Ahmed Chalabi so he could lie to you, spy for the Iranians, and plot to overthrow whatever half-assed government you install in Iraq. $340,000 a month for like THREE YEARS. That shit adds up. So get your ass back on the golf course with your cronies and let the grownups do the real work.

It would be GLORIOUS. But it'll never happen. Even if they took out the "fucks" and the "shit", which these days don't get said nearly enough on the Senate floor.

Compared to what those idiots spent on Ahmed Chalabi, midnight basketball seems like a pretty smart investment, if you ask me.

And after about five years, when the Chalabi thing starts losing its bite, and the Republicans are all up in arms because we want to send men to Mars, and they're cranky because there's no evidence as yet that Jesus ever went there, so we should spend that money right here on Earth, once again, the pissed off, dead soul of Paul Wellstone, having been made even more ornery by yet another half-decade being all dead and stuff, takes over the body of someone... I don't know. Someone with some seniority. Not Joe Lieberman. That'd just be fuckin' creepy, even for the pissed off soul of Wellstone. Doesn't matter who, anyway. And the newly possessed senator stands up and says...

"Spend money here on Earth? Let's see, you guys spent some money here on Earth a few years ago, didn't you? You gave it to Halliburton, so that they could go to the most dangerous roads on Earth, pay innocent people to drive back and forth on them, and those trucks were fucking EMPTY. Empty trucks! Your buddies at Halliburton risked innocent drivers' lives needlessly so that they could bilk us for $1,000 a trip. So sit your pasty ass down. We're going to Mars, and I guarantee there won't be any empty spaceships making the run.

Man, what I wouldn't give to see that one day. But I won't. None of us will. And it's a shame, because it sure sounds nice. But Democrats are DUMB.

Phony Political Discourse

Memo to political discourse in America: YOU ARE DUMB.

Could we just admit, once and for all, that politics in America is about one side fucking over the other however it can so that they can get what they want? Please?

Because it is. It's not even a question. It's how the system works. It may be how the system has always worked, but these days, they're not even subtle about it. There's this pro-forma Official Veneer where every tactical move you make is just dandy and every tactical move the other guy makes is evil incarnate, and we all know that they're just tactical maneuvers designed to fuck over the other side, but only the Official Veneer gets treated as news.

Especially during a campaign. I mean, there's a "big" story today about the R's being OUTRAGED that the Head D would DARE to use a BIBLE QUOTE during a campaign stop. A stop that happened to be at a church, where a lot of churchy, bibly types were there. It was basically "they talk the talk, but don't walk the walk", only said by some guy in robes a few thousand years ago, so suddenly it's a crime against humanity.

And, that complaint, that Mr. D was exploiting religion for political gain, was taken entirely seriously by the media, as if nothing had ever been exploited for political gain before, and this new transgression of our otherwise pure system merited dozens of column inches to claim, counterclaim, and mock-horrified reaction.

Or the judicial nomination thing, which is just getting completely insane. The guys in power want to put more of their guys in power. The guys not in power have a way to stop them. The guys in power have a way around the stopping technique. The guys not in power vow to make the guys in powers' lives difficult forever if they keep using that way around.

This is politics. This is the process. So why, every time someone makes a move or a countermove, do we have to hear how whoever made the move is "subverting the process"? Fuck that noise. The process isn't being subverted.

Essentially, American government is a like an out-of-print role-playing game. The rules were written a couple of hundred years ago, and we've been playing using those same basic rules ever since. So we've had a couple of centuries to figure out how to "cheat" within the rules, and now we're really, really good at it. Which makes for a really crappy game, sure, but nobody's actually cheating.

When two fat fucks with Cheeto stains on their t-shirts nearly come to blows over whether someone's fifth-level paladin can REALLY use that obscure skill to instantly kill a beholder, the rest of the players at the table do one of three things:

The smart, cynical players go home early, 'cause they know this won't be settled anytime soon, and they might as well get some sleep. In real life, we call these people "Internet rant columnists".

The naive players start poring through the rulebooks looking for the real answer, in the impressive but mistaken belief that the truth will stop the argument. In real life, we call these people "activists" and "journalists", and nobody listens to them.

The assholes jump in on either side, using past slurs, personal histories, their own imperfect memories of the rules and past situations and shouting at the top of their lungs. In real life, we call these people "the press".

And all the while, the basement that is America slowly fills up with the orange spittle of hypocrisy and the yellow spilled-Mountain-Dew of partisan vitriol, until eventually, we all get really grossed out or we drown. THAT'S politics. And pretending any different, or giving any credence to people who claim that their side is any different, just fills the room up that much faster.

The Supreme Court

Memo to the Supreme Court: YOU WILL BE DUMB.

In accordance with the Bush Administration's doctrine of pre-emptive strikes, we at You Are Dumb Dot Net have substantial intelligence. That substantial intelligence leads us to believe that the Supreme Court will overturn the ruling that says "Under God" shouldn't be in the Pledge of Alliegance. As a result, they will qualify as DUMB.

Of course, the Pledge itself is stupid. It's a waste of time. I've recited the pledge thousands of times in my childhood, having been forced to do it in homeroom, in assemblies, and whatnot, and yet, somehow, I neither watch Fox News nor attend church services regularly. It is therefore ineffective, and should be sanctioned under the No Child Left Behind guidelines.

Are we afraid of moles? Enemy agents who will be ferreted out or turned by recitation of this magical phrase? Are we afraid that children will grow up not realizing they are American citizens? They're children, for fuck's sake. You've got about a two week window between when they finally understand what they're being asked to say and when they stop caring for this "pledge" to have any effect at all. It's pointless ritual.

But if we gotta have it, and apparently we gotta, judging by the amount of uproar this has been causing, then jamming "Under God" into it back in 1954 in a blatant power grab by the Yay Jesus crowd should be reversed. Because grammatically, the Pledge of Allegiance is tantamount to state sponsorship of monotheism.

Yes, I said grammatically. Because if you strip away all the bullshit that people arguing about this use to support your position, the question you're left with is what, exactly, does the Pledge say? I don't care how long we've been saying it. I don't care how important it is to insecure Christians that they need the government to constantly acknowledge their majority and power. Let's look at the words in question.

The Pledge of Allegiance is entirely in the present tense. The Pledge is surprisingly verb-light, but both verbs, "pledge" and "stands" are present tense. With no other indicators, we must therefore conclude that the whole thing is intended to be in the present tense. Ergo, the Pledge claims that RIGHT NOW, in the present, the United States of America is "under God".

Second, "God". Singular. The possibility of more than one God is summarily excluded. One could go even further and say that the strong implication that this is the Christian God is there in spades, but we're talking pure grammar here.

So there we have it. Every single day, in schools across the nation, people in a position of power are making the statement in front of students that, right now, the United States is under one God. State-sponsored monotheism. Clear violation of the First Amendment. The government should not be expressing a preference for one god over many gods, or one god over no gods. End of story.

Of course, that's not how it's gonna go down. Not with this Supreme Court. Not in Dubya's America. Not in a country where it's perfectly OK for journalists to ask presidential candidates if they accept Jesus Christ as the son of God (Newsweek / Howard Dean) or if God is on America's side (Debate moderator / John Kerry). And certainly not with this test case. Atheists really need better poster boys than a father with limited visitation rights whose babymomma actually disagrees with him about the whole Under God thing.

Nope. God's going back into the Pledge with the help of at least six, and probably more, of his berobed Divine Hands. Because they won't be doing their goddamned job, which is to look at the facts and see how they stand. And even giving the Pledge an unfair benefit of the doubt, it breaks the rules. But it'll get a pass, because the Supreme Court will be DUMB. Guaranteed.

The Bush Administration

Memo to various and sundry in the Bush Administration: YOU ARE DUMB.

Riddle me this, Batman: When is news... NOT NEWS? And I'm not talking about my usual hatred of the media wasting time and effort on unimportant shit, I'm actually asking a Gorshim-style riddle here. When is news not news?

When it's a government-prepared, ready-for-air video puff piece handed out to local news, complete with fake reporter and fake lead-in for the real anchor.

Apparently, Bush has an entire team of people working tirelessly to come up with new, outrageous shit they haven't gotten away with before. And after their success with "Let's give Cheney's company billions of dollars by bypassing the contract bidding process" and "Look! Over there! Uranium!", they've thought outside the box once again.

Faced with an increasingly uppity press occasionally willing to risk royal disfavour by mumbling "hey, that's not, um, true, you know" once in a great while, the administration figured they'd just eliminate the middleman and create their own fake press to get their own fake news out.

So they sent a happy little video about Medicare reform to local news stations. It's full of happy people talking about how happy they are now that they can finally afford their life-saving drugs since the President singlehandedly fixed Medicare.

The videos have everything. Well, ALMOST everything. They have an actress portraying a fake reporter, Karen Ryan. Hispanic viewers get a different fake person, Alberto Garcia.

They have astonishingly realistic dialogue, such as the following exchange between a customer and pharmacist: CUSTOMER: "It sounds like a good idea." PHARMACIST: "A very good idea."

It even tells the anchor how to introduce the piece: "In December, President Bush signed into law the first-ever prescription drug benefit for people with Medicare. Since then, there have been a lot of questions about how the law will help older Americans and people with disabilities. Reporter Karen Ryan helps sort through the details." Presumably, there's a different script for the Hispanic video, lest people grow wise to the fact that the beautiful Karen Ryan has transmogrified into the hunky Alberto Garcia.

In fact, they only left out one thing. Any kind of indication in the video itself that it's actually political propaganda from Health and Human Services. As a result, someone -might- get in trouble over this. Maybe. Some Democrats are yelling, and someone'll probably look into it, and if you check page 17B six months from now, you may find out how it all turns out.

The amazing thing is that I honestly expected local TV news to have more pride than that. Not more ethics, of course. Just, you know. A certain amount of pride that, no matter what sensationalistic or insipid crap they throw on the air, at least it's THEIR CRAP. Not some Stepford news that Big Brother Bush asked them nicely to run.

I mean, there was a bigger uproar a few years ago when Sony made up a fake movie reviewer to pimp its crappy movies and get quoted on posters. That was a HUGE scandal. I mean, if our movie reviewers aren't real, then who ARE we all stealing our opinions from?

It's just like I said yesterday, when I was discussing this with my pharmacist, Alberto Ryan. "It sounds like a dumb thing," I said, and he replied, nodding sagely, "Si, a very dumb thing."

Minnesota Taxpayers League

Memo to David Strom and the Minnesota Taxpayers League: YOU ARE DUMB.

Man, where to start with the verbal beatings? It's not easy. See, the Minnesota Taxpayers League is, basically, a handful of old, white rich guys who are tired of paying their accountants to get them out of paying taxes. They want to eliminate the middleman. So they started a little group, a little millionaire's club, to bitch and moan every time the government collects taxes for stuff they don't personally get anything out of.

Complete bastards, of course. But they're taken seriously by the current administration and the media, so every time they bitch about something, we have to listen to them. For example. Right now, we're in the midst of a bus drivers' strike. That means no buses. That means that those of us who choose to bus to work have to drive, and those who have no choice in the matter are fucked. They're striking because, thanks the Taxpayers League, our ass of a governor got into office on a "no new taxes" platform. And then he cut transit funding. And so they want to screw over the bus drivers by jacking up their health care costs by hundreds of dollars. Is that the acrid taint of compassionate conservatism I detect wafting across the state? I believe it is.

To prepare for the strike, everyone was told to be good citizens and try to work from home and try to carpool and try to change their work hours to keep everything from going to hell. Which we did. Well, not me. I figured that playing-nice bullshit is counterproductive to the point, which is to actually make things as unpleasant as possible for people who drive so that they'll appreciate the buses almost as much as the people who ride them. And in a SHOCKING TWIST, I was right.

After two days without an urban apocalypse, along comes David Strom, president and founder of the Taxpayers League: ""Transit just isn't that important to the smooth functioning of the Twin Cities transportation system. That's the obvious conclusion to be drawn from the lack of chaos engendered by the bus-system strike."

This is classic arch-conservative fuckhead thinking. Buses, and I know this may sound radical, exist in no small part for the PEOPLE THAT RIDE THE BUSES. They're not magical Traffic Boxes that keep poor people bundled up out of the sight, and out of the way, of rich people's luxury cars.

On top of that, there's the fact that, like I said above, everyone's been following the directions to play nice and carpool and work from home. That won't last, because people are basically selfish bastards who'll only put up with the hassle of riding with people they barely know into downtown for just so long before they say to hell with it and buy a car.

That's the other thing. Without buses, a lot more people would have to actually -get- cars. Unlike millionaire Strom, most people can't up and buy a car on two day's notice. Of course, the Taxpayers League has a brilliant solution to this - buy everyone used cars with the transit money! It'd only cost $5,000 per person, and then we could stick all those annoying poor people with repair and insurance bills. Oh, and keep non-citizens from getting licenses to drive the cars we're giving them. If people only listened to the Taxpayers League, government could be fucking over more with less! 

Let's just pretend, for a moment, that Strom's idea weren't utterly delusional. If you need to smoke a little crack to get into that mindset, go ahead, we'll wait. So now all the poor people in the state have '97 Saturns with 75,000 miles on 'em. What does he actually think the traffic situation would be like once all these cars hit the roads? Face it. Eventually, a certain someone's Mercedes would be stopped dead on 35E, surrounded by the Great Unwashed in their Saturns as he tried to get to the state capital to lobby for his latest evil scheme.

At which point Strom would probably buy a fucking helicopter, and use public money to install a helipad in downtown St. Paul. Because if it's not completely evident yet, he's a bit of an asshole.

Now that I think of it, does anyone know of anyone out there, named Strom, who isn't a complete scumbag waste of skin? I'm curious, because I have a theory that everyone named Strom is a worthless scumbag waste of skin, and I'd like to see how well it holds up.

For using your power and influence to fuck over hundreds of thousands of people, and then brushing it off because you, personally weren't affected, David Strom is hereby added to the growing ranks of the DUMB.

Zell Miller

The Forces Of Regression

Memo to the forces of regression: YOU ARE DUMB.

It's two thousand and four. I mean, I know you've noticed, because you're writing "'04" on your checks, but have you actually noticed? Three years AFTER 2001. Twenty years AFTER 1984. We're supposed to be better now. Wiser. Smarter. Flying around in jetpacks or something. But we're not. And I've become convinced it's because of forces of regression. A bunch of dumb sonsabitches who are dragging their feet on the march to THE FUTURE. And I'm callin' em out.

Michael Powell, chairman of the FCC: It is not 1962. You do not need to protect us from a tit. Or the F-bomb. We do not need a full-scale investigation into a Super Bowl halftime show while the administration is getting away with shit that makes Nixon weep for being born 30 years too soon. Go back to your office, try to keep the beaver shots on Teletubbies below, say, five a year, consider protecting the public airwaves by keeping them vaguely public, and GET OUT OF THE WAY.

Groundhog Day: Can we stop, now? We've got weather.com, we've got satellites. Right now, even as we speak, there are a couple of tiny, remote controlled buggies tooling around on the surface of Mars, sending us back three-dimensional stereoscopic pictures of another planet. Yet people are still wasting time and energy watching a rat in Pennsylvania for its meteorological insights. The people of Punxsutawney have ridden this freakish ancient superstitious gravy train for too long, now. They're cut off.

Georgia: And speaking of tradition ruining things for the rest of us. Georgia wants to stop using the word "evolution" in schools. Consider this a warning shot across the bow of creationists, who may be the dumbest people on earth: you're gonna show up here a lot.

Creationists are like vile, oozing, black-hearted little idiot savants, who can somehow manage to finagle school boards and politicians into doing their bidding, come up with cute names like "intelligent design theory", all while firmly believing that the earth is only six thousand years old and an invisible man in the sky put all the fossils under Arizona.

And they don't even have an ulterior motive. It's not like, say, certain monkeys in power denying global warming because if they do anything about it, it'll piss off all their friends and wipe out their bank accounts. No. The creationists do all this because, if they don't, a few thousand repeatedly translated words in a millenia-old book written by dozens of people back when writing stuff down was NEW AND TRENDY might not be 100% accurate.

I say we eat 'em. I know cannibalism is a big taboo these days. Thanks to Michael Powell's new scrutiny, they've had to scrap the big cannibalism performance from next year's Super Bowl. But creationists are like a giant, inbred roadblock between us and Utopia. And with all the groundhogs and boobfear holding us back too, we're gonna need a lot of energy to push forward. So let's eat all the creationists. They're probably even low-carb.

The Return Of Joystick Joe

Memo to Joe Lieberman. YOU ARE STILL DUMB.

Man, it really must suck to be you right now. Dean and Kerry stealing all the headlines, you're polling around the same as Kucinich, your former running mate dissed you on national TV... it's a long way to fall. So I understand why you'd want to recapture some of your past glory.

Doesn't make you any less of a dumbass, of course.

Ol' Joe went back to his Bennett-loving, filth-hating, socially conservative roots on the campaign trail. But with the Mortal Kombat card played out, how the heck would Joystick Joe employ his classic technique of finding a years-old game everyone already knew about to "discover" and decry for its vileness?

"Video games have gotten better over time. But there's a couple out there that are horrendous.You ought to see one called 'Grand Theft Auto'. The player is rewarded for attacking a woman, pushing her to the ground, kicking her repeatedly and then ultimately killing her, shooting her over and over again."

Joe, you unrepentant, ignorant monkeyhumper. Anyone with half a brain could deconstruct that paragraph faster than the reanimated corpse of Pauline Kael hopped up on crystal meth. However, as a candidate, you're dealing with potential voters here, rather than people with half a brain, so lemme break it down.

First, "there's a couple out there that are horrendous". Note the accidental slip of the singular "there's" instead of "there are". Very Freudian, that, because the man only has one example. If there are a couple out there that are horrendous, list 'em both. Or list 'em all, if there's more than a couple. I'll help. Roadkill! Postal 2! DOA Extreme Beach Volleyball! Come on, Joe! Hundreds of games were released last year alone. You had to be offended by more than GTA.

"You ought to see one called 'Grand Theft Auto'". Oh, where to begin. The only game called "Grand Theft Auto" came out for the PC in February of 1998. So, on what approaches the six year anniversary of the series, Joe Lieberman is telling New Hampshire residents they "ought to see" it. I mean, yeah, it's New Hampshire, but it's not like they're Amish or something. They've got Targets there.

And then, of course, the meat of it, in which Joystick Joe uses his classic stylee to completely misrepresent the content of a game. I mean, I'm not saying that Grand Theft Auto III and GTA Vice City (the two games, one released in October 2001, the other a year later, that he's obviously lumping together) are paragons of kid-friendly virtue that stress the value of sharing and non-violent problem-solving techniques, but what he says about them is blatantly false.

First, the game is not gender-biased at all. You would be "rewarded" in exactly the same way by the game if you did those things to a man, and in fact, over the course of the game, you end up doing that type of thing to a lot more men than women.

Second, the "reward" is a paltry few bucks, because it's a simulated mugging. All you get is a little cash, and sometimes you don't even get that. There is no other reward, in game terms, for killing random pedestrians. Oh, wait, you get a single point toward a meaningless ranking, and you need a million points to have the meaningless "Godfather" ranking.

And you don't push people to the ground. They fall on the ground after you punch them enough. And once they fall to the ground, that's when you get the meager reward. Kicking or shooting them while they're down gets you no reward whatsoever, and, in fact, makes it more likely that you'll get caught and get the police after you.

I mean, for fuck's sake, most people who go off on GTA at least have the common decency to correctly reference the stupid prostitute thing. Sure, they blow it all out of proportion, so to speak, but at least they get it factually correct. Joe didn't even go that far. He just made some shit up because he's never played the game, probably never seen it actually being played, just got told about it by some aide who realizes that when it's GOOD news when a poll has you at 12%, you're deeply and utterly screwed.

For being consistent, unrepentant, and wrong yet again on what's supposed to be one of his "big issues", Joe Lieberman is not only DUMB, but has actually managed to beat George W. Bush as the first politician to be recognized by this site. Which surprises the hell out of me, let me tell you.