Project Whole Ass

As someone who was actively paying attention to and writing about James O’Keefe and Project Veritas since I first couldn’t believe anyone was taking them seriously, it’s with mixed emotions that I mark their passing, thirteen years later.

I mean, obviously, the only emotion I’m feeling hearing that they’ve shuttered is unmitigated, gloating glee. Fuck all of them. 

But the fact that they lasted for thirteen years, and the amount of damage they did thanks to mainstream media and centrist Dems acting like Something Needed To Be Done about their phony fucking revelations? That shit was an absolute harbinger of our current dystopia, so fuck all of them.

And yes, “fuck all of them” “fuck all of them” can be two different emotions. 

It was one of the earlier instances of blatantly weaponized optics, leveraging the knowledge that Democrats still felt like if things looked bad they had to fix it regardless of the truth, while their counterparts on the other side embarked on their current path of pushing through everything no matter how bad it looked or actually was, leading up to now where Lauren Boaebert’s real video is producing far less outrage and infinitely fewer consequences than PV’s fake videos. 

So even if they’ve been completely irrelevant for years once even the slowest Chuck Todds in the media stopped biting on their bullshit, I’m glad their dead and I invite all of us to piss on their grave. 

O Come On, ll Ye Faithful

Memo to Holiday Fundamentalists: FUCK OFF.

You people pull this shit every year, but you used to at least be a bit muted about it. Going on TV and moping about how the Christ has been taken out of Christmas. But this year you're getting downright nasty, and you need to get the fuck over it.

There is no vast liberal secular conspiracy to oppress, repress, and persecute you and take your holiday away. Just like John Kerry wasn't going to ban the bible, just like the gays aren't going to sneak in during the night like well-dressed ninjas and turn you gay in your sleep. We're not that organized. I wish we were. It's getting to the point where I think you people could use a short bout of persecution. You know, like a week's worth. Just to remind you what it's like.

Since I can't do that, allow me to provide you with a few simple guidelines, in case you're sitting around the house wondering if you're being persecuted:

Being asked to share: NOT PERSECUTION. Even being forced to share: NOT PERSECUTION. Not holding ultimate domain over every aspect of December: NOT PERSECUTION. Having a tiny fraction of your influence eroded by time and society: NOT PERSECUTION. Being kept from getting every little last thing your Jesus-humping hearts secretly desire: NOT PERSECUTION.

Just because one day of the season is named after Jesus does not make it all yours. And if you have a problem with that, tough shit, because it's YOUR FAULT in the first place. It's your fault for horning in on the solstice, for starters. There were winter holidays before you came around, but if there's one thing you've kept constant for two-plus thousand years, it's that you hate competition. So you counterprogrammed the Solstice with Christmas, grabbed all the market share, stuck angels on top of the trees, and called it yours. But you weren't there first, and you've established a precedent, haven't you?

And second, it's your fault because you're the only religion to get not ONE, but TWO of your holy days declared as national, governmentally recognized holidays. Veteran's Day, President's Day, Memorial Day, Labor Day, MLK, those are all national days for national history, but Christmas and Easter are yours, and you made them America's. Guess which two holidays are the most secularized, with Santas and bunnies instead of Jesuses and More Jesuses? Think that's a coincidence? You give the whole country the day off to celebrate, and even the ones who don't believe in Christ are gonna have a party.

The right's current echo-chamber bitch-fest includes retail stores changing greetings from "Merry Christmas" to "Happy Holidays", and this is described as the Moral Apocalypse engineered by the Jews, the Liberals, and the Jew Liberal Secular Humanist Atheists. Who they SHOULD be blaming is their beloved capitalism. The invisible hand makes more money giving invisible hand-jobs to all god's children than it does just the Jesus-fans. So the stores, wanting money from Muslims and Buddhists and Jews and secular atheists who still celebrate Christmas because we like having days off and giving our friends stuff, tell us "Happy Holidays" because that covers Christmas and Kwanzaa and Hanukkah and "Hey, There's No God, But Here's A Waffle Iron Anyway!"* That's the free market for you.

They're pursuing PROFIT, you thick fucks, not some dark agenda. So once again, the people actually responsible are going after their opponents for shit we didn't do. That they DID do. Because they can't stand not being allowed in a "holiday parade" that hasn't had religious floats in it ever before. Because they think it's Satan's work when Target decides to stop making an exception for the Salvation "We'll Fire You If You're Gay" Army in its no-solicitations policy. "Oh no, we don't have our special privileges anymore, and have to operate on the same level as everyone else! We're being PERSECUTED!"

Bill O'Reilly is complaining of an "anti-Christian jihad" JIHAD. Bill O'Reilly masturbates on the phone using his extensive vibrator collection! He's got so many sins Jesus would have to come back about two dozen times just to die for them all. The poster child for creepy self-abuse is going to say who's anti-Christian? The Falafel-Fucker is going to cast the first stone?

The lessons of kindergarten are lost on these people. So fuck 'em. If they can't share their toys, maybe we SHOULD be taking them away from 'em.

*You don't expect atheists to have decent holiday names, do you? No practice.

Revenge Of BAD CALL FRIDAY

Back in August, longtime readers of this column may recall that I inaugurated a new Friday feature: BAD CALL FRIDAY. It was such a stirring success that it was never once repeated... until NOW. Yes, it's time for another series of horrible mistakes made by celebrities, corporations, and public officials.

We start in Hollywood, where it was announced, a month or so ago*, that John Woo would be directing a new movie based on the venerable property, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. This is what experts refer to as a TRIPLE BAD CALL:

• Last year, they tried to resurrect He-Man with a new cartoon. The cartoon was awful, failed miserably, and was cancelled. Ergo, a new He-Man movie is a BAD CALL.
• Last year, they tried to resurrect He-Man with a new line of toys. The toys were super-crappy, failed miserably, and the line was cancelled. Ergo, a new He-Man movie strikes me as a BAD CALL.
• This year, they had the brilliant idea to make a new movie, based on a popular character, that had been portrayed in a shitty 80's movie by Dolph Lundgren. This film defied all odds by being almost as bad as (or worse than, depending on who you ask) the original, and was a critical and box-office disappointment. One can draw from this the conclusion that a new He-Man movie would be aBAD CALL.

And really, if you're going to take one 20-year-old piece of shit and bring it back with new "talent", why stop there? Remember "Band Aid", the African poverty benefit supergroup that narrowly avoided a trademark-infringement lawsuit from Johnson & Johnson? You know, the ones that put out the "Do They Know It's Christmas" song that has been inescapable for two months a year ever since? Well, they're remaking it. BAD CALL.

I mean, the original is bad enough. Sure, it's generally thought of as the best of the "save the hungry people" charity songs, but look at its competition. Plus, it was mostly British people, and that gives it bonus cultural cachet that obscures its general crapitude. But a remake? And it's not like they're getting the band (aid) back together or anything. No, this time they're assembling an all new "super"group of today's artists to re-record the song!

Farewell, Bono! You've been replaced by COLDPLAY. That's gotta fucking hurt. The only guy from the original Band Aid that's even remotely close to still relevant, and the coach pulls you out of the game so that those whiny "Yellow" fuckers can belt out "Feed The World". Remember Sting? You know, back in the 80's when he didn't entirely suck? Well, pack him into his Jaguar and send him off onto the ice floe, we've got Travis now. Boy George? Boy Schmorge! We've got a whole BAND full of glam assholes, The Darkness! And remember, when the remake comes out, every single time it gets pirated over the Internet, a child in Africa DIES.

And finally, the right-wing simply can't let "Fahrenheit 9/11" die. The DVD's been out for two weeks, which means it's now officially outside the "window of visibility", and gets stocked back with all the other "F" titles in the Documentary section. Most of the discussion of the film happened over the summer anyway; the DVD release really didn't incite any new arguing. But since the right can't just get on with it, today brings us theBAD CALL release of "Celsius 41.11", a movie title so bad and un-funny that it could have only come from pissed-off conservatives.

This new documentary**, written by Lionel Chetwynd, the man that gave us that stunning piece of Showtime fiction about how incredibly brave and decisive Bush was after 9/11, is named after the temperature at which your brain starts to deteriorate.BAD CALL. Chetwynd is quoted as explaining that "You tell enough lies, and the brain starts to die." Again, BAD CALL. I've thought of at least eight different punchlines for that quote in the time it took me to paste it. Make us lead the target a little, Chetwynd! Don't just stand there with a big target on your ass!

The documentary, intended as a "rebuttal" to Fahrenheit 9/11, spends a lot of time talking about John Kerry, which Fahrenheit didn't mention at all. Oops. Let me make fun of Chetwynd a little more, because his name sounds like an 80's prog-rock band, and because he said something else that was realy fucking stupid. ACTUAL BAD CALL QUOTE TIME!

"What was getting to me was Michael Moore's almost preternatural obsession with getting rid of Bush." - Lionel "HO-Scale" Chetwind. If "preternatural" means "beyond natural", and Moore's desire to get rid of Bush is "almost preternatural", that means it's almost beyond natural, which means it's COMPLETELY NATURAL. Along with the similar desires of anyone who's been paying attention for the past four years. Remember, kids. Being a complete dumbass in public is always a.... BAD CALL.

*They can't all be up-to-the-minute topical, you know.

**Note my kindness and taking of the moral high ground by not putting quotes around it.

A Tale Of Two Nutjobs

Memo to Alan Keyes: DON'T EVER CHANGE.

It's been a while since we've checked in with our old friend Alan Keyes, hasn't it? I don't know why it is that the hateful shit Keyes spouts doesn't piss me off the way it does coming out of, say, the Falwells of the world, but it does. I mean, let's take a look at a couple of quotes on the same subject. It's ACTUAL COMPARATIVE QUOTE TIME!

"I've never seen a man in my life I wanted to marry! ... And I'm going to be blunt and plain, if one ever looks at me like that I'm going to kill him and tell God he died!- Jerry Falwell, September 2004.

"If we do not know who the mother is, who the father is, without knowing all the brothers and sisters, incest becomes inevitable. Whether they mean it or not, that is what will happen. If you are masked from your knowing your biological parents, you are in danger of encountering brothers and sisters you have no knowledge of." - Alan Keyes, speaking out against gay marriage and homosexuality in general on Saturday.

See what I mean? That first quote still pisses me off. The only way any gay man would fuck Jerry Falwell is to sell the pictures to the media, and I don't think anybody's selfless enough to take that particular hit for Team Selfish Hedonism. Yet Falwell's ready to commit murder to prevent the one act his entire life, diet, and genetics have conspired every single day to prevent?! And what does he mean by "tell God he died"? Of course he'd be dead. You'd have killed him. That's the point. Does Falwell go around pointing out other obvious consequences to God? "Oh Lord, having just relieved my mighty bowels, I beseech thee, do not turn your omnipotent nose unto my bathroom, for it is most foul, and I may have left a floater."

The Keyes, quote, on the other hand, blows over my like a feather typhoon, all the force and bluster managing merely to tickle me a bit. It's as if Keyes finally got around to watching the original Star Wars trilogy*, saw what happened with Luke and Leia, and had the epiphany that all those kids growing up with two mommies or two daddies would end up unknowingly kissing their sibling to prove that they're not secretly in love with a scruffy-looking nerf-herder. It, like the rest of his campaign, is a complete fucking joke.

You know who endorses Alan Keyes? Jeanne Kirkpatrick, Reagan's U.N. ambassador. That's how desperate the GOP is about Keyes. They're pulling people out of mothballs who haven't been heard from since they got made fun of in BLOOM COUNTY. What's next, Caspar Weinberger? Keyes is down 40 or more points, and Obama's offering up his staff members to other campaigns that don't have the advantage of running against a completely crazy person. Maybe he should send a couple down to Kentucky, where Jim Bunning's only been outed as a nutjob in the last couple of weeks.

Keyes is unbowed and unchanged, thank goodness. "I think you are more likely to be called names if you are effective at articulating your position," Keyes said in a recent interview, which is true, but it does omit the crucial second step: that the position you're effective at articulating is that kids raised by gay parents will end up FUCKING THEIR SIBLINGS.

That's the kind of articulation that gets you called names, yes. Like "bat-shit crazy". The kind of thing that has the Illinois GOP infrastructure squabbling like ferrets in a sack over whose fault it is that you're the candidate. I probably should be more up in arms about you saying stuff like this, or that we shouldn't spend money on AIDS in Africa because it's caused by immoral behavior, but unlike Bush, or Falwell, or even Limbaugh, but the fact is, you'll never have any real power. Your tiny following would have been homophobic douchebags whether you spoke to them or not. So in November, you can go back to whatever it is you professional candidates do when you're not running - spewing your garbage in the guise of a radio show or "think tank" consultant, and then in two to six years, you'll be back saying more stupid, crazy shit to the press. And we can all start the laughing again.

So don't ever change, Alan. Keep railing against the selfish hedonists like your own (rumored) gay daughter, and blaming all the ills on the world on people who aren't making babies every ten months. Because every time you do, you show the true face of the far-right, and we all learn why it must be dressed up in frilly, "compassionate" sheep's clothing, lest it suffer your fate and only get 25% of the vote.

*Well, he probably watched the new DVD's, so "original" should technically be in Official Nerd Sarcasm Quotes.

Allegedly

Fuck politics.

At least for one more day. Sure, there's stuff I'd like to touch on, like all the things you didn't hear from Kerry-Edwards in the debates, or how ludicrous it is that The Bulge is getting more traction than, say, war crimes... but for this week, at least, fuck politics. And speaking of fuck-politics...

Memo to Bill O'Reilly: HA HA HA HA HA HA HA ALLEGEDLY HA HA HA HA HA HA HA ALLEGEDLY HA.

Oh please, oh please, oh please, let it all be true. Let this be the Bill O'Reilly legacy. Let him be the new Marv Albert, the new punchline, for the next decade. It would be a thing of such beauty in a cold, cruel world. So please, let it be true.

Because for a guy who purports to spend so much of his time in a "no-spin zone", Bill O'Reilly sure is allegedly one twisted little fuckmonkey.

In case you haven't heard the story, O'Reilly is being sued by Andrea Mackris, a producer on his show. Her lawsuit alleges that O'Reilly is allegedly a vibrator-obsessed, phone-sex-obsessed, philandering ape who allegedly forces all kinds of nasty, creepy, unwanted advances on his female subordinates, and allegedly called this particular producer on the phone three separate times while "tapping his microphone", as it were. Allegedly.

The details of the alleged allegations, as seen on The Smoking Gun, paint an allegedly horrifying picture of a middle-aged, rich asshole who allegedly acted like a non-stop horn-monster around the producer and her friends while, at the same time, exhibiting alleged behavior that really makes you question Bill's alleged sanity. Not to mention his alleged intelligence. The classic, choice bit that will go down in alleged history is excerpted here from the complaint in a new segment I like to call ALLEGED QUOTE TIME!

"You would basically be in the shower and then I would come in and I'd join you...and I would take that little loofa thing... it's one of those mitts those loofa mitts you know, so I got my hands in it ... and I would put it around front, kinda' rub your tummy a little bit with it... and then I would take the other hand with the falafel (sic) thing and I'd put it on your pussy..."- Alleged Bill O' Reilly *

First of all, "falafel"? FALAFEL? Second of all, I have it on very good authority that the only thing that happens when you use EITHER a loofa OR falafel on a human clitoris is that you get your fucking arm snapped off at the wrist. What next? Does O'Reilly have a dildo made out of pumice? Or, perhaps, hummus? Never trust a man who confuses exfoliants, chickpeas, and sexual aids. It'll only hurt you in the end.

You know who's gotta be having the time of his life right now? Al Franken. How must it feel to have pissed someone off SO much that he allegedly drops your name right in the middle of a series of allegedly creepy, sexual-harassing dinner conversations? That when Bill O'Reilly allegedly needs an alleged analogy for any woman who crosses him, he allegedly goes immediately to "Look at Al Franken, one day he's going to get a knock on his door and life as he's known it will change forever. That day will happen, trust me." That's gotta feel fucking incredible, to know that you've gotten so far under Bill O'Reilly's skin that even while he's trying to allegedly get into a subordinate's pants, he still has time for an elaborate power-trip revenge fantasy** about you. Al, you are the MAN.

There's even a bit that, if the allegations are true, may actually qualify Bill O'Reilly as the most allegedly selfish human being on the planet. Because, you know, it takes a certain kind of selfishness to allegedly call up your subordinate and allegedly whack off while you're on the phone with her. It takes an extra special kind of selfishness to allegedly do it AGAIN. It takes a rare kind of selfishness indeed to allegedly do it a THIRD time, allegedly using a vibrator on yourself. But only the most selfish man in the universe would, after allegedly masturbating for the third time, with a vibrator, allegedly on the phone with your subordinate (who's not allegedly cooperating in any way), to allegedly then brag about your recent performance on the "Tonight Show". Because first, when it comes to "pillow talk", that's just allegedly deeply fucking tacky and egotistical. And second, who gives an alleged shit if Jay Leno allegedly thinks your so damn funny?

This whole thing, of course, will get ugly before it's over. O'Reilly's already countersued, calling Mackris an extortionist and a politically-motivated career saboteur. He has plenty of media outlets with which to make his case. And these things never go smoothly. But I'm inclined to believe Mackris for two main reasons. First, some of the details, like the loofa, and the falafel, and the Franken, are just too completely off-the-wall and insane to be the products of a fabricated scheme. And second, I want it to be true so bad it almost hurts. Let's all keep our alleged fingers crossed.

*There's a lot more to this bit, but I've snipped it down to the comedically relevant parts. You really should check out the full complaint online, though. Even if it turns out not to be true, it's a great read.

**Allegedly.

That's Our Keyes!

Memo to Alan Keyes: STILL BUGFUCK.

I'm sorry. I honestly can't resist. It's like giving candy to a diabetic baby. Keyes says something completely bugfuck, and in the course of researching it, I stumble across other stuff, and my fingers just move of their own free will. B-U-G-F-U-C-K.

So what's everyone's favorite homophobic, ultraconservative, unelectable Senate candidate up to these days? Giving interviews to gay-themed satellite radio. It's amazing anyone even HEARD it, much less that the guy with the XM receiver bothered mentioning it to a reporter. I'll say this about Keyes, the man has the bugfuck courage of his batshit convictions, and didn't pull any punches when speaking to an audience composed primarily of people he despises.

"If we embrace homosexuality as a proper basis for marriage, we are saying that it's possible to have a marriage state that in principle excludes procreation and is based simply on the premise of selfish hedonism."

That is so incredibly selfish of the gays, wanting to form relationships with people they're attracted to. Don't you homosexuals know that every time you have gay sex, Alan Keyes cries? And not "one lonely tear" Iron Eyes Cody crying, either. Full-on heart-wrenching sobs. STOP MAKING ALAN KEYES CRY.

Obviously, the homosexuals need to be stopped at any cost. But luckily, if we've learned anything from the Republican National Convention this week, it's that the Republicans are the party of openness. Of tolerance. Of the "big tent" where people are free to disagree with party policy all they want, and even futilely dream of changing it. And in the spirit of the Big Tent GOP, Alan Keyes was very kind and deferential to Dick Cheney's lesbian daughter, Mary.

Asked if Cheney's daughter was a selfish hedonist, Keyes, thinking "Big Tent" all the way, said "Of course she is. That goes by definition. Of course she is... Dick Cheney may or may not like to hear the truth, but it can be spoken."

Oops. Well, the next day, at the RNC, after attending a "Big Tent" orientation meeting, with Powerpoint slides and everything, Keyes came around.

"I have said that if you are actively engaging in homosexual relations, those relations are about selfish hedonism. If my daughter were a lesbian, I'd look at her and say, `That is a relationship that is based on selfish hedonism.' I would also tell my daughter that it's a sin, and she needs to pray to the Lord God to help her to deal with that sin."

You know, if it were up to me, and one of the central premises of this whole website is that, dammit, it SHOULD BE UP TO ME, Keyes would have his own sitcom modeled after The Cosby Show this fall. Call it "That's Our Keyes!" The exclamation point is vital. He could play a wacky dad, running for Senate, trying to deal with his gay daughter and his sassy 8-year-old son and his barefoot, pregnant wife. RATINGS GOLD.

That is, as long as no reporters ask him any questions. Apparently, that form of journalism, where reporters ask public figures questions, doesn't go over kindly with Alan Keyes. But then, very little seems to go over well for him. The man's Rolaids budget must be massive. If he doesn't have a pneumatic tube straight from Merck to his living room for hourly deliveries of Pepcid and lithium, we should see about getting that installed. Here's what happened at the RNC yesterday when he was asked why he wasn't addressing the delegates.

"You are acting as a media surrogate for the Democratic Party! And when you ask questions that are aimed at achieving their purposes in the political battle, I have the right to ask who you speak for and who you represent. The reason you're asking that question is because the media wants to attack the Republican Party! You take approaches that are trying to sow the seed and impression of divisions within the party, to serve the purposes of the Democrats!"

The reporter in question is John Kass, a columist for the Chicago Sun-Times. Kass... is a Republican. Such a Republican that his columns attacking the left are reprinted on the Illinois GOP web site. What's next? Accusing Rush Limbaugh of being a welfare queen? He's already accused Barack Obama of being a slaveholder, so the man is no stranger to cognitive dissonance.

That's Our Keyes!

Another Pleasant Valley Spastic Topic Monkey Friday

Some of you may wonder about the nature of Spastic Topic Monkey Fridays. Why on many occasions, your humble author feels the need to dump a big load of half-formed concepts unworthy of full column stature on an audience that just wanted a little diversion, a little comedy. All I can tell you is, to paraphrase the late, lionized-despite-beating-and-torturing-women Rick James, "Caffeine's a hell of a drug." I have a sort of Ike-Tina relationship with caffeine, one in which caffeine and I alternately play both roles, and that frequently results in physiological payback by Friday morning. Welcome to my braindump.

Memo to the dudes in the back of the bus: DUMB. AND LUCKY. Lucky I wasn't feeling particularly Socially Darwinian yesterday afternoon. Because if I had, I might have decided to pass along the epic quantities of information you provided on your drug-buying and dealing activities to the authorities. Just to punish you for being so indiscreet about it. I don't care what you do. I'm borderline libertarian when it comes to drugs. But at least act like it's a LITTLE illegal. Loudly discussing where you live, how to contact you, what you can hook people up with, is just DUMB. And bumming an Oxycontin off the white-trash mother of two who very obviously had already taken a couple was just fuckin' tacky.

I love public transit, really I do. But I just want to ride home, play some Game Boy, and sit in peace. I do not need to spend half an hour listening to the Blue Collar Comics re-enactment of "Traffic". Thank you.

Memo to John O'Neill: DUMBASS. First, you say that John Kerry was never in Cambodia because you were never in Cambodia, which is specious reasoning to begin with. Then, confronted with a tape of you telling Nixon "I was in Cambodia", you supposedly address the contradiction. By explaining that when you said "in Cambodia", you actually meant NOT IN CAMBODIA. Brilliant! I suppose it would be a bit crass to suggest that this whole mess depends on what your definition of "in" is? It's a good thing you're not President. And a Democrat. Not to defend Clinton, but his definition of "sexual relations" is almost exactly the same degree of prevarication that "served with John Kerry" is.

Memo to Dubya: FUCKHEAD. "I understand how Sen. Kerry feels - I've been attacked by 527s too." Take your rattlesnake sympathy and shove it up your ass. Has anyone actually bothered to ask Bush which 527 ads attacking him contain demonstrably false statements? Here's a hint. Being called a shitty President doesn't count. They're not naming specific advertisements they object to for reasons that should be blatantly obvious even to people stoned off their ass on Oxycontin, be they bus riders or talk radio hosts. If Bush were any more transparent, he could strap on a set of clear plastic boobs and play Sue Storm in the Fantastic Four movie.

And on a related note, let me just bitch, briefly, one more time, about the fucking media. Given everything we know now, historically, about the behavior of poiticians, especially Presidents, how in the hell could it POSSIBLY seem like a good idea to start taking them at their word? With the possible exception of Carter, every single President from Kennedy on up has been shown to have been lying out of their asses for nearly their entire terms. Both parties. Just a constant stream of truth-shading, manipulation of selective facts, out-and-out falsehoods, hiding information... it hasn't changed. It's still going on. It'll still go on after November no matter who we pick. That is the reason you are there.

You do not exist so that I can find out what George W. Bush said at 2:42 p.m. instead of waiting until 6:30. You do not exist to sit between two lying assholes and point from one to the other. You are here because if there are hundreds and thousands of people poking at stuff trying to find out as best as they can what is actually going on, the people in charge have to WORK HARDER AT LYING TO US. You're like copy protection on software. You'll never stop the lying. You're just there to make us hunt for cracks and serials on porn-laden pop-up sites if we want to steal the software. And right now, you can't even be bothered to do THAT much, because you suck so incredibly hard. Adobe knows better than to just put a question at the beginning of the install asking "Did you buy this software? Yes/No?", and computers haven't been around nearly as long as lying politicians. What's YOUR fucking excuse?

"Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2" opens today. Authorities have set up elaborate haz-mat "safe zones" around area theaters to prevent vulnerable individuals from coming within 200 feet of the movies. Vulnerable individuals are defined as anyone who has read a book 50 pages or longer in the past two years, anybody who remembers that PBS is on Channel 2, and anybody who can count to eight without taking off their shoes. Anyone wishing to enter the movie's area effect can bypass security checks with proof of purchase of any "Larry The Cable Guy" DVD.

Osama Bin Godden

And now, another exciting episode of "ALAN KEYES, BATSHIT-CRAZY DOOFUS".

I swear, if Alan Keyes didn't exist, I would have to invent him. Every time he opens his mouth, something both wondrous and terrifying comes out. And the best part is, the GOP can't disown him or minimize him the way they can a Falwell or a Robertson, because Keyes is one of the few black allies they have. So they gotta use him, like they're using him now in the Illinois Senate race.

Even though he thinks God speaks to us by ramming planes into buildings. For Keyes, it's obviously time to adjust his dosage, but here at YAD, it's even more obviously ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!"

"Now, you think it's a coincidence that on Sept. 11th, 2001, we were struck by terrorists an evil that has at its heart the disregard of innocent human life? We who have for several decades killed not thousands but scores of millions of our own children, in disregard of the principle of innocent human life -- I don't think that's a coincidence, I think that's a warning. I don't think that's a coincidence, I think that's a shot across the bow. I think that's a way of Providence telling us, 'I love you all; I'd like to give you a chance. Wake up! Would you please wake up?'"

At least when Falwell blamed 9/11 on the feminists, gays, and abortionists, he had the common decency to do it on the 700 Club, where that kind of thing is only seven to eight percent beyond the pale. Keyes, on the other hand, is angling to be one of 100 people who sort of kind of try to help run things in our wonderfully representative democracy, so perhaps saying shit like this is a bad idea.

What cracks me up the most about this is that the ultra-right, anti-choice, blastula-suffragites won't have a problem with this, even though, in essence, Alan Keyes just called Almighty God a terrorist. Because what is a terrorist? A terrorist is an individual who commits acts of violence against innocent people in order to make a political statement. It seems to me that arranging for the death of 3,000 people in order to send America a special political message about how awful abortion is fits that definition quite nicely. Hell, Keyes is accidentally better at identifying terrorists than John Ashcroft is. Ashcroft's busy chasing software pirates and hackers and porn peddlers and calling 'em "terrorists", when according to Keyes, the biggest terrorist of all is the Big Guy Upstairs.

If I were Ashcroft, I'd jump all over that. After all, Osama Bin Laden's only in one place, and we can't even figure out what place that is. God, on the other hand, is EVERYWHERE, or so I'm told. Makes him easier to find, albeit tougher to capture. At least you don't have to send him to Guantanamo Bay, since he's already there.

As a result of being completely fucking insane, Alan Keyes is having a difficult time being elected to the Senate. Luckily, Keyes is a crafty planner who is never without a backup strategy.

"The balance is utterly destroyed when the senators are directly elected because the state government as such no longer plays any role in the deliberations at the federal level." What Keyes wants to do is repeal the 17th Amendment, which basically arranged things so that senators would be elected. Before that, senators were chosen by the state government. It is, to be fair, a brilliant strategy for someone who can only get 33% of the people to even remotely consider voting for him.

I mean, the fact that Keyes is even RUNNING shows that politicians favor party affiliation over, oh, not being a complete fucking wack-job. Ergo, once those pesky voters are eliminated from the equation, a Republican state government would thus be given the choice between an intelligent, sane liberal like Barack Obama, and the GOP's own "Mad Dog Murdoch", Alan Keyes. And someone's chances of a cushy Washington office job would suddenly improve dramatically.

Alan Keyes, ladies and gentlemen. The only man in America who thinks the voting public isn't doing a crappy ENOUGH job of sending psychotic, ideological, fanatic idiots to the Congress. And that's just DUMB.

Racists and Psychos and Bears, Oh My!

Memo to Desperate Republicans: YOU ARE DUMB.

Seriously. When it comes to finding a candidate, Republicans are like overconfident high school seniors who don't bother applying to a "safety college". And then when a meteor strikes the one university they DID get admitted to, they're forced to head off to Devry, or order correspondence courses from Sally Struthers, or go to one of those "accredited medical universities" in the Caribbean.

Let's move to Tennessee, where tongues are drawn to windowsills like magnets to steel. Every two years, in the 8th District, a racist douchebag named James L. Hart runs for Congress. He believes in "eugenics", a.k.a. the breeding of Aryan super-men like Khan. That thing ol' Adolf was a big fan of. Anyway, things were going along as usual in Tennessee. The sun rose every day, the cows got milked, the pigs got fucked, and all of a sudden, the Republicans realized, to their dismay, that they hadn't managed to run any other Republicans for the 8th District! Oh, no!

A failed scramble later, and all of a sudden, the Republican Party is being represented by a man who claims that non-whites should be sterilized, and that their "poverty genes" will turn America into Detroit. Of course, the Republicans are adamant that they don't share Hart's values, and I'm sure most of them don't. Yet despite that, Hart's runs every year as a Republican, not a member of the Eugenics Party or some other fringe group he made up himself. It's almost as if, especially in the barely-Reconstructed South, the GOP has spent the last 40 years courting the racist vote through thinly-veiled campaigning on issues like "states' rights". But that's just crazy talk.

And speaking of crazy talk, let's turn our gaze to Illinois. Illinois Republicans face the dubious task of challenging Barack Obama for a U.S. Senate seat. Obama is that rarest of Democrats. He sounds like he believes what he's saying. After his DNC speech, I spent 42.6 seconds in complete cynicism remission, which is a personal record. To oppose Obama, the GOP has considered:

• A horny, sex-club-frequenting Borgfucker
• A short-tempered celebrity football coach
• A couple of former governors
• A crazy right-wing failed presidential candidate from another state with financial liabilities and embarrasing hypocritical past statements who also happens to be black like Obama.

Guess who they went for? Alan Keyes, who vowed he would never "imitate" Hillary Clinton by running for senator in a state he didn't live in! Hooray for the process! Lest people be overly concerned with the embarrassing thing he said a coupla years ago, Keyes got right to work saying even more embarrassing things. I believe it's a Special Carpetbagging Edition of ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"I would still be picking cotton if the country's moral principles had not been shaped by the Declaration of Independence." I mean, sure, I remember learning in school about how the Declaration of Independence ended slavery, but I also remember my teacher going to a locker every five minutes to take a swing out of a bottle. At the time, I just thought he was very, very thirsty.

Keyes is also rabidly anti-gay, rejecting the idea that sexual preference is not a choice. "We as human beings cannot assert that our sexual desires cannot be controlled. [That would] consign us to the real of instinctual animal nature-- and we are not there." I love the conservatives who think gay people are A-OK in their book... as long as they stay celibate and alone. Hooray for compassionate conservatism!

Which is ironic, because when it comes to candidates, Republicans are less discriminate than even the sluttiest gay man. As we've seen, the GOP'll grab any ol' asshole that passes by for a shot at finishing the race on top.

Custard's Last Stand

sOne of these days, I'm going to go through the archives, and make some kind of Map of the Fifty Hates, just to see how many of the great states of the Union have felt the mighty wrath-hammer that is my prose.

You'd think I'd have done Kentucky by now, right? Google doesn't seem to think so. Kentucky has always struck me as more "hick" than "redneck", anyway. Slightly lower chance of having a cross burning on your yard, but still damn difficult to find decent Thai food in. But Kentucky is not without its deep red-state (Sorry, Mr. Obama) idiocy, as evidenced by Midway, Kentucky's unique form of pro-American protest.

Burning ice cream.

Now, setting stuff on fire IS a time-honored traditional protest, whether it's Tom Sawyer novels, Twisted Sister records, the American Flag, or your own gasoline-soaked body. But just because something is traditional does not make it a good idea across the board. When planning to set something on fire in protest, one should research the product in question as to it's overall, say, FUCKING FLAMMABILITY, YOU HILLBILLY RETARDS...

Ahem. Of course, anything is flammable eventually. You won't go up like flash paper if you drop a match on your skin, but that fact hasn't put our nation's fine crematoriums out of business. Still, without some kind of professional-grade kiln or furnace, it's probably a bad idea to try an burn a FROZEN LIQUID DAIRY PRODUCT. This is what happens when you let the Intelligent Design fuckers write your TEXTBOOKS. You end up with generations of Scopes rejects who think milk will ignite.

Having now explored, if not necessarily answered, the question of why they tried to burn ice cream, we now turn to the greater conundrum of why they tried to burn ice cream. What did pure, innocent, ice cream ever do to anyone? Well, it seems that the founder of Ben & Jerry's recently created the "PantsonFire-Mobile"*, which is a car with a large statue of Dubya on it, and the Dubya statue's pants are on fire for obvious reasons.

Seems Chuck Bradley, whose family owns a corner market in Kentucky that sells the glorious B&J pintage, didn't take kindly to that mean ol' Vermont liberal, who no longer owns the company that makes the ice cream that Bradley attempted to burn, badmouthing his President. So, you know. Make a pile and get some matches. Which is, when you think about it, reactionary-bordering-on-caveman. Don't like something? Make a pile and get some matches. If he'd only thought to hit the ice cream with a rock, he could have made a fortune off the National Geographic circuit.

I scream, you scream, we all scream for ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"We've got a great country -- thousands of men have died so we can stand here today and speak our minds but not bad-mouth the leader of the free world." - Bradley, in the kind of pontificating on the nature of "freedom of speech" that can only result from a lifetime of brain-freeze.

So now that we've learned what kind of hayhumper tries to set ice-cream on fire in anger, we turn to another burning** question: What kind of elementary-school dropout comes out to support and watch the attempt? Let's hear from Charlene Harris, who brought her TWO AND FOUR YEAR OLD CHILDREN to watch the protest, thereby ensuring that both kids will grow up to join Gay Drag Queens For Kucinich if there's a shred of fucking justice on this planet.

"It was kind of hard to explain to them why the ice cream was bad. We do support the president, but they like ice cream."Charlene, it was hard to explain to them because, first, as we've shown, it makes no fucking sense at all. Second, YOU were trying to explain it. Third, you were trying to explain it to a two-year-old and a four-year-old. And lastly, you were trying to explain it to a two- and four-year-old that share your genetic code. I just got a message for you from Sisyphus. He says you should give up.

* Fun idea, but that's the kind of proper-noun construction that gives style-guide editors conniptions.

** Really, it's more of a sputtering, melting question that runs into the gutter and attracts flies for a week.

Hey, There's A Terror On Your Back!

We're fucked.

I mean, we knew we were fucked, but we didn't know we were FUCKED fucked, you know? Sure, I've used the "I thought it was bad, but I didn't think it was THIS bad" intro so many times it seems to have lost all shred of meaning, but damn, we are FUCKED.

We are fucked because, against all logic and reasoning, Annie Jacobsen is not a global laughingstock. Annie Jacobsen is the "Terror In The Skies, Again" woman. If you don't know what "Terror In The Skies, Again" is, you will. It's one of those things that people should never have paid attention to in the first place, but now that they've started paying attention, nobody can stand to be the one NOT paying attention to it, even though they could be doing something more useful with their time, like going to see Catwoman.

Here's your Official YAD Precis. Crazy white woman gets on plane. A dozen brown men get on the plane. The brown men talk to each other and use the can. The white woman panics. The plane lands safely. The white woman still panics. The brown men are investigated, did nothing wrong, and are just guys. The white woman STILL panics. She writes an article. A website runs the article. The Internet panics. The mainstream media panics, but claims to be reporting ON the panicking. I realize we're all deeply fucked.

Why is this story not over? The panicwoman was WRONG. The Syrian musicians were not trying to blow up the plane, they were not trying to practice blowing up the plane. They were flying to their gig for one reason only: THAT'S HOW YOU GET FROM DETROIT TO L.A. You fly, because it takes too long to walk. Every single piece of "suspicious" behavior she recounts in her article has been checked out. I'm not going to go into detail about that. That's what everyone ELSE is doing. That or just mindlessly amplifying and repeating her crazy panic claims.

No, what drives me up the fucking wall is that this will NEVER DIE. It's part of the lexicon now. Some piece of random racist bullshit is now part of the free-floating sea of diarrhea that is the modern memetic culture. You will get this story in e-mail before you die. Guaranteed. From some crazy panicked relative. We all have them. Well, you all have them. If I have them, they don't have my fucking e-mail address and they're not gonna get it.

If you're LUCKY, you'll get it sometime in the next two weeks. Forwarded eight times already. Whichever sad relative forwarded it to you probably added something to the top like "Wow!" or "Something to think about!" or "Pass this on!". If you're not lucky, and I can almost guarantee you won't be, you'll get it eight months from now. Because the only thing worse than the clueless forwarder is the clueless forwarder who is helplessly behind the times. They're the ones that just sent you the photoshopped John Kerry / Jane Fonda picture last week, and they STILL DON'T KNOW IT'S FAKE. E-mails like this are the reason God invented computer viruses, you know. Just saying.

If anyone tries to tell you that the crazy panic woman story raises important issues, hit them in the face. It raises a sum total of one issue. If you are of Middle Eastern descent, or are one of the two dozen or so ethnicities and/or phenotypes that might be mistaken for Arabic, then sit in your seat, don't look at anyone, don't talk to anyone, stare forward, eat your peanuts, and stay quiet. You won't AVOID going to Guantanamo, it'll just make for a better story if you get out. "Yeah, they thought I was behaving strangely and sending signals to a Mexican guy with a beard four rows back. Something to do with the way I ate my peanuts, and how I never went to the bathroom. It's pretty funny in retrospect, except for the scarring on my testicles where they put the electrodes."

But it's too late now. The genie is out of the bottle, and there's nothing left to do about it except stock up on hard-drive-wiping "screensavers" and maintain a vigilant eye on our inboxes. Just saying.

Spastic Topic Monkey Friday II: The Spastening

In a new "I, Robot" TV spot I saw yesterday, Will Smith says, in character: "Robots building other robots? That's just stupid." I think that sums up the movie in a nutshell right there. The one part of the script that's likely to make any sort of sense, and Our Hero thinks it's dumb. What does he think, that when we start making robots, they're going to be artisinally hand-crafted by the Amish?

I know some of you, reading this, are gonna go anyway. You can't help it. I'll have the same problem when Alien Vs. Predator comes out. It's going to suck, but it still attaches to some kind of geek receptor in my nervous system. But try to fight the urge anyway. This is Akiva Goldsman we're talking about here. This isn't Ordinary Summer Bad. This is the man that wrote "Lost In Space". Just let go.

When you think about it, "I, Robot" isn't really an adaptation of Asimov's classic stories. It's actually an adaptation of the 80's video game, "Berzerk". You've got a lone human running through hallways shooting at robots who are trying to kill him for two hours. It's a pity Brando died, frankly. He'd be perfect for Evil Otto. Stop the humanoid. Stop the intruder.

I'm not even going to get into the whole Whoopi Goldberg, "Hollywood Hatefest" thing. It's only mid-July. There's going to be almost four full months more of this bullshit before we get to vote, anyway. I gotta pace myself. If I blew an arterial gasket every single time the right went on one of its hypocritical tirades at the left for being a smidge harsh, I'd be forced to drink Fix-A-Flat every morning instead of Vanilla Coke.

I do think it's a pity that a comedy pioneer like Whoopi gets slammed just because she happened to be the first person in the country to finally realize a possible sexual connotation to Bush's last name. I just hope nobody finds a way to "crude up" the name of our beloved vice president, Mr. Richard Cheney.

OK, maybe I'll get into it a little. Whoopi Goldberg making Bush jokes and John Cougar Mellencamp calling the President a "cheap thug" is not a HATEFEST. You know how I know this? Because I've been presiding over a fucking hatefest myself since the start of this year, I've never used the words "cheap thug", and I only made the obvious Bush joke once. And it was filler. But "Hollywood Mild Attack Of Sporadic Grumpiness" doesn't roll trippingly off the tongues of your Fox News anchors, so I guess all us real hatefests have to deal with a wimpy, half-assed poseur who just crashed our annual convention.

And the next day, Dennis Miller, whose resume for the past three years has at least eight different entries for "redefining pathetic", spoke at a Bush fundraiser, said Kerry and Edwards should "get a room", and called James Carville a "Satanic Chihuahua".

I'm actually not particularly concerned with the controversy. I'm just enjoying Miller's slide into oblivion. You look at his material now, and it's almost impossible not to imagine his writing process. I picture a dark hotel room, a bottle of vodka, a thick stack of Bushie talking points, and a laptop. And on the laptop there's two windows open. One to Google, and one to an elaborate Excel spreadsheet that tells him the last time he made a "Beverly Hillbillies" reference.

Gulp of vodka. Talking point: Flipflopper. Hm. Did Buddy Ebsen ever flipflop? What else flips? What else flops? Gulp of vodka. Google "flop". Flophouse. Megaflops. Those sandal things. Gulp of vodka. Stare out window. Remember being funny on Weekend Update. Stare at joke in progress. "This guy..." Need a verb. What was that talking point again? "This guy flipflops... " I'm supposed to say he does this a lot, right? Vodka. "This guy flipflops more than..." OK, cultural reference time. You can still do it, cha-cha. You've sold books. You've done movies. You were in "Bordello of Blood", for fuck's sake, so you can damn well think of something he flipflops more than.

Shit. Nothing. Back up. What about a Match Game thing? "This guy flipflops so much that..." and then the audience yells "HOW MUCH DOES HE FLIPFLOP!". Wonder if I can count on that. We'll be in Wisconsin. More vodka. Screw the audience. I don't need an audience for my CNBC show, dammit. "This guy flipflops so much he needs..." what's that thing? That thing in the car? Google it. A GPS navigation system! That's hip new technology. I'll seem cutting edge. "This guy flipflops so much he needs a GPS navigation system to know which way he's gonna vote." There you go. You still got it, man. You still got it.

Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.

Democracy Once Again DOOMED

Before we begin, a quick update on Try To Say Something Bad About "I, Robot" Every Day This Week Week. Scientists have determined that watching "I, Robot" can cause unsightly growths on your acronym.

And now, a memo to everyone panicking about the Election Delay Plan: DAMN, I HOPE YOU'RE DUMB.

This is the problem with being a liberal who hates people. It makes things difficult at times like this. Because on the one hand, the idea that the Department of Homeland Security is looking into ways to postpone the election in the case of a terrorist attack is deeply troubling. On the other hand, it also plays right into the deepest fears of the Paranoid Conspiracy Leftits. And I hate it when the PCL's are even remotely right.

When the PCL's come close to the mark with their apocalyptic predictions of the fascist police state that is right around the corner, two things happen. First, they become a bit more insufferable, which is difficult, but possible. And second, it points out just how well and truly fucked we are.

The Department of Homeland Security, for its part, claims it is just looking into the technical legalities of the situation for purposes of contingency planning. Which sounds reassuring, until you remember the last time a federal department looked into the possible technical legalities of something, it was "how much torture can we get away with" and lo and behold, the answer turned out to be "quite a bit, actually."

Depending on who you talk to, there are two precedents in play here. First, local elections in New York were delayed after the 9/11 attacks, because, well, New York's mayoral election date isn't actually enshrined in the Constitution, and there were piles of rubble and plumes of roiling smoke all over the place. The other precedent is, of course, Spain, where an Al Qaeda bombing right before their elections presumably "changed the outcome" and led to the election of a liberal candidate who pulled Spain's troops out of Iraq.

The first rationale makes no sense on a national level. Unless the terrorists devise a plan to simultaneously blow up hundreds of thousands of elementary school gymnasiums, the country will be able, for the most part, to get to the polls.

So that leaves Spain, which is a wonderful example of American retardation at work. If you look at the stories about the election delay, they all say that the Madrid bombing changed the outcome of the election, which is true, but roughly akin to saying it was the explosion in the chamber of a rifle in Texas that made Lyndon Johnson the president. People here think that all of Spain rose up as one and pissed their pants as soon as they got bombed, and voted in the liberals in the hopes of appeasing the terrorists. When what ACTUALLY happened is that the incumbent tried to use the bombing for his political advantage, blaming Basque separatists for it even though the evidence pointed toward Al Qaeda, and so the Spanish electorate fired his sorry ass.

The funny part is, either way, the reasoning still is "we don't want that to happen here". The fake reasoning is that we don't want overly emotional traumatized Americans making poor decisions in the heat of the moment, and the real reasoning is that we wouldn't want the public to actually judge the incumbent on how much he lied about terrorism in order to achieve his personal political goals.

I'm so glad that we have the Department of Homeland Security now to tell us, by the way, which world events we, as voters, should be allowed to use to sway our opinion on the candidates. Isn't that how it's supposed to work? I mean, let's say Bush gets caught in an open-mic moment telling a racist joke or something two days before the election. Would that "unfairly" sway the voting public? That's how the political game works. A big fuckup can cost you your job, even if it's not your fault. Given all the other ways the powers-that-be have at their disposal to prevent or delay the release of bad news, or just lie in reports, it's nice to have one part of the process they can't tweak for their own benefit. For the time being.

Of course, over the weekend, I watched what appeared to be a documentary about the inner workings at Homeland Security, called "The 4400". From this educational program, I learned that in the event of an emergency, Homeland Security will dispatch a pair of Mulder and Scully knockoffs to wander around aimlessly and bitch about their personal lives while dozens of alien abductees demonstrate mysterious supernatural powers. So maybe the paranoid lefies are right to be keeping an eye on this one.