Sunday, September 5, 2010

Day After Saturday Links

I actually have a few things I want to write about, but it's a holiday weekend and I'm feeling a bit lazy. So for now, here's some links.

The RNC 8 is now the RNC 7. Erik Oseland has pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy, with the agreement that he won't be made to testify against the others.

Minnesota gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer decides to run an ad using his family to shore up his family values cred (it's really the only thing he can run, being that, you know, he has no ideas). Too bad one of his "blessed" son's family values is drunkenly drawing squirting cocks on a passed out girl in permanent marker and posting the photos on Facebook. Someone is gonna be soooo grounded. Now, I'm not going to go so far to call this sexual assault like some are, but I'll just say that I was a pretty wild child in my youth, and neither myself nor my friends ever did this kind of shit. Because we aren't assholes.

Only 28% of Americans can tell you who the chief justice is. In all honesty, I'd of thought the number was lower.

I'm sure glad Minnesotans voted Tim Pawlenty back into the governor's office knowing full well he was going to abuse that position while running for president. He's not only denied much-needed federal health care funds to an already broke state (because the well-being of one's constituents pales in comparison to the awesomeness of being able to run on opposing Obama's health care bill), he's actually making us spend our own money on failed health programs like abstinence only education which serves to cost the state more in the long run. And dude, if you are going to claim that this isn't some dirty cynical ploy to boost your numbers among movement conservatives, you might want to wait a bit before sending out the fund-raising emails on the issue. Asshole. Tim Pawlenty 2012: I have no problem fucking over a state for cheap political gain, now let me do the same for your country!

And just another quick note on Pawlenty, this post from Wonkette (regarding Pawlenty's classification of federal aid as "free samples" from a "drug dealer") pretty much sums up the level of stupid we are dealing with here:

However, we might take issue with the idea that these federal handouts are “free samples,” since, last we checked, Minnesotans were still required to pay federal taxes. It’s more as if your local drug dealer extracted money from everyone on your block, but then you refused his weekly handouts of crack cocaine that was purchased and cooked up using those extracted moneys. Oh, and also, in this analogy, “crack cocaine” is not a dangerous drug that can kill you, but is instead something that’s actually good. So it’s like you’re giving your drug dealer money but not accepting the delicious, nutritious food that he delivers, with his “meals on wheels” service.


Decent summary of the increasingly authoritarian atmosphere we are educating our kids in. Via Balloon Juice, in which the poster thinks it's being overly hyped, that children will always rebel, and may do so in increasingly high numbers if the push to conform is too great. I disagree. I think we are running a huge risk of raising generations of citizens that don't see civil liberties as an important issue that will have dire consequences for the county in the long run. I just keep thinking back to this terrifying survey. It's not going to be immediate. But little by little, we are chipping away at the value of civil liberties in favor of raising children with the experience that subservience to the state is the preferred norm.

This is kind of amusing: So apparently Movement conservative leaders have finally clued into the fact that their supporters are batshit insane, and hope that they can present a more "moderate" face of the Tea Party to the media by banning signs at their rallies. Sadly, they cannot weld metal plates over their mouths to prevent them from speaking.

However, they can attack the source! The Daily Calling is like, totally upset at those mean old kids from New Left Media that keep showing up at these rallies and forcing the Tea Baggers to say stupid shit on camera by holding up an apparently magical racist-transforming microphone to them. The fact that they admit that they are college students from "Wright State" without instantly clarifying that isn't the same thing as the blog "Red State" is the most ultimate form of manipulation the world has ever seen. John Cole suggests that maybe they should dress up like pimps to make it more fair.

And finally, on a lighter, non-political note, Allie Brosh's post about "The Four Levels of Social Entrapment" is hilarious. Level Two at the grocery store: the story of my life.

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