Pissed off about something stupid? Run for president! (Let's all run!)

See, this is exactly why I can't take modern Republicans seriously:

Roy Moore, the former Alabama Supreme Court chief justice who lost his job after erecting a monument of the Ten Commandments outside the state's courthouse, plans to announce in mid-April that he is setting up a presidential exploratory committee, an aide told CBS News.

The aide, Zachery Michael, said Moore's platform will be focused on repealing the health care overhaul law, replacing the progressive income tax with a flat tax and bringing "commonsense solutions" on immigration and border control.

Michael said Moore is entering the fray because "we're just seeing the same type of politicians run for president." He said Moore is someone "who can connect with over 300 million Americans across the country, which is something we've been lacking with today's leaders across society."

Michael said Moore should not be thought of simply as a culture warrior, arguing that he has been a strong advocate for limited government.

"He not only stood up for his faith, he stood up against the tyranny of government," he said.

So to recap: Judge that promotes his own personal religion in the people's house? Not tyranny of government. Upholding the separation of church and state to ensure one religion isn't seen as favored by the government over another? Tyranny of government.

But you know, don't think of him as a culture warrior or anything. When his religion isn't involved, he's totally for limited government. Like with taxes. Unless those taxes go to building monuments of the Ten Commandments outside your local courthouse. Then it's cool.

And no dude, surveying the confederacy of dunces that is going to turn the 2012 primaries into a reality TV show, you are the same type of politician. Exactly. The. Same. By the way - 2008 called. They want their "commonsense solutions" non-solution talking point back.

(via)

"You can bet your ass, I'm not going to be mean to Willie Nelson"

Nice.

Email thugs

Couple o' stories out of Wisconsin that I wish were getting a little more coverage nationally:

Indiana prosecutor encouraged the Wisconsin governor to use staged violence to discredit unions:

After praise for Walker, the email — sent Feb. 19, during union demonstrations against Walker’s budget repair bill — then took a darker turn. It suggested that the situation in Wisconsin presented “a good opportunity for what’s called a ‘false flag’ operation.”

“If you could employ an associate who pretends to be sympathetic to the unions’ cause to physically attack you (or even use a firearm against you), you could discredit the unions,” the email said.

“Currently, the media is painting the union protest as a democratic uprising and failing to mention the role of the DNC and umbrella union organizations in the protest. Employing a false flag operation would assist in undercutting any support that the media may be creating in favor of the unions. God bless, Carlos F. Lam.”

(via)

After trying to deny the email was his, the prosecutor (prosecutor!) resigned.

It's pretty much conventional wisdom among political activists at this point that plants are often used to disrupt peaceful protests and discredit those participating in them, eyewitness reports of these plants are numerous in personal accounts (I even ran into one myself during the RNC protests in St Paul a few years back, think he was just an observer though). But as the public tends to see protesters as Dirty Fucking Hippies, these first-hand reports are often taken as unreliable; the narrative always leans hopefully to the idea that protesters are inciting violence. It's much more of an exciting story that way as it reinforces premeditated beliefs about the nature of political dissent. So to have it in writing that yes, this sort of tactic is at the very least, considered (actually in audio too, as the Governor himself admitted during his fake conversation with David Koch that "we thought about" Fake Koch's suggestion of "planting some troublemakers" in with the protesters) is kind of a big deal. I'd actually speculate that if it weren't for that call being spread all over the media (which was a major hit on Walker's own credibility), you might of seen more of this, the push to smear the union protesters as violent thugs was so desperate in some circles it became almost comical.

As Walker & friends have had some embarrassing email incidents, they seem inclined to share the love. Their target now is William Cronon, a History Professor at the University of Wisconsin that committed the high crime of blogging about the potential power-players behind the recent legislation in Wisconsin. The Wisconsin Republican Party has requested access to all of Cronon's emails through his personal university email account, on the argument that as it's a state email, it's public record. They make no pretense of what they are after (they specifically request any emails that may contain keywords relating to unionization), they are not so much looking for incidences of misconduct (the correct usage of the FOIA) but instead looking for conversations that can be used to discredit the professor's own character. After praise for the FOIA and the acknowledgement that universities are fair game, Professor Cronon questions the motivations and criticizes what he sees as an act of intimidation from the Wisconsin Republican Party:

When should we be more cautious about applying such laws to universities?

Answer: When FOIA is used to harass individual faculty members for asking awkward questions, researching unpopular topics, making uncomfortable arguments, or pursuing lines of inquiry that powerful people would prefer to suppress. If that happens, FOIA and the Open Records Law can too easily become tools for silencing legitimate intellectual inquiries and voices of dissent—whether these emanate from the left or the right or (as in my case) the center. It is precisely this fear of intellectual inquiry being stifled by the abuse of state power that has long led scholars and scientists to cherish the phrase “academic freedom” as passionately as most Americans cherish such phrases as “free speech” and “the First Amendment.”

Might be time for Cronon to meet up with PZ Myers at the border and share some survival tactics, as right-wingers have been trying to get his ass fired from the University of Minnesota for years now because he has a nasty and hilarious habit of pointing out bullshit spewed by fundamentalists. Because remember kids, you aren't allowed to hold down a job and have political opinions unless, of course, you lean right.

(via)

The ongoing class war I'm not supposed to talk about because it's rude

Okay, I'll mark this:

A catastrophic fire swept through the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory 100 years ago today. By the time it was over, 146 people had died. Many lay dead on the sidewalks off Washington Square in the middle of New York's Greenwich Village, having thrown themselves out windows to escape the flames. Many of the terrified victims — mostly young garment workers, as young as 14, and nearly all Italian or Jewish immigrant women — were engulfed by the devastating flames, unable to escape through the stairways that had been padlocked by the factory owners, and trapped beyond the reach of the firefighters' ladders.

But you keep telling yourself that it would never get that way here. That we've progressed, and can't go backward. That the people that fought for these rights will magically, after their deaths, protect us. Or maybe because this is America, dammit, and we just don't treat people that way.

I burst your bubble. Yes. We do. And yes, we will, if it turns a profit. Because you should never underestimate the fact that they see you as shit.

The class war never ended. We were just shamed out of fighting it.

And then when you leave I'm wondering when would be too soon...

Tried to get a new blog post up today but I'm feeling lazy. So how about some Dessa instead? Dessa's our latest Twin Cities gem. I really, really fucking love Dessa's latest album (and you should listen to it). I'm not sure if she's got nation-wide exposure yet.

Just understand, non-local peeps, that after all the hip-hop battles and teases, Minneapolis has been waiting for this album for years. And awesomely enough, it delivered in a major way.



Dig the Portishead feel of that song. This next one is amazing too:



Dessa - A Badly Broken Code

If you can't beat them, smear them

Fresh off the major butthurt Fox News has upon discovering that when people actually want news and not some hot blonde chick or paranoid middle-aged dude screeching about unpatriotic non-Fox types, they tune into CNN instead, Fox has decided the best way to compete and boost their ratings is to do some more screaming about unpatriotic non-Fox types. Namely, CNN's foreign correspondents, and their annoying habit of actually trying to go out and report on a story instead of lounging around in their hotel rooms waiting for someone in the studio back home to tell them what to say.

Which is why Nic Roberston had to step up and lay the smack down:

I mean if they had actually been there - Steve Harrigan, the correspondent here, is somebody I've known for many years. I see him more times at breakfast than I see him out on trips with government officials here.

BURN!

And seriously, good on him. Even though I tend to go online for my news, ever since I lost cable CNN has been on more often when one feels like receiving the news in a more mindless and passive manner. Which, admittedly, can turn into a snark fest because it's still CNN (did you catch CNN's trenchant analysis the other day about reporters who report on things? They even cut to Sanjay Gupta to see how he feels about reporters reporting on things. It was riveting). But overall, I've been pretty impressed by CNN's coverage of the uprisings in the Middle East and the earthquake in Japan. It's not really a surprise, as one of CNN's strong points is that they have a large international network to work with, and employees that actually studied things like, you know, journalism, and it helps that their network stars will actually get on a plane once in a while to do some reporting on location.

So basically, these guys have been working their butts off the past few months, and then the laziest name in news decides to suck on some sour grapes and accuse them of being shields for Gaddafi because they are fully kicking their ass at this whole "news" thing. I think if anything, Robertson held himself back pretty well. Not that it will stop the screeching, however, because now it's the delicious "Never mind that I hit him first he hit me back and that's just meeeeeeeean" whining and that's pretty much Fox's bread and butter. And yes, Steve Harrigan did just respond to Nic Robertson's awesome and totally deserved burn by basically calling him a boring old pussy. Because Fox is too lazy to even figure out how to insult people in a meaningful way.

Fox News can gloat about their successful business model, because it has worked well for them. The majority of the time, people are going to go to them merely because they can fabricate a major-threat-to-the-way-of-life-as-old-white-people-know-it-so-be-overly-paranoid-and-watch-Fox-all-day story out of pretty much anything, like Michelle Obama looking at a fat kid all funny. But this type of model has a price; People aren't going to utilize Fox News for something like the earthquake in Japan for the same reason that they wouldn't utilize the Daily Show for it - because they have shown themselves useful at providing entertainment based on the news, but not so much useful at providing the news itself. All Fox ever really does these days is editorialize instead of report, so in a situation where there's really no editorializing to be done (except for, perhaps, how awesome nuclear power plants are), there just isn't a lot that Fox has to offer. They don't have reporters. They don't have journalists. All they have are pundits. And yes, eventually that's going to cause your credibility to take a hit.

Just a name on the map, sounds like heaven to me

Anyone here for the politics should probably just skip this one, because it's really only for one person anyway.

I can't say that I'm proud of every choice I made fifteen years ago. High schoolers, as a rule, are quite stupid things, and if I could have a do-over in some situations, I'm sure I'd probably take it.

But there is one thing that I have no regrets about, and it was the realization that I could spend forever just walking with you down those train tracks in R-Dale and finding alligators in the clouds.

I have no profound insight on this, and I know if I did, you wouldn't want it on this blog anyway. I believe that we were, all in all, just straight-up lucky to have found each other, and even more so that we matured into adults that could still truly respect and enjoy our ongoing conversation throughout all the changes that come with life.

So happy non-anniversary-anniversary, baby. I love you and I thank you for every day of the past fifteen years, and am so very grateful that I have a lifetime to continue to laugh, love, and figure out this whole thing together with you.

And because you knew I had to:

Maybe if the teachers put out, we could save the economy!

Even though we had to do a little union busting to "fix the budget" in Wisconsin, Republicans were able to scrape together enough money to give the girlfriend of one of the Senators a cushy little job. Gosh, one almost gets the impression that Republicans are completely full of it when they claim they are for "fiscal responsiblity" and instead might be using that talking point to push other types of agendas. 

I wonder if she gets to keep it after they recall that Senator, because at this point, that dude's toast. National media has overall forgotten about Madison, but the local papers there are out for blood.

(Via)

Deep thoughts on bitches

Wow, quality judge here. Maybe he was busy playing Angry Birds during "Logical Fallacies 101".

Seriously, if the first place your brain goes to is "Female with opinion I dislike" = "Bitch!", I think that really says a lot about your ability to argue from any sort of logical place (I'd assume that if he's a judge at this point that somewhere down the line, someone had to teach him argumentation). Because that's really the laziest intellectual response one could have. I don't even bother with people that call me a bitch at this point because it's so tired. Once you call me some easily accessible sexual slur, I know I've won, because you've obviously got nothing. How the hell did this guy get into law school?

Enjoy frying in your own misogyny, bitch.

But if we make France bomb everything first then we can pretend we didn't just enter into another war, right?

Fear mongering, flowery freedom-y promises and Whiskey! Sexy! Democracy! rhetoric aside - At the very least, when Bush and Co. decided to stupidly leap headfirst into a war without thinking through the possible consequences, they still had the balls to admit that it was a damn war.

Downplay it all you want - you're not fooling anyone, you assholes.

As if the week couldn't get any crappier...

Netflix will tease me by giving me season 1 of "The IT Crowd" on instant view (and season 4, for some strange reason). Yet, when I go to watch season 2? Nope. YOU WILL WAIT FOR SEASON 2

I've had a bad week, Netflix. Don't play me like this. Maybe it's a technical glitch. Did you try turning it off and on again?

This is the most pointless and self-centered post you will ever read on this blog. You're welcome.

She was pretty cool, too.

You get Morphine this week because Chevy's been playing it in one of their ads and it's been stuck in my head as of late.



Still amused that the best music on TV these days usually comes from car commercials. Not that I blame Chevy for swiping this one, the horn/guitar riff on this song is painfully bad ass.

Morphine: Cure for Pain

Day After Saturday Links (Now with tractors!)

Thanks, Duluth. You really did the state proud with this one.

Love this - Colbert on Pawlenty's AWESOMELY EPIC ads. (via Norwegianity)

Update on the neighbors: Police estimate the crowds in Madison yesterday were the largest yet, "85,000 to 100,000 people — along with 50 tractors and one donkey". (via Michael Moore)

(Photo by Jeff Miller for SEIU)

I keep hearing a strange argument against unions since shit got real in Wisconsin, it goes something like "We needed unions in the past, but they are irrelevant today". It seems to assume that there's no way to rollback the gains labor has made, because there's no way someone would seriously suggest we get rid of things like child labor laws, right? Wrong.

Gee, I really can't figure out why health care costs in America are so absurdly high. I wonder if there is something we could do about it.

Looking back, if I had to do it over again, I probably would of supported Clinton in 2008. Not that she would have been any better on issues like this, just that I went with Obama because I though he would be.

The monster Glenn Beck panders to is starting to turn on him (this is also why despite all the hype, Mitt Romney will never get enough votes to be a viable presidential candidate).

Sorry to bring it up, because I'm just as sick of her as everyone else, but the next time someone starts whining about liberal identity politics, throw this in their face.

This is pretty incredible: CNN reports that the earthquake in Japan moved the island over by eight feet.

Rare moment of clarity from our Galtian overlords.

Finally, in case you missed it, Michele Bachmann is still very, very stupid.

When reality and false compassion collide

Sometime during the last decade or so anti-choicers decided they really had to change their rhetoric when it came to demonizing abortion. Just screaming about babies all the time brought up some uncomfortable counterpoints for them, like when it was pointed out that criminalizing the procedure would take women back to the age where many died due to unsafe abortions, and they never really had much of a response other than to insinuate that consequence was at best irrelevant, at worst, deserved. Being that most people just don't hate women enough to see them as disposable in this way, the anti-choice movement started to lose the public to images of coat hangers and accusations of hypocrisy over why "life" was so sacred when it came to the unborn, but not their carriers.

Trying to pretty up a political position that is so heavily based in misogyny isn't a simple task. Many still avoid the issue of the existence of women and instead soldier on and discuss the issue as if humans gestated in pumpkin patches. But a few others realized that in order to complete the picture of the compassionate "pro-lifer" and win the public back, they would have to at least try to fake some sort of concern for women when it came to that issue. So instead of arguing for a no-tolerance, draconian solution, they began to argue for paternalistic ones. The woman seeking abortion services was no longer a sinister and malevolent person, but rather a stupid and easily manipulable one that needed to be saved.

And that's how obstacles like waiting periods or mandatory ultrasounds set up for the sole reason of burdening an woman's time and resources became "safeguards" against alleged rash and ill-informed decisions to abort, how those that wished to police female sexuality and control the bodies of women became the real "feminists" standing up for their sisters, how a made-up disorder called "post-abortion syndrome" was touted as rampant even though it was discredited by the APA, and how the notion of needing to criminalize abortion in order to protect women from their fickle selves made it's way into the discussion on reproductive rights. While the idea of concern for women in this debate was unheard of years ago, it caught on in a big way, and today it's one of the main arguments being presented by the anti-choice movement.

Indeed, when a major piece of successful anti-choice legislation, the partial-birth abortion ban of 2003, was upheld by the Supreme Court, Justice Kennedy used the "concern" for a woman's mental health in his majority opinion in favor of the ban:

Respect for human life finds an ultimate expression in the bond of love the mother has for her child. The Act recognizes this reality as well. Whether to have an abortion requires a difficult and painful moral decision. Casey, supra, at 852–853 (opinion of the Court). While we find no reliable data to measure the phenomenon, it seems unexceptionable to conclude some women come to regret their choice to abort the infant life they once created and sustained. See Brief for Sandra Cano et al. as Amici Curiae in No. 05–380, pp. 22–24. Severe depression and loss of esteem can follow.

Would you like to know what the end result of all this "compassion" for women is? I'm sure by now, you can guess where it's going to lead:

Nebraska’s new abortion law forced Danielle Deaver to live through ten excruciating days, waiting to give birth to a baby that she and her doctors knew would die minutes later, fighting for breath that would not come.

And that’s what happened. The one-pound, ten-ounce girl, Elizabeth, was born December 8th. Deaver and husband Robb watched, held and comforted the baby as it gasped for air, hoping she was not suffering. She died 15 minutes later.

So in case you are keeping track - we must prevent all late-term abortions because even though we "find no reliable data to measure the phenomenon", we will just assume that it would be emotionally devastating for the woman involved to give her wanted yet doomed child a release from suffering, so instead we will force her to carry and birth that child so the parents can watch it struggle for breath and eventually die in their arms, because this apparently won't seriously mess someone up as much as an abortion would.

I have no words for this type of cruelty.

(via C&L)

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me five times, sure, whatever.

As expected, the new videos out by O'Keefe and Co. turn out to be heavily edited. Good thing the liberals and the media have wised up to the fact that this guy is nothing but a smear artist and didn't do anything rash like jump to conclusions and make themselves look guilty by running around screaming "OH GOD SOMEONE FOUND OUT THAT LIBERALS WHO AREN'T ACTUALLY LIBERALS AT ALL MIGHT HAVE PERSONAL OPINIONS THAT HURT TEABAGGER FEELINGS" and firing everyone on the spot like they did with the whole Shirley Sherrod and ACORN stings...

Oh wait.

The worst part of it is that this story was broken by The Blaze. That's Glenn Beck's site, folks. Even Glenn Beck fans have caught on by now that these guys are a bunch of hacks. I now have to admit that I've linked to Glenn Beck's site from this blog for reasons other than outright mockery and scorn.

I'd like to rant against O'Keefe and his financial daddy and spew hatred at them, like I usually do, but you know what? I can't this time. They keep doing this because they are genius at selling it to a increasingly lazy and easily distracted media, so the shit works and becomes entrenched in our political narrative. You can't fault them for keeping it up. I mean, it's to the point that it's these stings are becoming parody, they've successfully convinced everyone that a woman giving a speech about the immorality of racism is a racist, a community organization that tried to help a woman escape from her pimp supports teaching people how to get around the law to be better sex traffickers, a health organization that called the FBI about suspected underage sex trafficking supports and encourages underage sex trafficking, and now a news organization that sent a Republican fundraiser to meet with a group that they didn't know was supposedly connected to radical Muslim extremists and rejected their donation anyway is a news organization that is biased towards Republicans and takes money from radical Muslim extremists. I'm almost in awe at this point.

As is the media, apparently, who eats it up time and time again and never really bothers with issuing corrections once it is made known the "stings" are fake. As long as they are being perpetrated by right-wingers, that is. When a Republican is made to look a fool without any sort of editing or pimp costumes, like we saw in Wisconsin, it's just a local story or blog fodder. At this point I'm not sure why they just don't sit James O'Keefe down in the CNN studios, let him say that "Union thugs sacrifice teachers to their nefarious god because they hate them, pinky swear, y'all" and then hold a discussion panel afterward with David Gergen and Erick Erickson to discuss the real story: "Unions: Sacrificing teachers to Allah or Satan?" At least that way we wouldn't be subjected to watching over-privileged douchebags run around in pimp costumes anymore.

But it's not just media's lack of basic journalism standards (like, you know, actually reviewing all the material before you report on it) that allows for these types of smear campaigns to be successful. It's also incredibly stupid way liberals cower and flee at the first line of attack, even though this pattern keeps repeating itself over and over again. And it is the over-reaction and preemptive bed-wetting that reinforce whatever lie these guys are currently spreading, because where there is smoke, there's fire, right? They never seem to understand that those that are targeting them will never be sated with short term gains, or the concessions of their targets. They are targeting you because they want to eliminate any credibility you still have, and until that's accomplished, they will never let up. Ever. So despite the outright dishonesty of a group of sleazy right-wing pranksters that take perverse joy in attacking the most desperate of targets, despite the reality that what serves as "news" these days is a complete joke, the real damage, the final blow, is coming from liberals themselves. So to hell with you, liberals. The truth is you deserve whatever comes to you at this point, because you keep playing right into the hands of those that only have the goal of destroying you and everything you stand for. And so long as you keep doing so, I have no sympathy for you. I only have it for those whose causes you claim to champion, who are the ones getting screwed over and over again by your frustrating lack of a spine.

Those police union votes were nice while they lasted, right?

Wis. Republicans bypass absent Dems, strip collective bargaining rights from public workers

Congrats, GOP, you've just created a class war. Which you will probably lose. Why? Because I'm not sure if you've ever noticed, but pretty much every time you attempt to disenfranchise a group of Americans that commit the crime of not being you (the poor, women, gays, people of color, etc), you always lose. Sure, it takes time. But we're patient, because in the end, we always win. I'd of thought you would have learned this by now, being that you are pretty much always on the wrong side of history. But don't worry about it, enjoy it while you can, and try not to think too hard about the fact you have handed over all your populist cred, you know, that thing you ran with to get votes over the past decade, to the Democrats.

Just a couple of favors. First, please don't do that whole "No, we were totally on the side of workers!" shtick 50 years from now like you always do with civil rights. You can't keep up this attempt to revise your own history and claim you were the patriots in the past when you are so set on repeating it as the assholes in the present again and again. Second, no whining in 2012 when you realize, yet again, that when we are paying attention, the country really doesn't want anything to do with your asses. I'm afraid that there are going to be more people then just your Tea Party who show up at the voting booth next time in 2012.

Go to the Mardi Gras

Not a fan myself, as I'm not a believer, but it does give me the opportunity to post this:



Enjoy it, folks. Eat a few steaks for me.

Title stolen from here.

10 Things Right Wing Pundits Have Taught Me About the Madison Protests

Elections have consequences.

Wouldn't Democracy be just peachy if we could only find some way to prevent certain people from participating in it? Like these hippy infiltrators out in Madison, who just cannot accept that they weren't politically savvy enough to pick up on Governor Scott Walker's non-existent union-busting plan before they all voted him into office. He ran on fiscal responsibility, people. Everyone knows that means "I'm going to destroy unions", duh (liberals are so stupid). And they are completely wearing out their welcome now in the Governor's Palace State Capitol whining about how he isn't listening to the people, as if that mattered once you get elected. It's like these people think the Governor is a public servant that is supposed to work for them or something, and that the fact that poll after poll that shows the growing disapproval rating of the governor or the public siding again and again with the unions should make him rethink putting his own personal agenda over what is best for the state. Obviously, these people don't know how democracy works.

But only when Republicans win them.

But do you know who does understand Democracy? The Tea Party. Remember back when that Kenyan Muslim Socialist stole the presidential election with ACORN and the opposing party said "Sorry America, our bad" and slunk quietly off into that good night? Of course you don't! Know why? Because the real patriots of America stood up and said "Not so fast with your whole 'reforming health care' thing, dude that ran a strong campaign and won on reforming health care!" And true to their word, they sacrificed it all to come out by the hundreds (so long as food was provided) to wear funny hats and yell about how they don't understand why the opinons of people that aren't Tea Partiers count at all and then were home in time to watch Bill O'Reilly.

When Republican abuse congressional loopholes to appease the minority, it's Democracy in action. When Democrats abuse congressional loopholes to appease the majority, it's thwarting Democracy in action.

As the representatives of true America, Republicans have made painful sacrifices to stave off this injustice of not being in the majority by doing things like placing anonymous holds and filibusters on pretty much every bill in congress before they left early to start their golf weekend. Some may point out that this was a cynical abuse of existing parliamentary rules, but when protecting the people from the very policies the majority of them supported, sometimes representatives have to fight dirty. Compare this to the lazy workings of the Wisconsin State Democrats, who are supporting the tyranny of the majority by doing trivial things like leaving their homes and their families to whoop it up over on the borders of Illinois and Indiana, which we all know are major party hotspots. So make no mistake - The Republican habit of abusing the filibuster on the federal level cannot possibly be compared to the dirty tricks of the Wisconsin Senate Democrats, who fled the state to avoid a quorum. For one, "quorum" and "filibuster" aren't the same word. You can tell because one starts with a "q". Also too, one was on the federal level, and one on the state level. So they are completely different, people.

The protests in Madison are exactly like the protests in Egypt.

Because Americans are more important then everyone else in the world, it's important to take global events and frame them in a way that is relevant to Americans so that they might be a little bit interested in it. So naturally, when the protests in Madison first hit their stride, there were comparisons. And rightly so. For instance, one similarity was that everything in Egypt and Madison were going just fine until a few outside professional trouble-makers decided they should actually have a say in what their dear leader should do. And in both situations, we know that the protests were filled with violence and destruction, because the leaders who were being challenged by the people told us so, and it's not like there's a history of those in power to lie and smear their own people in order to discredit the grassroots organization against them. So obviously this situation is an exact parallel to.... wait, what do you mean Mubarak wasn't the good guy? Never mind. Let's move on.

If someone has ever given money to cancer research, then you can't ever say anything bad about them.

Everyone knows that the real victims of this whole Madison massacre are the nation's beloved Koch brothers, who have been smeared by the mainstream media CNN some obscure news outlet run out of someone's basement somewhere. But do you ever hear about how these selfless servants of the people do so many things that are great for the nation, like give money to cancer research? Sure, maybe it's to literally save your own ass, but still, when you give money to cancer research, that automatically cancels out everything else you've ever done. Okay, maybe you hear about it in the New York Times, but anywhere else? Okay maybe on Fox News or in Reason Magazine, but anywhere else? Of course not, all you hear from the whiners is "Oh they are Birchers" and "Oh they want to destroy the quality of life for American workers" or "Oh they spread misinformation about climate change" and such. But you know what? So what if they are self-serving assholes that dupe people into thinking they are grassroots populist heroes? We all know that greed is a virtue as long as you aren't a teacher (more on that soon). And really, if we can't spend a bunch of corporate money to purchase elections and then sit back and wait as our shiny new politician sells us the public's property for pennies and gives us tax cuts at the expense of the middle class, then what is democracy good for, really? Maybe if you wanted a say in your country, you should have inherited a shit-ton of money from your dad, too.

Teachers are the most privileged people in our society

It's true, the people that teach your kids are greedy little bastards who, when forced to purchase basic supplies for their students because the district has no money to provide basic necessities, always go with the cheap scratchy toilet paper. And really teachers, no one is buying this lie that you might have this strange thing you call PTO time, or that you might have time after work or on Saturdays to show up to protests to protect the interests of your colleagues and your students. Don't get me wrong, greed is normally considered a virtue in America, because it really turns on women in Ayn Rand novels. Plus, without greed, we would never have an abundance of business majors that perform such important services like gambling other people's money on the predicted values of commodities or figuring out new ways to bundle mortgage shitpiles so that they appear to be profitable investments. Obviously, these people need to be wooed in with the promise of ridiculous wealth, because if not, they might refuse to blow up bubbles and then demand a taxpayer handout when things predictably go horribly wrong! But the people that teach our children? Seriously, fuck them. It's not like we should offer pensions and job security for a job that actually pays less than a basic baby-sitter or anything. How hard could it be dealing with all of the issues with America's youth? And if you do find it hard, maybe you shouldn't spend so much time giving a shit about the next generation, or drink on the job, and it would be easier (Plus the worse you do, the easier it is for me to claim you are doing a shitty job and we should just get rid of you!). And let's be honest - Obviously being an educator, a counselor, a trusted guide, an inspiration, a bookkeeper, a mediator, and a babysitter takes no effort on anyone's part and is nothing more than a lazy, sweet-ass job. Anyone can read answers out of the teacher's textbook edition, so why offer perks for that sort of thing? Your gravy train is over, teachers.

American workers are the most violent people in our society and we should really bust their heads open to teach them a lesson.

You know what Madison has been rife with? Violence. Hatey-hateful bullhorn violence. Towards Fox News members. I mean, how can one explain away the pain of being told that "Fox News Lies" when all Fox news wants to do is pretend that shoulder taps are equivalent to being punched in the head or reverse poll results to make it look like the majority of the country agrees with Fox News? They are just trying to do the jobs they were hired to do, people. Which is lie. So stop pointing that out and hurting their feelings. And if you don't, well then you just deserve to be shot, don't you? After all, you struck first by making that bitch-face at that reporter. We are just protecting ourselves against your extreme hostility. We all know that the real bullies in this situation are the ones without authority. Sure, maybe Scott Walker is in a position of power and is using it to do things like violate court orders, threatening mass layoffs, or taking away the Democrat's sweet parking spaces. But you know who the real bullies are? Regular people that aren't in the most powerful position in the state with mean signs, that do things like stand there, and hold up their mean signs:


Just cruel.

If Beyonce doesn't show up to your protest, it doesn't mean shit.

The guitarist from Rage Against the Machine? Please. Give me a call when your silly liberal protests start pulling in real talent, like former 90s SNL star Victoria Jackson or former 70s one-hit-wonder Ted Nugent.

Union Workers are too biased to have their opinions heard.

Union workers are completely biased. You can tell because whenever you ask them about the union, they always have fairly decent things to say about it and never say "please take away that pension I've been working my whole life for" like rational people would. It's absurd that we'd actually let union members partake in polls about unions. Or allow them on news shows to talk about being in a union. They are so biased that they even suckered in the police and firefighters unions, who are fighting for them even though we assured them that we weren't going to take away their collective bargaining rights, because they vote Republican! Or used to, anyway. It's like people think that there's some rational motivation behind keeping public employees content, or something. But I for one am so tired of people that have an agenda other than "Morality and importance should be assigned based on your checking account balance" being allowed to voice their opinion! This madness needs to stop. Obviously, the people that have no opinion (which means of course, that they hate unions), are the only ones whose opinion should be taken seriously.

Wisconsin has Palm Trees.

Oh come on. After all the accurate information you have been given, who are you really going to believe. Fox News, or your lying eyes?

It's Baltimore, gentlemen. The gods... will not save you.

In which I remind you about the best show that ever was - The Wire.



What's really messed up is that clip reel doesn't even contain the best quotes from the show. That is how good this show is, people.

By the way - Season 2 of Treme starts in April