Monday, November 9, 2009

Officially Registered Tea Party in Florida


It's plain to see that the wingnuts are learning an important lesson from the recent special election in NY-23. That lesson is that it's better to be consistently crazy than to win elections. In keeping with this epiphany some random wackaloon in Florida has registered a Tea Party with the Secretary of State.

From my perspective this is most excellent, and I'd like to encourage other teabaggers to set up parallel organizations in all fifty states.

Friday, May 29, 2009

Fun with wingnuttery: Politico Comments

The personal profiles on the website Politico.com seem to be intended to evoke the behavior of a social site like Facebook or MySpace. There is a mechanism for "friending" other participants, and for blogging and leaving comments.

This feature does not seem to be widely used, but recently a few comments have been appearing on my profile page, and two of them in particular caught my attention.

One was from someone who identified him-or-herself as "Phineas Blog site" which leads me to believe the post was in reference to Wingnuts in the Wild. The post is as follows:

"I wish I would have run into you at a teaparty, I would have smashed your camera."

A charming testament to the sentiments of the teabaggers, and reinforcement for my primary rule when I'm threatened outside the bounds of normal political discourse -- "Always press charges". By that I only mean real world threats, to myself or my equipment. The wingnut in question can bluster away on these internet forums.

The second, posted with no name or nym, merely stated:

"You're a sick man, everytime you post your hatred of whites and God is evident. You should be made to sit and watch the 700 hundred club reruns you might learn something."

This one is particularly interesting, since I've never posted anything I'm aware of which was particularly directed at white people in general (after all, I'm white myself). I have pointed out that the GOP and the Teabaggers are overwhelmingly white organizations, which is not a winner on the national political stage given the increasing diversity of the US. And as for hating God, I've only periodically mentioned religion, I'm a churchgoer myself (although right wing evangelical Christians might not accept my credentials, since I'm not a right wing evangelical).

All in all I'm very happy to be getting comments, both the positive ones and the weird stuff (I've yet to get any well measured criticism, which I would also welcome).

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Some photos from the Atlanta Teabagger's gathering

I'll write more about the Atlanta Teabagger's gathering later. I actually concentrated on photographing signs and crowd scenes, so my focus was away from the speaker's platform and on the crowds. As I'd guessed it was reasonably large, given Fox News's role in organizing the event (Hannity covered the Atlanta teabagging).

I'm not good at crowd estimates, but I'd say more than two thousand.

I took a bit over a hundred photos, and will put all of them in a publicly accessible location sometime over the next couple of days (I'm exhausted at the moment, which accounts for the lack of literary flourish and wit in the post).






























Friday, April 10, 2009

Arizona State University and School of Vending Machine Maintenance Decides US Presidency is no big accomplishment

Arizona State University and School of Vending Machine Maintenance has become such a laughingstock over the past day that I don't have a whole lot to add to the issue. Here's the ensuing hilarity from MSNBC.

Thursday, April 2, 2009

Ross Douthat on the GOP Budget

I rather hate it when my political adversaries exhibit some sense of living in the present political reality of the United States. It's so much more satisfying to listen to Zach Wamp, Saxby Chambliss, Sonny Perdue, Jeff Sessions and Chip Saltsman and imagine that the GOP is really best represented by Ernest T. Bass with better grooming.

But I have to admit that Ross Douthat really spends some time thinking about why the GOP is in such a deep hole at this point, and what they might do to get out of it.

Here's his brief article in the Atlantic Monthly about the recently released GOP budget proposal.

Sunday, March 15, 2009

Fox News gone Wild!!!!

Fox News has been using the very serious news story of drug related violence in Mexico to run its evidently substantial video storage room footage of bikini clad dancers. TV news is largely entertainment rather than information anyhow, so this isn't very surprising. But the sheer length of the footage, combined with the dearth of footage directly related to the heart of the story makes me wonder if Fox is scrapping hard news altogether, and going to a more Benny Hill sort of format.


A Video from FactCheck.org

Every week or so I drop by the wonderful site FactCheck.org It often contains antidotes from the spin and hyperbole not only from the Right Wing Noise Machine, but from my end of the political spectrum as well. Here's the last in the weekly video series FactCheck ran in 2008.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Jon Stewart versus the Santelli rant

Jon Stewart responds to the vicious and idiotic Rick Santelli rant by taking on CNBC in one of the most hilarious spots ever to hit the Daily Show.


Monday, March 9, 2009

New Ad about Rush's leadership of the GOP

Here's a new ad reinforcing the point that Rush Limbaugh has effectively filled the leadership void in the GOP

Friday, March 6, 2009

Birthers get ridiculed by court

Another filing by the so-called "Birthers", those wingnuts trying to prove that Obama isn't constitutionally eligible to serve has been thrown out by an exasperated judge.

This particular judge has ordered the plaintiff's attorney to argue why he shouldn't have to pay Obama's attorney for the time he had to spend arguing the case.

"This case, if it were allowed to proceed, would deserve mention in one of those books that seek to prove that the law is foolish or that America has too many lawyers with not enough to do," U.S. District Judge James Robertson said in his written opinion.

The GOP spokesperson on Health Care policy

Since the White House has successfully granted Rush Limbaugh the ownership of the GOP, I thought it might be interesting to see if other unappealing characters can be granted dominance of other aspects of Republican political life. This snarling, ranting, angry southern white male congressman from Tennessee, with the wonderful name "Zach Wamp" is an excellent choice for GOP spokesman on health policy issues. And he's quick to randomly spew immigrant bashing too.


Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Rush Limbaugh owns the GOP

It's official now. Rush Limbaugh is the undisputed owner of the GOP. There had been pretty compelling evidence that he was consolidating his grip on the Republican Party for quite some time. But until recently he had only exercised his discipline over funny non-entities like Phil Gingrey and Mark Sanford.

Now he's made an example of the top reaches of the GOP by forcing Michael Steele to make a humiliating public apology.

Wonkette had the funniest headline, Rush Limbaugh has Balls of Steele, but the DCCC came up with their own funny slant. It's a utility for generating apologies to Limbaugh called I'm Sorry Rush.

Whatever the long term implications of an entertainer owning one of the two major electoral parties, it's certainly a unique and interesting development, and it'll be fascinating to see how a party totally revolving around an AM radio talk show host does in the electoral arena.