Bohemian Rhapsody

I read the news today, oh boy. It's just SSDD; the wrongwingers are upset with Obama, people killed their families on the holiday, and houses burned down, (Hey, they got footage!)

So I decided to amuse myself, and hopefully you.

This place is awesome, I spent a whole evening just following these links:

Two Words Obvious Trope

Fridge Logic

Lampshade Hanging

Kick The Dog

Sadly, No! is always brilliant, but you reeeeealy have to read the comments to get the full effect:

Three Turkeys for Thanksgiving

Who knew Howie Klein went to a WH dinner!?

David Bowie Has Still Never Attended A State Dinner At The White House

I have a half-baked reason for telling the story of the state dinner I went to in September, 1998

Read it all, it just gets funnier every time I do.

Jon Ronson of The Guardian says:

'I'm going to tell my son the worst swearword in the world'

Fafablog! Need I say more?

Breaking Terror Update!
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four of his friends are going to stand trial! It's taken about six and a half years for this to happen, during which they were all presumably kept waiting in the parlor of a sumptuous mansion along with the Colonel, the Countess, the jewel thief, the butler and the maid while a brilliant but eccentric sleuth attempted to discern the identity of the true culprit through the use of the deductive method, the thorough examination of evidence, and simulated drowning.

Everybody else has to stay in Special Torture Jail forever on accounta they have all come down with Schrodinger's Guilt. If they stay in the box they might be guilty, but if we open the box they might not be.

And now, since you've been wondering about the post title, here is the bestest ever version of Bohemian Rhapsody:




Cross posted at VidiotSpeak

Rock'n'roll will never die

Things to be thankful for this Thanksgiving, in no particular order:

1. My family is mostly close by, and mostly happy

2. No one in my family is Republican

A. No one in my family has been sucked in by Sarah Palin's idiocy

B. Everyone in my family is pretty healthy

3. Rock'n'roll will never die

4. My brain still works fine, even though my knees & fingers, eh, not so much

5. Isabella Carolina Zumaya:

6. Republicans are mostly out of power in DC (yeah, I know . . .)

7. I can still afford my health insurance, which, through Kaiser, is still pretty good

8. I seem to have steady work in this crappy economy

9. My co-bloggers are the best!

10. Mrs. Cupcake

11. Dick Cheney has disappeared . . . oh, wait.

12. GWBush has disappeared.

13. Indy record labels are doing well, like Dangerbird Records

14. Guitars still rule rock'n'roll

Anyone want to contribute comments, please feel welcome.

And co-bloggers, feel free to add to the list, it's all good.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

Like, totally bogey

Some people pay good money to get booted in the nuts, but when there's no shortage of out-of-work placekickers willing to do it for free why bother, right?

Well...

Case in point - say somebody gets a nice job, even though their reputation for truthtelling and non-partisanship is verifiably sketchy, insofar as they were the last in a long line of professional prevaricators and timewasters hired to keep the Bad Ship Lollipop stacked to the gunwales with fresh bullshit for eight long years.

No biggie - somebody else wants to look professionally magnanimous, extend a hand, build a bridge to...where?
Meh, looks good for the networks...On in five, boss. Kiss kiss.

Not so fast.

First, this legacy hire on the half-shell's former employer claimed he quit golf 'in solidarity' with the troops on a day deemed convenient to do so (In the reality-based world, a dense executive's poorly timed piece of optics management theater) even though that story of staunch sacrifice wasn't quite true...OK, make it a whole lot untrue, but that was sort of par for the course with that fellow, pardon the pun.

Fast forward, he's gone bye-bye...probably out golfing, shooting smack with some caddies in the arbusto behind the 15th hole, who cares?...He's not there anymore.
In the words of Bette Davis - 'Good'.

Meanwhile in the Now, this rogueish ingrate's not even in the saddle of a cushy job for a week and already she's shit-talking her open-armed buddy with the sweet job offer, right there on the teevee, about the same thing she ham-handedly pimped for in a briefing a week after her old pal busted out his feckless fib for the feebleminded...

Golf.

Plainly put, this poison plum's not even smart enough to shut her mouth and keep from drawing attention via her mere presence to the fact that her former boss, his sidekick, and every other operational body within that place of employment for that period of time is a kleptocratic war criminal or hearts them very much.

President Obama - with all due respect, your countryfolk spent a lot of time and effort to get people like this out of American government jobs so that people who don't bend truth for a living could help float the ship of state a while.

You're bringing them back in.

Indulge an old carny, pal - what's the angle?

;>)

Well, you're an untamed youth That's the truth, with your cloak full of eagles

(Fantastic art obviously by our very own Darkblack)

The Big Guy™ is back! After a long summer vacation, TRex's batteries are recharged and he's sizzling:

Hey, y’all, yes, it’s me. I’m back. Nearly two years after getting fired from FDL and a year after tapering off the political beat at the end of the ‘08 elections, I am coming up hard against the fact that I’m apparently constitutionally incapable of disconnecting completely from the media stream and tuning out the noise of the political world. It’s been backing up in my brain and as much as I may try to ignore it, I can’t. Grumble.

So, apparently the only answer is to start back on blogging, if only to provide a pressure release valve for the overwhelming feelings of “ZOMG!!” and “WTF??!!” that are the inevitable human reactions to the farcical circus that is the current political climate. Between Princess Jesus Boobies and The White Witch of the North, Nazi Doughboy Glenn Beck, and that bloated intestinal polyp Rush Limbaugh, I just can’t sit here quietly any longer.

Halle-freakin'-lujah! David's blog has always been one of our fave's, and we're glad he's back on duty.

In his honor, something from the other TRex:

You Go To Armey With The War You have

Think Progress makes a great catch:

‘Read the stimulus’ advocate Dick Armey slammed for not bothering to read the stimulus.

Yesterday, the House Oversight and Government Reform committee held a hearing on the implementation of the Recovery Act, also known as the stimulus. Republican members invited former GOP Majority Leader Dick Armey, who now leads the corporate front group FreedomWorks, to testify as their expert witness.
[...]

VAN HOLLEN: Let me ask you think. You keep saying ‘if there were,’ did you read the Economic Recovery bill?

ARMEY: No I didn’t. I had no reason to read it, I wasn’t voting on it.

Ironically, as part of an effort to obstruct and derail the bill, Armey launched an online petition called “ReadTheStimulus.org.”

This is the best republicans can do? They bring in an expert who hasn't read the bill!

It just goes to show that the best thing republicans have to offer is willful ignorance.



Cross posted at VidiotSpeak

Hungry Like A Wolf

USDA: Hunger rises in U.S.

America is hungry and getting hungrier, with 49 million people - 17 million of them children - last year unable to consistently get enough food to eat, according to a report released yesterday by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

These figures represent 14.6 percent of all households, a 3.5-percentage-point jump over 2007, and they are the largest recorded since the agency began measuring hunger in 1995.

Of those 49 million, 12 million adults and 5.2 million children reported experiencing the country's most severe hunger, possibly going days without eating. Among the children, nearly half a million in the developmentally critical years under age 6 were going hungry. That's three times the number in 2006.

The study documented both "low food security," which describes people unable to consistently get enough to eat, and "very low food security," in which people reported being hungry various times over the year but were unable to eat because there wasn't enough money for food.

I'm just going to bypass any argument about adults going hungry, because we all know they just brought in on themselves, all those white collar people who now go on welfare are just lazy.[/snark] [Editor's Note: I felt compelled to add the 'snark' tag because things are just so damn crazy that The Onion articles can't even begin to approach reality as seen thru GOP whiteout goggles.]

So I'll cry out the constant republican theme, What About The Children! Seriously, why does any child in America, or the rest of the world, go hungry?

There is no excuse, we have the food, we have the means of distribution, what we lack is adults in charge to make this happen.

Addendum:

Texas ranks second-worst in hunger risk, U.S. says

[...]
[Jan Pruitt, president and chief executive officer of the North Texas Food Bank] we're seeing a lot more professional people now."

Outreach workers who help people sign up for food stamps recently met a man who lost his job when Hewlett-Packard acquired EDS.

"He was an engineer – he made $100,000 a year ago," Pruitt said. "But he lost his job, his house and his savings, and now he's on food stamps."
[...]
"And Texas does lead the nation in the number of food-insecure children," Pruitt said.

"Every fifth child in Texas is in a food-insecure household," she said. "Every fourth child in Dallas County lives in poverty. And every third child in the city of Dallas lives in poverty."

I really don't have anything else to say, the facts speak for themselves.



Cross posted at VidiotSpeak

Will The Real Sarah Please Stand Up?

There, that's better - Now everybody can stop fussing over the Newsweek cover.

;>)

Shock the Monkey

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!?

Officer Shocks Girl, 10

An Ozark police officer used a stun gun on a 10-year-old girl Thursday, an action the child's father has publicly spoken against.

Officer Dustin Bradshaw used a stun gun to subdue the girl, whose mother had called police in response to her daughter misbehaving at the woman's residence, according to an Ozark police report.
[...]
Bradshaw said the child's mother attempted to place the girl in the shower to get her ready for bed.

"I witnessed (the child) screaming, kicking and resisting every time her mother tried to touch her," Bradshaw stated. "Her mother told me to Tase her if I needed to."

Bradshaw said he and the mother carried the child to the shower, but the child refused to cooperate.

Bradshaw said after realizing there would not be a "peaceful resolution," he moved the child to the living room and told her he was going to place her under arrest, according to the report.

"She was jerking her arms away from me violently while I was trying to cuff her and thrashing about wildly," Bradshaw stated. "While she was violently kicking and verbally combative, (she) struck me with her legs and feet in the groin."

Bradshaw said because he had difficulty placing handcuffs on the girl, he administered a brief drive stun to the child's back with his stun gun, the report states.

"She immediately stopped resisting and was placed into handcuffs," Bradshaw stated. "She would not [ED: could not, FIFY cop] walk on her own and I had to carry her to my police car."

There's more:

[Ozark's Police Chief Jim Noggle] said the officer properly used his discretion when he fired his Taser at the girl.

OMG, where to start? The Mom is a bad parent and should have custody taken away from her. No responsible person calls the cops on a 10 year old for having a tantrum. And especially not for encouraging a cop to taze their child.

The cop should go to jail for child abuse. This a$$hole managed to carry her into the shower and into a squad car (given, she was incapacitated by 50 thousand volts in the latter instance), yet he can't subdue a 10 year old girl without a potentially lethal weapon?

The police chief needs to be fired and never have another job in a supervisory position, and be sued personally. Who the hell sticks up for a cop that does this?

Addendum: Ozark police argued that had the officer grabbed the girl, he could have hurt her. "If you grab somebody, you can slip an arm out of joint," the police chief added. "They can slip from you and fall on the ground."

Yeah, like adults who are Tazed don't have spastic contractions of their muscles, dislocate their joints, and/or die. TASERs are less lethal than hand guns, not less than lethal.

What a brave and fierce thin blue line we have to protect us from ... 10 year old girls.

Let this be a lesson to you kids; the monster isn't under your bed, he's not in your closet, he's your Mom and Officer Friendly. And if you don't take your shower you'll be Tazed and sent to Juvie.




Cross posted at VidiotSpeak

The Letter

This is an open letter to all SteveAudio readers.

We know you're out there, we can see the hit count. We appreciate the fact that you stop by, and we are humbled that you care enough to drop by over and over. We hope you feel welcome here, even if you disagree with a given post or all posts.

That's why we've made it easy for you to make your opinion known. You don't have to comment, (tho we really like it when you do), but if you're not comfortable with that all you have to do is click on the 'stars' below each post to let us know how you felt about a post.

It's a simple scale, just like when we were in school.
1 Star = F
2 stars = D
3 stars = C
4 stars = B
5 stars = A

It's easy, it's quick, it's anonymous, and unlike your teachers, we are grateful for your input.

And if you don't, we'll we've seen what happens

All You Zombies Hide Your Faces

Catholic Church gives D.C. ultimatum
Same-sex marriage bill, as written, called a threat to social service contracts

The Catholic Archdiocese of Washington said Wednesday that it will be unable to continue the social service programs it runs for the District if the city doesn't change a proposed same-sex marriage law, a threat that could affect tens of thousands of people the church helps with adoption, homelessness and health care.

Under the bill, headed for a D.C. Council vote next month, religious organizations would not be required to perform or make space available for same-sex weddings. But they would have to obey city laws prohibiting discrimination against gay men and lesbians.
[...]
City leaders said the church is not the dominant provider of any particular social service, but the church pointed out that it supplements funding for city programs with $10 million from its own coffers.
[...]
From 2006 through 2008, Catania said, Catholic Charities received about $8.2 million in city contracts, as well as several hundred thousand dollars' worth this year through his committee.

With the Catholic Church, the Mormon Church and evangelicals churches advocating political actions I think they abrogated any right to the 1st Amendment when they crossed the line between church and state.

Personally, I never understood why religions get a break in taxes. Now pardon me while I go shear my flock for tax exempt dollars.




Cross posted at VidiotSpeak