Can we have some backlash *now*, please?
This is a big story that, for some reason, isn’t getting much US attention yet.
So, this guy is walking down a London street today — some reports say he’s a soldier, at any rate he was wearing a Help for Heroes t-shirt, a military charity — and these two guys knock him over with a car. Then they get out with a knife, a machete and a handgun and hack the man to pieces while screaming “Allahu Akbar!” and “‘We swear by almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you!” and drag his corpse into the streets.
It takes twenty minutes for the police to get there, during which time the two yoots stood around trying to get the horrified bystanders to take their pictures waving their weapons in the air, like they’re going to be on Britain’s Got Talent tonight or something. Africans, from the look of it. Shot, but alive.
It’s already classed as a terror attack, so we don’t have to go through THAT linguistic dance, at least.
So. Doesn’t there come a point where that backlash they’re always wringing their hands about is actually appropriate?
May 22, 2013 — 6:11 pm
Comments: 36
incoming!
Before you ask…yes, Photoshopping shit onto my hate objects is incredibly cathartic.
If you think back, it’s like when you were six and you drew your worst enemy with, like, a gazillion knives sticking out of her. And they took you away to the home with the green walls and the metal bunk beds and showed you all those pictures of ink blobs and asked you to make up stories about them. And you didn’t get to go home again until, gosh, junior year of High School.
Like that.
May 21, 2013 — 11:04 pm
Comments: 25
But seriously folks
You know, I hate Obama as much as the next swivel-eyed wingnut, but he’s a nothing. For all the damage he can do, he is still going to be gone in three years. The IRS is with us always.
If the IRS (and all the rest of the government covered by the pubic employees’ unions) are truly run by a bunch of leftard activists now, this is the most serious threat to the American experiment I’ve seen in my lifetime.
I’m so not kidding.
If (at least) 47% of the country completely loses faith in the honesty and fairness of the civil service, the union will not hold.
And these guys, they’re coming for everyone’s medical records soon.
Hoo. Boy.
May 20, 2013 — 11:11 pm
Comments: 30
Oh, good. All better now.
After you stare at this a while, the mouths follow you when you move, all over the room. Word.
p.s. I think “the president said some words” is an aceism, but I can’t find it.
May 16, 2013 — 10:27 pm
Comments: 13
Mine. Get your own.
Okay, so it’s looking like the administration deliberately leaked the IRS-leaning-on-Obama’s-enemies story. I guess the thought was, it was going to break anyway, why not use it to knock Benghazi off the front page?
I’m thinking. Maybe. This was not so smart. The media, possibly stung by the idea there really was a there there in Benghazi and they should probably have been covering it, decided this IRS stuff was just really…not cool, guys.
But this AP phone records story? May be the stupidest thing this bunch of bozos has done to date. Two months worth of phone records for New York, Washington, Hartford and the main number for the AP in the House of Representatives press gallery, plus personal numbers. Outgoing, possibly incoming. The AP’s not sure yet.
If it was meant to be a Chicago-style warning, it was more of an “oh, hai — we have fucked up your relationship with your current and potential sources, possibly forever, and we know a whole bunch of stuff about your bidness that we shouldn’t. Kthxbai.”
Our journalist friends think a whole hell of a lot of themselves. This is going to move the media to rage, just when the administration needs them most.
I know, I know…this cascade of revelations seems awfully contrived, and maybe it is. But, if so, I don’t think it’s going to turn out quite the way they planned.
May 14, 2013 — 10:02 pm
Comments: 49
College men
Oh, good. President Smartass reported for duty today. Where do we find these guys?
May 13, 2013 — 9:42 pm
Comments: 28
Let’s talk narratives…
Big day for this guy: Nigel Farage, leader of the UK Independence Party. UKIP picked up 23% of the vote in local elections across England. Yes, that is a Very Big Deal.
UKIP is a lot like the Libertarian Party in the States: their policies make great good sense, but they’re seen as a party of nuts and no-hopers.
Some of that is fair enough — there does seem to be a higher than usual proportion of whackadoodles in both parties. On the other hand, an awful lot of that is our old arch enemy The Narrative.
Try this experiment: do a Google Images search of Nigel Farage. Notice how often he’s shown making a goofy face. In almost all of them.
Okay, so maybe he just looks goofy, right? Well, you know who else looks goofy? One-eyed rubbery-faced paranoid nutcase with anger management issues Gordon Brown. Note there are one or two candid and unflattering shots on that first page, but not many.
You look how they want you to look, and UKIP has been declared the clown party by our lords and masters.
But let’s look at The Narrative, International Governance Conspiracy Edition. The BBC did a vox pop this morning featuring several hacked off Tories who voted UKIP. More than one made the same comment: we’ve got a gravely sick economy, a war on, scary times in the Middle East, tense times in the Far East, a general feeling that everything is turning to shit, and what is David Cameron obsessed with? Legalizing gay marriage.
So, riddle me this: why? Why is gay marriage suddenly the big fucking deal in Britain…and the US, and France? Why now, when everything is in crisis, and why all of these countries at the same time? It almost makes one suspect the existence of an international political Journolist.
Anyway, the Clown Party just kicked David Cameron’s ass. Have a good weekend. I know I will!
May 3, 2013 — 9:27 pm
Comments: 28
Arrrrr, that’s embarrasin’!
So, a branch of the Women’s Institute invited a retired sea captain to give a talk about pirates. When the news got around, the ladies gamely decided to dress up as pirates for the occasion.
Turns out, the talk was about Colin Darch’s ordeal at sea — kidnapped by Somali pirates, savagely beaten and held hostage for forty-five days in the Indian Ocean. Goodness, were their faces red. Cap’n Darch was a good sport about it, though, and the talk went on as planned. (Say, that granny on the right with the boots and the do-rag looks a game ‘un, doesn’t she?).
Meanwhile over in Wales, a Welsh woman pled guilty to racially aggravated harassment and was given a 12-month conditional discharge and fined £50 for calling an English woman an “English cow.” The cow in question was sleeping with her father, busting up her parents’ 32-year marriage, so tempers were high.
She could have called the woman a pustulant cunt of a hag of a cow of an elderly whore-flavored douche bucket and it would have been perfectly legal, but “English” makes it a crime.
Y’arrr, we be livin’ in stoopid times, me hearties.
May 2, 2013 — 9:52 pm
Comments: 12
Thanks, Obama!
NBC’s Chuck Todd on Sunday’s Meet the Press, discussing Obama’s closing remarks at Saturday’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner:
It did seem, I thought his pot shots joke wise and then the serious stuff about the internet, the rise of the internet media and social media and all that stuff – he hates it. Okay? He hates this part of the media. He really thinks that the sort of the buzzification – this isn’t just about Buzzfeed or Politico and all this stuff – he thinks that sort of coverage of political media has hurt political discourse. He hates it. And I think he was trying to make that clear last night.
Noel Sheppard on Newsbusters, discussing Chuck Todd’s remarks:
Todd was likely quite correct, but chose not to disclose why Obama hates new media. It’s because most of it isn’t in the tank for this President and can’t be controlled by him.
That’s obviously not true of folks such as Todd and his colleagues in the old media who echo the current White House resident’s talking points, mercilessly attack his opponents, and cover for his missteps.
It’s therefore no wonder the President hates “the rise of the internet media and social media,” and although Todd is very active on Twitter, one thinks he also hates this rise because it’s making him and his colleagues less relevant.
Stoaty Weasel, on this blog, right now:
Thank you, Obama. If ever I falter, if ever I waiver, if ever I wonder what I’m doing down here in the ass-end of the internet drawing stuff on people’s faces and cracking dick jokes, I will remember this. I do it because you don’t like it. Because you can’t control it and it isn’t kind to you. Mine is a small, silly, anonymous ‘fuck you’ to you and the whole the ruling class, but it’s mine and it’s persistent and it’s right out in public.
April 30, 2013 — 9:33 pm
Comments: 33
Meer Nederlandse
That’s Queen Bea again, taking the Scout Oath. -=Kidding=-. That’s her and Prince Claus on her Coronation Day in 1980. Then they went off to live in Castle Drakensteyn.
I bet you thought that’s where Scrooge McDuck lives.
Anyway, I don’t have anything meaningful to say today, so I thought I’d tell you my one Dutchman story.
I used to hang out in USENET back in the day and in this one newsgroup there was a particularly obnoxious Dutch guy. You know the type: boring faux-sophisticate European smarty pants always ragging on Americans.
Oh, you Americans and your flag and your pledge and your primitive nationalism and your silly patriotism, always chanting U-S-A…U-S-A. We Europeans have moved beyond such childish notions of blah-blah-blah-blah-blah. I think he lived in a committed threesome with two women and drank a lot of wine. You know what I’m talking.
Well, one day, I made a remark about Queen Beatrice. It wasn’t even particularly rude remark — I think I referred to her as “Queen What’s-her-name” — and the man came unstrung. I mean howling and screaming about respect and my betters. The bulgy eyes and flecks of spittle were implied, as this was in the days of text only.
Um-hm. Because nothing says ‘modernity’ like groveling subservience to royalty.
Have a good weekend, folks!
April 26, 2013 — 10:39 pm
Comments: 17