And the winner is…
Election night, we had a little contest: guess the makeup of the 112th Congress. Contestants guessed the final number of GOP in the House and the Senate as separate numbers, the difference between the two added up would be the final score. The prize was dick, of course. It’s always dick.
I was going to post everybody’s guesses so y’all could see I really did do my homework and tot them all up (and so’s you could check if I missed anything), but then I realized that our outsized exuberance on that evening might be a little sad, seen growing smaller in the rearview mirror. So, ummm…figures released upon request.
The final tally is: 242 Pubbies in the House, 47 in the Senate (I’m counting Murky red).
Without further blah-blah-blah, the winner is: Some Vegetable! With a pick of 240/47 and, therefore, a score of 2. Monotone The Elderish matched that score with a guess of 243/48, but lost the timestamp. Some Veg was the very first guess, and the closest.
Congratulations, Veg! You know what to do if you want your dick.
Thanks for playing, folks, and have a great weekend.
December 10, 2010 — 11:35 pm
Comments: 18
Barack Obama, he mad
Did you watch Obama’s Very Cranky Presser yesterday? You should. Go on. I’ll wait.
One of the most inartful pieces of political theater ever. Somehow he took a fairly wise political compromise and turned it into a complete loser for himself.
He could have been just a leeeetle teensy bit gracious to the Republicans and come off as a reasonable man and a tough negotiator. Nope. He was petulant about Republican opposition right from the start, which somehow made it look like they had pwned him utterly.
He could have appealed to his base, explaining that a deal with this congress has to be a bzillion times leftier than any deal with the next congress could possibly be. Nope. He scolded them for being “sanctimonious” and “pure.”
He could have minimized the whole thing. You know, all this bill does is keep things the way the are for now. No big.
Nope. Somehow, he managed to alienate pretty much everybody, and look like a tooth-gritting, vein-throbbing lunkhead doing it.
I don’t get who he was trying to appeal to. “The American people” he kept invoking — presumably minus the Republican part of the American people and the leftmost section of the Democrat part of the American people. Which leaves — oh, I dunno — maybe a third of the actual American people?
President Sooper Genius not look so smart these days.
And if you don’t recognize the image I’m riffing on, you are an utter, utter Philistine. It’s this famous shot from the always spooky Diane Arbus. After she cut her wrists in the bath in 1971, there were persistent rumors that she had set up a camera on a tripod to film her own death.
December 8, 2010 — 6:02 pm
Comments: 33
*pop*
Man. Was there ever such an international display of utter FAIL as this Julian Assange/Wikileaks shit?
To start, there’s nothing I care about that I didn’t already know in any of the cables published so far. Catty diplomatic chit-chat. Bo-ring. Unless, of course, you were one of the people whose lives were put in mortal danger by the leaks.
Yeah, that’s the first thing we should have done — offered US asylum to anyone endangered by our crappy inability to keep a secret.
I don’t know why the left is so stoked on this guy. His leaks confirm my every ‘winger belief. Israel is reasonable. The entire Middle East is afraid of a nuclear Iran. China is pushy. The UN is useless. Global Warming is a front for wealth redistribution.
Oh, and he has deeply embarrassed and hobbled the foreign policy of the most left-wing government America is likely to have. EVER.
An act of courageous journalism? Please. Document dump. Some journalism.
And now he’s been arrested on the stupidest charge in history — sex without condom. Whether we had anything to do with this silliness or not, whether we move to extradite him or not, nobody is ever going to believe this double shitburger doesn’t have Made in America written all over it.
I can’t see that Assange is any more guilty of a crime than the New York Times is, but I won’t waste any pity on this whispy dumbfuck. Garden variety attention whore; the internet is full of ’em. He didn’t have to put face on the box . If all wanted he wanted was to get the info out there, he could have dropped it on a server somewhere and posted a note to a blogger. The file would have replicated across the wires like plague.
Like the Climategate leaker did. What was his name? Oh, right — we don’t have a clue.
December 7, 2010 — 10:53 pm
Comments: 21
Yeah, I should be so stupid…
You know the most hilarious part of the Sarah Palin phenomenon? All the same people — right and left — who thought Reagan was a complete doofus back in the day are now swearing on huge stacks of Bibles that he was a great man and a bzillionty times more differenter than Sarah.
Yeah. Most common old school media descriptor of Ronnie: Ronald Reagan, star of Bedtime for Bonzo.
Since I can’t watch the show, I went online and watched the trailers for Sarah Palin’s Alaska. Now, I’m a total and complete sucker for a montage, I admit, but I was…mmm…charmed.
Okay, so let me get this straight. The woman wangled eight hours of polished, prime time, slickly-produced, kick ass television time out of a major cable network, and I’m supposed to believe she’s stupid?
Huh.
I was firmly in the “I love Sarah but I don’t think she should run” camp. Every day, I edge closer to the “fuck it — RUN, SARAH, RUN!” camp.
Those of you who didn’t get the bubblegum reference…I’m extremely disappointed in you, that’s all.
December 6, 2010 — 9:57 pm
Comments: 44
Because I can is why…
Jes’ playing around with ImageReady’s .gif animation tools. Because that’s the only animation tool I got.
Yep, my desktop machine is still busted and I haven’t QUITE talked myself into a new one, on account of every time I tot up the bare minimum things I need to enter the multi-core world where all the cool kids hang out, the bottom line makes my eyes water.
And then I see a sidebar ad for Photoshop’s Extended version. It has 3D bits. Droooool.
$999.
Times like this, I really miss my old faceless evil American corporation and her magical bottomless pockets.
December 1, 2010 — 7:39 pm
Comments: 14
All the king’s horses…
Whaddya think? Are they going to make Hillary! walk the plank for the Wikileaks scandal?
Boy, Hill’s life didn’t turn out the way she imagined, huh?
(You think this is grotesque? My first idea was nailing her to a cross. That’s when a little voice in my ear said, “what are you, fucking retarded?!”).
November 30, 2010 — 11:50 pm
Comments: 32
Fat lip
They’ve only released about one-thousandth of the purloined documents, so I’ll have many opportunities to eat these words, but so far, the most surprising thing about the Wikileaks cable dump is — no surprises. Nothing released so far that I haven’t heard before, at least as a rumor.
And that’s stunning. Because I’m an extreme right wing nutcase who gets all her news from my fellow wingnuts on the internet. Shouldn’t a huge dose of raw diplomatic data have dashed at least a few of my cherished assumptions by now?
The wildest revelations — things like Iran buying long-range missiles off of North Korea, Arab leaders hotter to stop Iran’s nuke program than Israel is, the Red Crescent moving weapons with ambulances — have been chatter around the dextrosphere for ages.
Would Wikileaks lead with its most boring material? Would the lefty journalists helping them sort through it cherrypick facts that support the winger worldview? I guess we’ll find out.
Anyhow, the most shocking thing — by far — that I’ve learned is that three million people had access to these diplomatic cables, including some very junior staffers. Our utter boneheaded incompetence will be the most serious revelation to the world.
p.s. Despite the picture — I’m lazy. I recycle illustrations. Sue me — I wonder how upset Obama is about this, really. None of his own words have leaked. The whole thing reflects more on Hillary. He won’t like the building loseriness of his presidency, but I don’t see him as the kind of guy who takes other people’s mistakes upon himself.
p.p.s. Do we know how far back the cables go? He could get some bonus Blame Bush out of it. He can’t get enough of that shit.
November 29, 2010 — 10:34 pm
Comments: 28
And other things that don’t make sense
Can anybody explain the hunger strike to me? Why they ever work, I mean.
You’re in prison, say. A political dissident. Your government would like to be rid of you, but doesn’t dare execute you. So you announce you’re going to starve yourself to death.
I’m thinking that’s a win for everybody.
Oh, well. Bunch of students in Texas are hunger striking in favor of the DREAM act, AKA the petite amnesty. L’amnestita.
Yeah.
Thanksgiving week, and a bunch of kids 18-20-something will go entirely without food. Uh-huh. My experience of that demographic is, they’re an assortment of insatiable appetites on legs.
Anyhow, travel safe. Don’t let Janet Napolitano mess with your bikini area. Hug Grandma for me.
I’ve got a pumpkin pie to make. I have to tell you, the stuff I scraped out of that pumpkin doesn’t smell ANYthing like familiar old pumpkin pie.
I suspect the chickens’ll have it.
November 24, 2010 — 9:24 pm
Comments: 41
The giant melting head of Kim Jong Il
Yeah. I’m not really going anywhere with this. I got this image stuck in my head and I had to get it out. It’s like an itch. An art itch.
I’m fascinated by the train wreck that is North Korea. I’ve read a bit about it, but I don’t pretend any special insights. This is more of the same old posturing, at a guess. Kim always gets such fabulous prizes when he behaves badly.
I don’t for a minute imagine it’ll be any different this time.
November 23, 2010 — 10:01 pm
Comments: 18
Grope, no. Profile, yes.
I had problems with airport security long before 2001. I wasn’t exactly a frequent flyer, but I did several domestic and several international flights a year for a goodly number of years and found US security staff seemed to go out of their way to be unreasonable and unpleasant. I’m not feeling a lot of sympathy.
Granted, I have carried some odd things onto planes. Like a few jars of pond scum. Or that time I just totally lost track of just how much small change had accumulated in the bottom of my purse, and what that would look like on x-ray (I’ll never forget the look on my boss’ face when they upended that sucker and all those pennies tinkled out).
Oddly, airline staff didn’t bat an eye when I checked a fifty-pound bronze sculpture of a tiger in my luggage. It would have made a hell of a good bomb, too. Go figure.
Anyhow, the TSA has to be very low paid work, as it definitely seems to attract a certain type. And I don’t mean Rhodes scholars.
We’re still chasing the last terrorist scheme. Usually, a failed one. Millions of people feed shoes to an x-ray machine every day because of Richard Reid’s failed bomb nine years ago. Folks, they’ll never do shoes again. Next time, it’ll be a belt buckle or a laptop computer or a rectum. Short of stripping us down, feeling us up and giving us hospital johnnies to wear on the flight, we aren’t going to cover every possible hidey hole.
Would this have worked even for the plots we know about? Both the shoe bomber and the panty bomber used the same stuff — a powder that is mixed with a liquid to make a plastic explosive. That ain’t going to show up on these clever new x-ray machines. Carefully sewn into a garment, would it be obvious even to a good, hard grope?
The TSA only screens US-to-US flights. Chances are, threats from here on out will be coming from outside the US. Very likely going through Heathrow (or Gatwick). I’ve flown out of both many times. They don’t just wave you through, but they seem to have an eye-roll view of American security procedures. No junk-groping for the Brits, ta.
We do too profile, sometimes. I got pulled out of line just as I was getting on a plane (Boston to London) and gently questioned. It was one of those Christmases with the heightened alerts. I don’t know who the questioner was, but he was brief, pleasant and professional. I’m convinced he picked on me because I was wearing dark aviator sunglasses and looking harried. Okay, maybe middle-aged American women aren’t the most insightful demographic to give second glances too, but paying extra attention to people who look stressed out…is a start.
Have you seen their recruits? There were eight quiet years between the failed shoe bomber and the failed panty bomber. And those two guys should’ve rung all kinds of alarm bells. So, yeah, I’m sure al Qaeda would love to enlist a few Midwestern grannies to fly under our security radar, but they’re having a hard time getting desperate losers from the third-world shit-holes to sign on at the moment.
They’re reduced to recruiting inkjet printers, mailing them from suspicious addresses to suspicious addresses, and bragging that it only cost $4,200 to assemble their latest FAIL.
I’m thinking a leeeetle teeny tiny bit of profiling should be plenty.
November 22, 2010 — 8:11 pm
Comments: 25