Respect Authority

Major developments are in the air. In previews for tonight’s season finale of The Real Housewives of New Jersey, there’s a fight! A big ole Jersey-style screaming match that I’m really hoping devolves into arguments over whose jeans are the most stone-washed and maybe the pulling of some big-ass hair. But in the meantime, until the lovely hour of 10 p.m. Eastern Time rolls around, we’ll have to amuse ourselves with actual news. Well, “actual.”

FOLLOWING THE TREND set forth by Al Gore, John Kerry has apparently asked the Senate ethics panel if he can use $300,000 from his (pointless) campaign funds to invest in a documentary about injured Iraq war veterans. Because “documentary filmmaker” is apparently every presidential hopeful’s second choice of career.

SPEAKING OF PRESIDENTIAL hopefuls, everything about this headline struck me as wrong. Not only should John McCain probably not be driving (at least not without Solar Shield sunglasses) but he definitely shouldn’t be tweeting. Luckily, “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” is less than 140 characters.

PROCTER & GAMBLE’S TAMPAX is reportedly behind a new series of viral videos about a boy who wakes up one morning to find his “boy parts” are gone, replaced by lady ones. …No commentary necessary.

A&E FINALLY CANCELED Patrick Swayze crime show The Beast. I’m more upset that I can’t in good conscience make fun of the show’s cancellation than that it was actually canceled.

IN A HOPELESS case of short-sighted thinking, the Detroit City Council is expected to consider a crackdown that would ban alcohol at clubs that offer topless dancing. Because if there’s one thing more depressing than watching topless dancing at a strip club in Detroit, it’s doing it sober.

So who’s the real loser in the 2008 Presidential election? The Dallas Mavericks.

Founded in 1980, the Mavericks, also known as the Mavs, have had a fairly decent history in the world of professional sports. They’ve won two division titles and one conference championship and according to Forbes magazine, they’re the third most valuable basketball franchise in the country, surpassed only by the Los Angeles Lakers and the New York Knicks.

Unfortunately for the Mavs, John McCain didn’t run his campaign into the ground by calling himself a “Laker.” Unfortunately for the Mavs, Sarah Palin didn’t refer to her presidential team as a “couple of Knicks.” And unfortunately for the Mavs, Barack Obama is a Bulls fan. Read More ›

I really didn’t want to find this funny, but it’s like those laughing baby videos. You can’t control that shit.

Can I just be the… billionth or so… person to say, “Holy fucking shit.”

It really happened. What is this, anyway? Some kind of modern country or some shit? Clearly, it’s time to start creating some “ANGRY IDIOTS FOR THE ASSASSINATION OF BARACK OBAMA” Facebook groups.

First of all, now that the silly election thing is over with, I feel like I should let you know that Barack Obama actually is a Muslim and a terrorist sympathizer, and, in fact, has a history of sleeping with both a copy of The Communist Manifesto and a defaced Precious Moments Bible under his pillow.

Nonetheless, throughout his campaign, Obama ran on a platform of hope. And clearly, he inspired hope in many American voters — including me, and I was under the impression that my capacity for hope had iced over years ago, that space in my heart left barren and forgotten, its haunting desolation not unlike that of lonely Pluto. Indeed, with Obama’s decisive victory against America’s oldest fart tonight, I regained some small amount of hope for the American people as a whole.

Understand that I drink an overfilled glass of negativity instead of orange juice every morning when I wake up, and as a result, think everything is always terrible, without question. So of course, it’s my belief that we hardly have any real reason to hope that we’ll see it out of the current economic case of the runs without losing even more of our assets yet. Nor do we have any reason to hope that Iraq won’t continue to be a mess of epic proportions, a mess that Tide Magic Stain Remover couldn’t even clean up. But today, there is hope that as a country, we are not entirely stupid. Read More ›

Like many Americans with business interests and a masochistic streak, I’ve come to rely on The Wall Street Journal for a litany of news related to the current economy. The paper’s coverage of financial news is breathtakingly comprehensive, albeit conservative, and I’ve also become a fairly avid fan of the Journal’s little character drawings. I am easily entertained.

Yet in all the attention I’ve paid to the newspaper’s coverage of the Great Depression II, I have spent little time looking to the WSJ for political news, opting instead for the liberal Grey Lady, The New York Times, or CNN, which consequently adds in entertaining and dumbed-down headlines like “Nudists want to vote in the buff.” It’s for this reason that the Journal’s Election Day editorial, with its fear-mongering warnings and backward-looking sentiments, came as something of a surprise to me, and put a tiny little damper on my recent elation over having done my part at the polls this morning. Read More ›

Imagine a possible scenario in the not so distant future…

An Army of Onesies

Under the new law, all former abortion-eligible babies (which is what they prefer to be called) were placed in the military immediately after birth. This new wing of soldiers has been named “The Fightin’ Fetuses,” and their record so far has been most impressive, though quite messy at times. Much like John McCain’s America.

President McCain was elected in a landslide victory in November 2008 thanks to hundreds of thousands of “Joe the Racists” finally coming together in an epic moment of national unity. Former Senator Barack Obama (now deported) was thought to end the eight year drought of Democrats in the Oval Office, but unfortunately for him, he was only able to carry the vote in Newport News, Virginia.
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"0bama hat35 @merica."

Indiana, a state of gun toting ignorant technophiles, has a law barring the use of robocalls. So in order to defend the formerly reliable Republican state, McCain and the RNC were forced to employ a telemarking service called Americall to do their dirty work.

Well, turns out that humans still have more decency than robots and Rudy Guiliani combined. Between thirty and forty telemarketers walked off their job yesterday in protest of the anti-Obama script they were given to read. They weren’t fired but they also weren’t paid the rest of the day, which for someone who’s doing telemarketing work must’ve been a huge financial sacrifice.

I’ve got to say, this moved me [Full Disclosure: I once beat off to this picture]. Telemarketers, the definitive scum of the earth, actually stood up for themselves, for truth, for fairness and decency and said, “Mama, enough is enough”. Traits never before observed in this caste of cold-blooded virtual salespeople.

[Talking Points Memo]

We all know Republican politicians love trying voters’ tolerance for fear tactics, and considering it’s worked pretty fucking well for the past eight years who can really blame them. I’d much rather blame them for all the contractors in Iraq, but that’s another issue altogether.

"I've been tested so many times it makes me sick!"

Now, I’m not sure how McCain knows they wouldn’t try to test him… unless of course… he asked them, thereby associating with known terrorists — McCain’s a terrorist! Terrorist terrorist! He talks to terrorists and has lunch meetings with terrorists and plays shuffle board with terrorists on Carnival Cruises!

With all the negative campaigning going on lately, do you think it’s possible that the RNC maybe just ran out of good things to say about McCain? Huh. I’m guessing “Vote for the candidate who is almost as old and frail as America is today” probably wasn’t an alternative campaign route they really wanted to entertain.

And while it is true that McCain has been thoroughly tested, I think the part where he got captured by the enemy doesn’t exactly count as getting an A. Let’s just say that’d be a test I’d be a little nervous to bring home for my mom to sign. No video games for a month, John. You earned it.

[CNN]

In case you missed some of this morning’s most mind-blowing stories: 

NATIONAL RIFLE ASSOCIATION executive vice president Wayne LaPierre announced the organization’s official endorsement of presidential candidate John McCain.  …The Catholic Church decides to wait on their endorsement; McCain’s geriatric grip might not be enough to cling to both guns and religion. 

HUGH HEFNER shoots the shit about his breakup with girlfriend Holly Madison, the chief cheerleader on E!’s hopelessly-addicting reality show The Girls Next Door. Hugh says he’s “down in the dumps” about their breakup, but gives little explanation for why Holly continues to live in the Playboy mansion, or whether he thinks its odd their ages are so “close” (28 and 82) or, most importantly, if Holly was really so dumb she thought they’d live happily ever after.  

THE NYPD embarked on yet another gun-buyback program in Brooklyn, offering residents $200 for each weapon they turn in, no questions asked. During past buybacks, more than 1,100 guns were taken off the streets – no word on whether the money went to buying, you know…more guns. 

THE NEW YORK TIMES points out that there actually are black Republicans. Don’t hate.

THE DAILY NEWS documents the hobbies of three complete losers who pass out sandwiches to the homeless in superhero costumes. Hey guys, you can be charitable without being tools.

The Foo Fighters, who might consider begging people to still consider them relevant, on Wednesday issued a formal request for presidential candidate John McCain to stop using their song “My Hero,” saying he had misappropriated the tune without their permission. 

Nor are the Foo the first. Apparently Heart, Van Halen, John “Cougar” Mellencamp and Jackson Browne have all asked the McCain/Palin camp to stop using their music. 

“The saddest thing about this is that ‘My Hero’ was written as a celebration of the common man and his extraordinary potential,” the band said in a statement. “To have it appropriated without our knowledge and used in a manner that perverts the original sentiment of the lyric just tarnishes the song.”

Needless to say, if McCain becomes president, I think we all know who’s getting audited first.

John McCain and Barack Obama went head-to-head last night in the second presidential debate, which was tense as all hell but still seemed to pale in comparison to the Palin/Biden madness that was last week. In the interest of mixing up my so-called “coverage,” I decided to document my debate commentary in blog-form, with timestamps, and after a few bowls … of … Cheerios. 

9:01 p.m. Tom Brokaw should consider a second career as an announcer for wrestling matches, or maybe as a stand-in for that guy who voices all the movie trailers. 

9:02 p.m. McCain takes a few notes as soon as he sits down. Perhaps “Obama not wearing flag pin” or “Forgot to take Ginkgo biloba today.”
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Photo Credit: Reuters

Early yesterday, NPR posted a story on Presidential grandpa McCain insisting that the bailout must pass, which is certainly news if I’ve ever seen it, since he’s only said that like fifteen times before.

I’m serious — our understanding of what news is has changed, particularly since the onset of the 2008 National Popularity Contest, and I think the definition is now something like “every time a political candidate farts.” Okay, that was a little facetious. But I am pretty sure an item doesn’t qualify as news anymore unless the exact same story has been covered at least two dozen times… per news outlet I mean. Really, I don’t think CNN.com writes more than four original sentences a day anymore.

Regardless, the truly interesting thing about the story are not the 7 other paragraphs I’ve read countless times, but this little gem from John “The Maverick” McAverick himself:

“I’ve turned to her [Alaska governor and all around charmer Sarah Palin - RA] for advice many times in the past,” McCain says. “I can’t imagine turning to Sen. [Barack] Obama or [Sen. Joseph] Biden because they’ve been wrong. They were wrong about Iraq. They were wrong about Russia.”

Wait, wait wait… wait… wait. You’ve asked Sarah Palin for advice… many times? What, in the month that you’ve known her?! Look, I realize butchering a presidential race is a lot of hard work, but if you’ve asked Sarah Palin for advice many times throughout the course of a month, you must really need some help. Read More ›