Reality 101 (part i)

If we’re going to engage in a real politics about real issues concerning real people, we need to have a basic grasp of what reality actually is.

I know that sounds vaguely ridiculous. But, as in martial arts, falling down is the first thing you learn, and the first thing you learn about falling down is that you don’t know how to fall down properly.

So: reality. What is that?

Heaviousity Tomorrow, Comedy Tonight

In honor of the Great National Day of Halftime Flushing water-pressure-dropping, I present the single worst lede ever written about a Super Bowl. (OK: actually a “parallel” filler story to excuse some idjit getting an assignment to “cover” the Super Bowl, complete with travel and expenses.)

alternative-providing volunteers

Tragedy tomorrow (for either Indianapolis or New Orleans). Comedy tonight (with apologies to Sondheim):

Stooopid — The MOVIE! In 3-D!

I had thought I had seen the stupidist creatures in all existence: an afghan hound, a planaria flatworm, a Tea Bagger, or even Craig T. Nelson. But I was wrong. There is a NEW KING OF STOOPID!!!

Previous Honoree

All hail Imbecilia!

KVOT link

Here are the blog posts referenced on KVOT this morning.

click to visit

• Some Real Astroturf in Oregon

Sour Power:

Tea Party Express?

I covered this in 2005. (Cited by Crooks & Liars‘ Susie Madrak):

• Swift Boat Moms in Winnebagos
  30 Aug 05 (cited by SourceWatch)

Yup. Same folks: Melanie Morgan, Mark Williams, Russo Marsh + Rogers, Deborah Johns, ETC.

[* "Republican public relations firm Russo, Marsh and Rogers (RMR), has padded its pockets with $1,025,559 in money raised by the tea party group." Huffington Post]

Courage.

Reality 101 (Prologue)

(Adapted from a colloquy on FaceBook)

The retarded Liberal Democrats.

Disability Advocates Accept Rahm Emanuel’s Apology For ‘Retarded’ Comment
Huffington Post

Special Olympics Chairman and CEO Timothy Shriver personally accepted an apology from White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel on Wednesday, days after comments surfaced in which Emanuel used the word “retarded” to describe a proposal made by a group of liberal Democrats…

And the liberal Democrats are still trying to sound it out phonetically. How come we have so much energy to attack Dems but never bother about R’s? Oh, wait. I know: it’s so we can fall asleep at the wheel and lose our 60th vote! Hoo haw.

My Ledger Domain; Your Precedent

You are the reincarnation of a very important Gas Princess of Jupiter.

You don’t remember this, of course, because THEY have wiped your memory.

But don’t worry, princess. I, your faithful retainer, have found you after years of patient searching, and the rescue ship will be arriving in forty-eight minutes to return you to Imperial Jupiter. We will restore your memory en route…

So begins the Philip K. Dick novel that neither he nor I will ever write, Gas Princess of Jupiter.

Dick was obsessed with the difference between the noumenal (things as they are) and the phenomenal (things as we perceive them to be) and, thus, became the O. Henry of epistemological stunts.

Global Notwarming Tanks Roll Across Tundra

Metaphorically, I mean.

Hey. A concerted worldwide media campaign is underway to convince us all that global warming is a monumental criminal hoax perpetrated by leftist ideologue scientists.

Grow a pair

It’s a galloping global glitzkreig.

Salinger Dead, Caulfield at Rest

J.D. Salinger is dead.

The author of lone assassins’ most popular book has passed away at 91.

I do not know why Mark David Chapman and Arthur Bremer were so obsessed with Catcher in the Rye, nor why it was consistently among the top ten most censored books in America. But there you have it.

He landed at Utah beach on June 6, 1944. I didn’t know that. The usual, excellent New York Times obit is here.

Requiescat in pace.

Courage.

Why I Initially Backed John Edwards: Nukes

If you will check the archives, I initially supported John Edwards in the presidential stakes. I didn’t do it because of where his penis had been, NOR do I now believe that the First Annual National Castration, Weenie Roast and Auto-da-fé is appropriate, just, or says anything that is NOT insulting about the national psyche, our Collective Obnoxious*, but that is by the by.

Another cheapjack defender of public “morality”

(* Or, shorter, Faux Nooz™ and its “Hot chick teachers who’ve had SEX!” Sniff! Sniff!)

I supported Edwards because Obama has this insane idea that nuclear energy  will ever be anything OTHER than a nightmare, and is, instead, a panacea for our energy problems.

Look, I used to live downstream from Los Alamos National Lab, and I had a cousin who worked there for years. From a young age I’ve been aware of the “promise” of nuclear power, but it is an endless downside with zero upside, as I will esplain to you. LOOOOOOOOOCY!

I believed that Obama believed nukes to be good, coming from the state in which Exelon —  the thousand pound gorilla in the U.S.’s nuclear power industry —  operates six, count ‘em SIX nuke plantz. It is politically idiotic to be against nuclear power in Illinois, sad to say.  And it’s a fait accompli. They’re there.

Some REAL Astroturf in Oregon

News Flash: The Los Angeles Times SUCKS.

OK. Not so much news. But consider the arrogance, the clueless elitism of this first sentence of the report on Oregon’s election:

Voters in Oregon OK tax hikes for some

Corporations and wealthy families are targeted to help ease the state’s budget crisis.
By Kim Murphy
Los Angeles Times
January 27, 2010

Reporting from Vancouver, Canada – Facing a budget crunch that threatened to close schools early, lay off teachers and slash healthcare benefits, Oregon voters ended two decades of tax scrimping Tuesday by approving higher taxes on corporations and wealthy families …

“Reporting from Vancouver, Canada“?

Robo-Sockpuppets Behave As Predicted

“Breaking news: I am an idiot.”

Well, I told you so yesterday at 2:20 PM PST.  And look at what today’s cat dragged in: