For those of you not of a certain age, a popular college fad in the 1950s was telephone booth stuffing. In fact, there were often competitions between colleges to see just how many students could cram themselves in. Oh, yeah, and you might also want to ask your parents or a great uncle what a telephone booth was.

Which brings us to the state of play in the current GOP Presidential nomination battle royale…

I can’t wait to see what the first debates are going to be like. I won’t bother watching unless they make ‘em do it in a big steel cage, with Mean Gene Okerlund as the moderator.

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And, here’s some more rock ‘em, sock ‘em election action:
“Cromnibus Island”, December 2014
“Yer Liberals, no. 2: Make Him Do It”, November 2012
“Middle Class First”, October 2012
“Blankness You Can Believe In”, April 2012
“My Little Party”, February 2012

Continue reading "“Would Whoever Can Reach The Phone…”" »

Y’know, I hardly know where to start with this. Perhaps I could start with this gob-smacking foto of ex-Presidents Bubba and Chimp, both smiling their most smarmy and smug smiles as they accept the position of Special Envoys in charge of the Haitian relief effort. That’s right, ex-President I Invaded Haiti In The ’90s and ex-President Heckuva Job Brownie have been placed in charge of Haitian earthquake relief, and the bastards are frickin’ smiling… and President Timberlake, there, seems just barely able to contain himself as well. What perfect cover for a little bit of that “vulture capitalism”.

Or, perhaps this amazingly soulless, brutalist David Brooks column from the New York Times might work for you. In it, he calls for the throwing away of any tolerance or respect for foreign cultures and calls for “intrusive paternalism” at least half a dozen times in a page and a half of thinly-veiled racist spewage. In spirit and letter, it’s really no different from any similar racist spewage about Haiti and the Dominican Republic published in the New York Times a century or so ago; Noam Chomsky writes in Year 501:

Times editors lauded the “unselfish and helpful” attitude that the US had always shown, now once again as it responded “in a fatherly way” as Haiti “sought help here.” Our “unselfish intervention has been moved almost exclusively by a desire to give the benefits of peace to people tormented by repeated revolutions,” with no thought of “preferential advantages, commercial or otherwise,” for ourselves. “The people of the island should realize that [the US government] is their best friend.” The US sought only to ensure that “the people were cured of the habit of insurrection and taught how to work and live”; they “would have to be reformed, guided and educated,” and this “duty was undertaken by the United States.” There is a further benefit for our “black brother”: “To wean these peoples away from their shot-gun habit of government is to safeguard them against our own exasperation,” which might lead to further intervention. “The good-will and unselfish purposes of our own government” are demonstrated by the consequences, the editors wrote in 1922, when they were all too apparent and the Marine atrocities had already aroused a storm of protest.

However, if comic relief is what you’re after, don’t despair; former US Senator John “Senator Goodhair” Edwards is going to Haiti to help out, also — with cameras conveniently present, of course.

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Continue reading "Greetings From Haiti!" »

Are you getting pissed? I mean, really, REALLY pissed? Well, don’t just sit there doing bong hits and watching “Adult Swim” — ­get up, rise up, and show ‘em your shoes! Show your solidarity with the Iraqi shoe-throwing reporter! Let ‘em know you’re ready to “keep ‘em flying”!

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Continue reading "First Insurgent Aerial Attack Squadron Gear" »

So, I’m poring over the Drudge Report in my daily search for cheap laffs, and finding out what the Enemy is up to, and I come across this Associated Press dispatch from Baghdad reporting on the Iraqi reporter who threw his shoes at President Chimp, and thinking “whoa, that’s some cheap laffs – and he almost hit the sonofabitch, too! Sweet!” and move on with whatever I was doing…

Later that day, I go by Drudge again, and find another story from Agencie France-Presse noting that the perpetrator of this “shoe-icide attack” is being hailed as a hero in most of the Arab World, and the next thing I know the whole world’s raising hell to get the guy out of prison, it’s being reported that he’s being beaten in custody, there are demonstrations and rallies all over in solidarity, and I’m thinking…holy shit, this story’s really grown some legs, man!

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Continue reading "Mission Accomplished!" »