Oklahoma: Filling in the Blank

So why am I even here in Oklahoma? Why do I continue to live in a state that can’t even kill people on purpose cleanly, accept federal dollars to improve the health care provided to its citizens, resist electing the most extreme kind of dumb-asses the country has to offer, etc?

It’s simple: I was born here, my kids live here and if I were to just write the state off… well, the terrorists would win.

It wasn’t but a year or two ago when a co-worker came to me to ask if it wasn’t true that “Obamacare” required that children be injected with a microchip (“the Mark of the Beast”). 70+ percent of the voters approved a statewide referendum to prohibit ‘Sharia Law’ here. As many people that claim, nationally, their belief that the Hebrew God created the world less than 10,000 years ago, I’d bet that almost twice as many Oklahomans believe the same. If a plurality of my statesmen aren’t home-schoolers that are ‘hooked on phonics’, they wish they had the patience/resources to be.

Oklahoma’s people are largely an ignorant and fearful folk: they fear negroes (especially the President), non-European immigrants, change, secular anything,  books, the commie United Nations, most new ideas and the Big Scary World.  Believe me, I know about Oklahoma. I was born here, grew up here and stayed here.

Believe me: it was not always this FUCKING STUPID A PLACE TO LIVE.   No, the Dark Flame of Ignorance has been carefully tended and stoked to make Oklahoma a Beacon of Idiocy:

• Governor Mary Frick’n Fallin, the adulterous darling of the Tea Party, has been paid to oppose damned near everything that could make things better for this state while her spoiled brat daughter openly mocks Native Americans
• Senator James Mountain Inhofe, who has for years been a global laughing-stock over his conspiratorial thinking on human sexuality, climate change and the dang-nabbed 20th Century in general
• The numb-skull state representative that put a 10 Commandments monument on the grounds of the capitol but couldn’t get the spelling right
• Another cretin on the state payroll that campaigned against using human fetuses in food products
• The list goes on and on!

So why am I still living in Oklahoma?

Some amazing things have happened here.
I have fond memories of ‘liquor by the wink’.
Once upon a time, we had the highest per capita membership in the Communist Party in the nation.
Cannabis was once the number one cash crop.
The musicians are amazing here.
The state bird, the scissor-tail flycatcher, is cool.
Gas prices are low.
Maybe I’m too lazy to move and if I did only the Crazies would be left!

Fuck Governor Fallin and all her kind.
Fuck the followers of Oral Roberts and his fellow travellers.
Fuck the Koch Brothers and their veinal scheming.
Fuck all the manipulators of well-meaning Okies! Their hearts are pure, but —

I’m staying here to fill in the blank, the blank that they told me to erase and write something else in (but I won’t!).
I’m staying here to remind them of every time they are so terribly wrong that they pretend like they weren’t.
I’m the fly that stays clear of their patent medicine ointment.
I’m no Tom Joad, but for crying out loud, if people like me left this state, what would be left besides the easily led?
I am an Oklahoman, and I’m  staying here whether they like it or not: I want to rub them the wrong way.

Maybe I’m staying just to annoy the rest of ‘us’… because ‘we’ need to be annoyed.
What they’ve done to us shouldn’t be forgiven or forgotten or excused.
Those bastards did it for money and power and greed, straight up.
I wanna be here to watch the payback, if it ever comes.

 

 

Sometimes the Name Says It All

Britain has more than it’s share of really bad place and street names.

Last Laugh Department: German media report that Heinrich Mueller, head of the dreaded Gestapo, was buried in a Jewish cemetery in 1945.

Contrary to popular belief, the biggest reason for the rise in U.S. health care spending is not an aging population or patient demand, but rather the increasing price of drugs, procedures and hospital care, a new study finds. Cough-<nationalize the gougers>-cough! 

In other quack medicine news,  a weight-loss ‘dietary supplement’ called OxyElite has been pulled off the shelves after over 50 cases of serious liver damage or acute liver failure among its users.

Show of hands: who is shocked by this? A new study finds that many pills labeled as ‘herbal supplements’ are little more than powdered rice. Americans spend an estimated $5 billion a year on dubious ‘herbal’ preparations.

Stuxnet, the first real 21st Century cyber-weapon, wasn’t content to just muck up Iran’s uranium enrichment centrifuges. It’s infected a Russian nuclear plant, according to Russian anti-virus guru Kaspersky, and there’s not much to prevent it from infecting the International Space Station, what with all those infect thumb-drives floating around. The ISS has already seen infection by the W32.Gammima.AG worm. Is this why NASA is switching to Linux?

Russian performance artist Pyotr Pavlensky nails his scrotum to the ground in Red Square to protest ‘apathy, political indifference and fatalism of Russian society’. Okay, so some Russians make more sense than others.

A culprit has been fingered in the mysterious mass die-offs in the North American elk population. Nope, it’s not Bigfoot.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has voiced his own doubts about the ridiculous conspiracy theory that Lee Harvey Oswald acted as a lone gunman.

Despite being considered extinct for nearly 80 years, an intrepid group of British naturalists from the Centre for Fortean Zoology has set out to find proof that the thylacine (AKA ‘Tasmanian tiger’) is still alive and kicking. 

The oldest big cat fossils ever found  have been unearthed in the Himalayas – from a previously unknown species “similar to a snow leopard”.

Respect The Hamster-Ball of Personal Space: enjoy reading “Dr. Carmella’s Guide to Understanding the Introverted“.

“Tulsa: Where ‘Good Government’ Just Doesn’t Pay!”

T-town is in for another three years of scandal-plagued government with the re-election of Dewey  F. Bartlett yesterday. I’d like to wish him good luck, and his pants a higher ignition temperature, this time around! The good news from last night is that the infrastructure improvement projects all passed, so maybe the ‘street-crater slalom’ will get a little less challenging.

This is one of those elections that left me wishing for a “None of the Above” option on the ballot. More than $4 million was spent on the mayoral campaign, and I found both candidates unworthy. Why should we have to get stuck with lemons like this? Voters should be able to say “Sorry, try again!” and call for a fresh slate of candidates.

Sandia’s Multi-Modal Vehicle concept is just weird enough to love. Look for something like it under your X-mas tree (or circling your compound) in the near future!

Something Slimy This Way Comes

Well, there is “fraud”, and then there’s “employer-enabled fraud”. What I saw yesterday looked like the latter type.

I’ve written before about The Management Family’s infatuation with sleazy, scammy MLM schemes. It’s like an addiction with these people. We’ve been internally spammed about everything from real estate to weight loss products, magical rubber bracelets and a “full-body MOLECULAR cleanse!” over the last few years.

So, last week we got this weirdly worded, crudely formatted, all-employee email about a supposed ‘benefit meeting’:

Good Afternoon Everyone,

 Legal Shield Benefit Meeting !!!

We will be having a benefit meeting in the
Lunch Room on October 30, 2013.
We will be having 2 meeting that day
                        11:30 & 12:30.
Lunch will be provided for all that attend the meeting.
There will be a  “FLAT SCREEN T.V. GIVEAWAY”

Everyone that attends the meeting will have a chance to WIN…. The FLAT SCREEN T.V.
We will have the drawing at the end of the 2^nd meeting.

If you plan on attending the meeting, I  will be posting a flyer at the time clocks with a sign-up sheet in order to get head count for lunch that day.

      FLAT SCREEN
      GIVEAWAY !  

                 WIN IT!!  

        NEED TO BE @ LUNCH & LEARN
      WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2013
                    FREE LUNCH
               11:30AM & 12:30 pm
             NICE “HOLIDAY GIFT” 

And I’m left thinking “Gee, I’ve never been to a legitimate benefit meeting that had to offer free pizza and a door prize drawing before. Do you think it might be a scam?” It was hard not to speculate on some sort of connection between these outside scammers and The Management, given the rosy presentation and history of MLM addiction in The Management Family.

Yep, the scam-artists formerly known as “Pre-Paid Legal” (PPL) are now doing business as “LegalShield™”. Apparently people were starting to get wise to them so they changed their name. I sure can’t fault them for that logic! How are you going to keep fleecing the rubes if you don’t change your name occasionally?

See, I’ve had dealings with PPL in the past. Their crack lawyer failed to handle a simple, bogus, out of statute collection action a few years back, leaving me stuck with a default judgement. I found out about this little back-stab two years later when nothing could be done about it, and when I complained to PPL the answer I got was a simple ‘fuck you’.

Yeah, I know all about these vile ass-clowns.

So, of course I went to the ‘benefit meeting’, and as I listened to The Management put in a good word for the scammer’s product before the pitch-man started his spiel, it made me feel more than a little sick.

Then the pitch-man took the hand-off and started stoking paranoia about how the law was out to get us, and how O.J. only went to jail when he ran out of money, and how LegalShield™ was going to save all our asses! LegalShield™ would make 80% of our traffic tickets magically go away! We could drunk-drive with confidence and be safe from vehicular homicide charges, because they’d handle everything! Child custody and child support worries would be a thing of the past! It was all covered by LegalShield™. Just sign on the dotted line… suckers!

As he was lining up his closing spiel I had to bring up my experience with his firm. Of course his stammered answer was “that could never happen now”. I stood up, expressed my opinion that this was a fraudulent representation for a bogus product/service/company and I walked out of the meeting.

Sure, I looked like the asshole that bad-mouthed the nice man that brought free pizza and a chance to win a TV: so be it. When the victims realize just how far the verbal representations made by the sleazy pitch-man are from what PPL-LegalShield™ membership actually provides they’ll really want to cock-punch that guy; I’ll happily hold him down while they do.

Hats off to Eric, who made a point of asking to see the actual contract… and, wouldn’t you know that the pitch-man didn’t seem to have one with him! ‘HEY TRUST ME, THAT’S ALL AVAILABLE ON-LINE!‘, said the nice man that brought free pizza and gived a chance to win a free TV. What an ethical cockroach! But I know he still snagged at least two victims that didn’t bother to see what they were paying for before signing up, and I fear there may have been more victims that swallowed his deceptive presentation.

Here’s some info on this “legitimate business” at MediaMoogle and ConsumerAffairs. I’d take it as a bad sign when such a vast number of complaints about PPL-LegalShield™ are made by their former sales force that got screwed on their commissions and so forth. When they treat their sellers that shitty, just imagine how good being a client must feel (obligatory LOL).

This YouTube user has a few thoughts on the quality of services provided to him by PPL-LegalShield™. His follow up video covers the very disreputable efforts to suppress his negative review of this very disreputable firm. This is pretty much par for the course when dealing with this mob of MLM vermin.

Gods and Monsters

Dark Horse has launched a new comic book series where atheist superheroes protect the Earth from supernatural forces they don’t even believe in.

Here’s 11 horror movies that are incredibly scary because of what they say about humanity. I thought they all were!

Rare non-face palm news out of Indian Territory! The first 24 hour automated library in the U.S. has been installed in Norman OK!

The robot apocalypse has been postponed! In front of dozens of journalists yesterday in Hong Kong, DARPA’s 330 pound Atlas robot lost its balance and broke its ankle during a demonstration of walking.

Law of Urination: all mammals empty their bladders over the same duration.

A new study published in the American Journal of Medicine finds that heavy pot smokers tend to be slimmer than former marijuana users and non-smokers. So that’s what happened to my 30 inch waist!

Poor children are now the majority in American public schools in South, West. Standardized testing won’t fix that.

Yes, Evil Knievel endorsed a scooter-chair in his declining years. Sad, isn’t it?

Authority > Leadership. “Authority in the Village from Italy to Ireland“.

There’s an interesting “sedition petition” that’s got over 40,000 signatures.

At a loss for words? Try the Tea party Insult Generator! It’s powered by actual insults spewed on John Boehner’s Facebook wall!

Beloved Imbeciles

“The righteous hates falsehood, but the wicked brings shame and disgrace” – (Proverbs 13:5). Yea and verily, my own district’s Rep. Jim Bridenstine (R-Pekoe and Orange Pekoe) issued the following statement on his vote to continue the government shutdown Wednesday night:

I voted ‘No’ on the bill to raise the debt ceiling without any spending controls and fund the government without providing any relief to millions of Americans being harmed by Obamacare. The President’s policy of funding all of the government or none of the government violates the principles of a representative republic and is devastating to a nation historically governed by consensus.

Yep, them Obamacare casualties are just littering the streets, aren’t they?  This kind of hyperbole, coupled with the fact that Bridenstine is known to be able to both read and write, is why I conclude that he is a very lazy liar that just doesn’t care to sound even a little credible. Because, hey, TYRANNY!, right?

Mr. Bridenstine doesn’t seem to comprehend that, under the Constitution of this representative democracy, there are just two ways to undo the Affordable Care Act (since the Supreme Court has already killed the “declare it unconstitutional” gambit):

1. Pass a bill in congress to overturn the ACA, and have the president sign it into law, or
2. Pass a bill in congress to overturn the ACA, have the president veto it, then override the veto by two-thirds vote in both houses of congress

It’s a little odd to have to explain this to a congressman, even a spurious ‘wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross‘ rookie like Bridenstine, but he’s just a mendacious little tool and not an overly bright one at that. Go Okie voters!

Rep. Tom Cole was the only member of Oklahoma’s all-Republican delegation voting to re-open the government. I’ve lauded Rep. Cole in the past for being the most pragmatic member of the Oklahoma delegation, by far. We might not agree on much, but with Cole you won’t get an argument about the sky being “up” or 2+2 being equal to 4. This sets him head and shoulders above the rest.

On the other hand, in the Senate, crazy old Tom Coburn (R-Rampant Lesbian) was among the 18 senators who voted against the measure. Sen. Jim Inhofe, recovering from surgery to remove a scientific hoax, was unable to vote but released this statement:

The president has taken care of his pet projects while letting the most foundational elements of the Constitution — from budgeting to national security — sit on the back burner. Because of his leadership, we have operated from one crisis to the next. It happened once again when he and Majority Leader (Harry) Reid held Congress hostage with the debt ceiling in order to forge a deal that falls short of anything worthy of conservative support. It’s time this ends and my colleagues face the overdue discussion on the scope and size of federal government.

Does that parse as being as disconnected from reality to you as it did for me? Maybe it was only the Demerol talking, though with Inhofe how would you ever know?

The Big Fall and the Big Fail

It’s been one year since Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner made the highest jump of all time. The Red Bull Stratos project was part science, part adventure, and of course part caffeinated beverage promotion overload.

31 Levitating Vehicles From the Dawn of the Hovercraft. Hey, I remember the GEM-1 from the Weekly Reader!

“The People of the West”, a 3rd century Chinese report, lists products of interest from the Roman Empire.

Ingo Potrykus developed “Golden Rice” to combat blindness and death in children by supplying 60 per cent of the vitamin A they need in a typical daily helping of rice. He’d like to live long enough to see it save lives despite protests over GM crops.

By side-stepping IP security, a pair of researchers have uncovered more than two dozen vulnerabilities in products used in critical infrastructure systems that would allow attackers to crash or hijack the servers controlling electric substations and water systems.

Oxford University genetics professor’s DNA tests on “yeti” hair samples gathered in the Himalayas are a “100% match” with an ancient polar bear sample that dates back to between 40,000 and 120,000 years ago – a time when the polar bear and closely related brown bear were separating as different species.

Problem-Solving Parrots Understand Cause and Effect. Scientists speculate two factors may influence why some animal species are smarter than others: how cognitively demanding it is for the animals to obtain food and the social complexity of the animals’ society.

Here’s a slightly dated gallery of non-problem solving parrots… I think they are related to the dodo, somehow.

Aren’t you glad to know they make (non-alcoholic) wine for cats? Nyan Nyan Nouveau.

Clues to the origin of language: a stuffed python on a fishing line has revealed that chimpanzee alarm calls have intentional meaning rather than being involuntary expressions of emotion (as seen in lower primates like jackanapesis teapartius).

The ancients had gods and pyramids to tame the sky’s mystery. We have Star Axis, a masterpiece forty years in the making.

The Houston Chronicle is suffering some regret over its endorsement of Ted Cruz, the poor dears!

Lord Humungus would like to put all this recent unpleasantness aside, at least until January. And he wants a certain head, for decorative/ceremonial purposes.

Mr. Cause, meet Mr. Effect

The movie we’ve all been waiting for! “Hell No!”, the sensible horror movie.

Right out of “Creepshow“: Russian team recovered a half-tonne chunk of the space rock that exploded over Chelyabinsk earlier this year, but they broke it.

What fact do you accept intellectually, but still feels “wrong” to you? It’s quite a discussion over at Reddit.

A herpes drug can make people with renal failure insist they are dead – a condition called Cotard’s syndrome – and may provide insights into consciousness.

Here’s what the fox really says, Ylvis.

Connecticut College students and a professor of neuroscience have found “America’s favorite cookie” is just as addictive as cocaine – and just like most humans, rats go for the middle first.

Donkey Baseball (which is, as the name implies, baseball played while riding on donkeys) became a popular fad in the 1930s. In 1934, William Beck became the first fatality for the fledgling sport.

How the Bible and YouTube are fueling the next frontier of password cracking.

A drug similar to ketamine has been shown to work as an antidepressant, without the psychosis-like side effects associated with the party drug.

Billionaire businessman Richard Branson last week spoke on CNN against the ‘War on Drugs’, labeling it “an abject failure”. Speaking in purely business terms, Branson said that if he “had a company that had failed for 60 years I would have closed it down 59 years ago”.

Q: How many cops does it take to throw a suspect down a flight of stairs? A: None; he tripped. More police-state fun! 

“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” -Mark Twain

Besides the train-wreck the GOP and their fellow travelers are causing, the U.S. really doesn’t have a debt crisis. What we do have is a crazy crisis!

More than half of low-wage workers employed by U.S. fast-food restaurants rely on public assistance to get by, possibly due to laughably low wages.

So, let me get this straight: you voted for werewolves to dismantle the government and now you can’t get any help? SD ranchers demand to know “Where’s that gubbermint we voted against?”. Pardon my shocking lack of sympathy.

Here’s the plotting of the “Putz Putsch” conspirators, caught on video. Shipping all those teabagger pukes to Gitmo is better than they deserve.

Painting a Rosier Picture

A study of hand prints on cave walls suggests much of Paleolithic cave art was created by women, a Penn State archaeologist says.

The Ancient Paths: Discovering the Lost Map of Celtic Europe is an enthralling new history that argues that Druids created a sophisticated ancient society to rival the Romans.

Just over a thousand years ago, someone sealed up a chamber in a cave outside the oasis town of Dunhuang, on the edge of the Gobi Desert in western China. The chamber was filled with more than five hundred cubic feet of bundled manuscripts. Discovered in 1900, the manuscripts are now being carefully digitized… because that’s what we do with old manuscripts.

Today viral jokes spread by email, Twitter, or blogs. But in 1910, jokes went viral by telegraph.

A loving look back on the age of airships from The Atlantic.

Is the term “dickhead” more endocentric than exocentric? One linguist’s opinion.

There’s always fun reading at The Poison Review! Take, for instance, “Is that a jellyfish on your leg or are you just glad to see me?  Priapism and Irukandji Syndrome“.

Get ready for the new, improved botulinum H!

Swiss radiation experts have confirmed they found traces of polonium on clothing used by Yasser Arafat which ‘support the possibility’ the veteran Palestinian leader was poisoned.

Not winning! New WaPo/ABC Poll: 74% of Americans Disapprove of GOP Shutdown Craziness.

False equivalence: how ‘balance’ makes the media dangerously dumb. We’ve seen it in climate change reporting; we see it in shutdown coverage.

“On letters from climate-change deniers” carefully explains the Los Angeles Times’ decision to not print letters to the editor that dispute global warming: “it’s asserting a factual inaccuracy”.

Aorta-gate! Senator Jim Inhofe falls prey to liberal Hollywood “Theory of Circulation” hoax, gets bypass surgery from Illuminati “doctors”!

“Veterans Slam Tea Party Politicians For Hijacking Protest Against War Memorial Closures“. Apparently, failed teabag-rats will even turn on veterans when they need a publicity fix.

Shocking terrorist attack on GOP office! These evildoers will stop at nothing!

The Wurst is Yet to Come

Have you tried crossing the beams?

Republican Debt-Ceiling ‘Truthers’ Are Risking a Financial Disaster: “Like the insane, nuclear bomb-worshipping mutants who live beneath the Planet of the Apes, the debt-limit truthers and denialists are willing to risk disaster in a last-ditch attack on Obamacare”. Here Are Three Debt-Ceiling Lies You’ll Hear From the GOP This Week.

The Big Lie that the Affordable Care Act was “rammed through in the middle of the night without a single Republican vote” doesn’t align well with the years of debate and negotiations Senate records show. Look out for that “memory hole”!

Ohh, burn! Taliban mock ‘selfish and empty-minded American leaders’ over government shutdown. ‘Even a stopped clock’, as the saying goes.

On the origins of “goo goo ga joob”.

How to Spot a Narcissist… just Google “Ted Cruz”?

How much energy does it take to vaporize a human? We have the technology.

According to a new documentary, the quantity of cow intestines required to manufacture Zeppelins for WWI was so enormous that the making of sausages was temporarily outlawed in Germany and allied or occupied parts of Austria, Poland and northern France.

Neuro-enhancement in the military: far-fetched or an inevitable future? I’d settle for a Legislative Branch that wasn’t brain-dead.

Eighty to 90 percent of people who use crack and methamphetamine don’t get addicted, and the small number who do become addicted are nothing like the popular caricatures.

Robotic Snakes Slither Their Way Into Ancient Archaeology. First the Congress, now the Pyramids.

An extinct Judean date palm has been grown from a 2,000 year old seed found in the ruins of Herod’s palace. Still no progress rekindling patriotism or honor among the Tea Party zombies, though.

This bizarre lizard bleeds green poison that can kill you. Sort of like the Koch Brothers.

(TheOnion) Shutdown breakthrough! “According to Congressional aides, if the White House agrees to deliver Malia, as well as a pint of Michelle Obama’s blood, a ram’s horn, and a shard of obsidian to the basement of the Cannon House Office Building by this evening, a House vote on the bill could take place as early as Saturday“.

Electronic cigarettes could save the lives of millions of smokers, or they could set millions of non-smokers on the path to nicotine addiction. The pressure to regulate them piles up… without a speck of science.

Dutch authorities using ‘scratch and sniff’ cannabis cards to bust pot growers. This brings up a funny-but-true story. A good friend of mine, a graphic artist, wanted to do a cannabis-scented scratch’n’sniff  thing for a local “head shop” in the ’70s. 3M was the sole provider of the technology at the time, so he ordered some samples, but none of them smelled anything close to right. After some back and forth with 3M, he finally got someone on the phone who told him “Look, 3M is a pretty conservative company. Even if one our fragrance engineers knew what pot smelled like they could never admit it.” And thus the project was dropped. Apparently it’s not a problem for the Netherlanders today.

Something surreal from Banksy:

Kids with Matches!

The Flying Crowbar: The Insane Doomsday Weapon America Almost Built. Sure, nuclear ram-jets are cool and all, but this thing made me say “Thank goodness for ICBMs!”

Any Animal That Touches This Lethal Lake Turns to Stone. Well, almost any animal, that is. There are some fish that quite like it there.

Just in time for holiday cookie season: the vanilla flavoring in your baked goods and candy could come from the anal excretions of beavers.

So long for now, Silk Road! It looks like at least part of the government wasn’t totally shut down, after all.

Swiss War Game Envisages Invasion by Bankrupt French.

World News: Obama has told the American people there will be ‘no discernible difference’ when banks take over the running of the country after the shutdown of the US government.

Australia had a government shutdown once, in 1975. In the end, the Queen fired everyone in Parliament. I know how she felt!

The Walking Dumb: How a small gaggle of thick-headed Republicans could derail the entire global economy for a decade.

I know my own district’s elected Tea Party catamite, Rep. Jim Bridenstine, can expect nothing but the highest respect from me, especially after he helps tank the economy again. But I’m hearing rumors of more sinister motives for his backstabbing of our nation.

The Gift That Keeps On Giving!

That Time GE Made a One-Man, Rocket-Propelled Reentry Vehicle/Body Bag. 

Judge Takes On Patent Troll With ‘Sham Employee’; Forces Troll To Defend Practice Before A Jury. This is going to be good!

Just a few holes transforms the fried chicken-peddling Colonel Sanders into a blood-vomiting demon.

Should Kratom Use Be Legal? The leaves of the herb kratom (Mitragyna speciosa), a native of Southeast Asia in the coffee family, are used to relieve pain and improve mood as an opiate substitute and stimulant.

Another form of wireless charging: Harnessing the power of lightning to charge a mobile phone. Ben Franklin on line two!

Naked mole rats live long lives—about 30 years—and stay healthy until the very end. Now biologists at the University of Rochester have new insights into the animal’s longevity—better-constructed proteins.

The Once and Future Tantrum

Happy 123rd anniversary, Yosemite National Park! It’s too bad the congressional Pubes & Goobs decided to shut down the government to celebrate!

Of course the Oklahoma delegation played its part as faux-populist Tea Party lick-spittles, but what do you expect from the likes of Markwayne “Lying Tradesman” Mullin or Jimbo “Unambiguous Tea Party-Doll” Bridenstein or the rest of the mouth-breathers that the rural base here seems to love? Calling attention to the Okie voters’ lack of critical reasoning skills would be to state the self-evident, judging from the type of pathetic douche-bags they keep sending to Washington.

And that brings us back to the current round of “Amateur Hour” at it’s most garish: the Goobs can barely muster the coordination required to drag all the furniture into a pile for the self-serving, cynical Pubes (like Ted Cruz) to apply their rudimentary fire-making skills to. There will follow much hooting and howling around the bonfire, some spirited poo-flinging and Piggy may be hunted for a time. Meanwhile, the nation’s business is put on hold. Surely this is what the Founding Fathers intended!

Eventually, the adults will show up (as they always do), kiss their little boo-boos and send them off to their warm, corruption-funded beds again. What passes for Tea Party ‘honor’ will have been served: they’ll have held their breath till they turn blue as Smurfs and thrown their tantrums for the cameras, given the global economy a limp, forced up the cost of borrowing for everyone, screwed workers out of timely paychecks, maybe even triggered some evictions… and call it ‘striking a blow for FREEDOM!” Most of these ass-clowns will probably be re-elected because Americans just aren’t very good at thinking any more. Too much kool-aid will stunt your brain.

The reality is that there are no principled positions advanced by the Right, which can only dish out a wilted word-salad of nihilistic platitudes and strategies for kicking people already laid low by the banksters and vulture capitalists that own the GOP body and soul. Their idiotic base will applaud their fraudulent malfeasance in office… and we can do this all over again in a few months! Blather, rinse, repeat!