Gather round, friends, because radio gabber and adopted son of Ronald Reagan whose unused portion was returned for a full refund Michael Reagan is giving a seminar on dealing with all enemies, foreign and domestic.  In short: point a gun at them (but just to avoid trouble with the authorities, make it an unloaded gun, and be careful to look silly while you’re doing it).

I know what you’re thinking. “Did he fire six shots or only five?” Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself. But being as this is an empty .22, the least powerful handgun in the world, you’ve got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?

Oh.  You do?  Well…You should probably go buy some Lotto scratchers then.

WikiLeaks’ Assange and Pvt. Manning Should be Tried for Treason

If we had a president in the White House who understood that we are at war with a crazed faction of Islam, and was willing to act on that belief, there would be no question about how we should deal with people who give aid and comfort to the enemy — they’d be tried for treason and when found guilty stood up before a firing squad.

A president like Michael’s dad.  A man who, if he did not necessarily know we were at war with a crazed faction of Islam, almost certainly began to suspect it after the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing, when someone in the White House pointed out that he had managed to lose more U.S. Marines in a single day than any president since World War II.  And unlike the current Administration, Reagan had a plan for dealing with the traitors who give aid and comfort to the enemy: sell weapons to the same crazed faction that attacked us, thereby making the traitors look like small potatoes (because aid and comfort is nice, but TOW anti-tank missiles are nicer; not to mention the lovely key-shaped baked goods that came with them as lagniappe), and ensuring that whoever was getting killed — us, them, whoever — we’d make a profit on it.  Because the man was first, last, and always a Fiscal Conservative.

Julian Assange and his fellow conspirator Pvt. Bradley Manning allegedly betrayed the United States, gave aid and comfort to the terrorists who seek to destroy the United States, and if found guilty they deserve nothing less than death sentences for their unspeakable crimes.

I’m not sure that Assange, an Australian who doesn’t live in the United States, can legally “betray” it, but still, one can’t ignore the precedent set by the execution of Daniel Ellsberg.

Their pitifully lame excuse that they were merely trying to provide information to the American people that was being improperly withheld from them by the government is on a par with Benedict Arnold’s claim that he was merely trying to inform the British on information the American people believed they deserved to have.

Often when I read a conservative  columnist and encounter what context indicates is a joke, I think, “well, that’s kind of stupid.”  But then I remember that everything liberals observe in wingnuts (sociopathy, hypocrisy, racism, etc.) is really just a projection of our own mental illnesses, so in reality the conservative columnist is actually so smart that his writing probably works on multiple levels at once, which means that at this very moment, there is some place, in a quantum branch of infinite-dimensional Hilbert space, where that joke is funny.

Anyway, the super-intelligent pan-dimensional mice seem to like a good Benedict Arnold gag.

On the contrary, the public does not have the right to know everything — some information needs to be kept secret if the public’s safety is to be assured. Consumers do not need to know the gory details of how sausage is made

Rather than establishing the business-strangling USDA, the government should have just hanged Upton Sinclair.

…nor do the people need to be made aware of all of the details of what is being done to protect them.

For instance, Erin Brockovich spilled the beans about how Pacific Gas & Electric contaminated the residents of a small California town with hexavalent chromium.  What Hollywood didn’t tell you — and what you didn’t need to know — is that PG&E was working under contract from the U.S. government to make Californians unappealing to the aliens who wrote that To Serve Man cookbook.  NASA figured out that if you fill humans with enough hexavalent chromium, they become the equivalent of the Japanese fugu fish — very tricky to prepare without poisoning the diner — and the aliens would go find some other planet with a dominant species they could just microwave.

Nobody ever demanded that those scientists engaged in building the atomic bomb that ended the war with Japan should do their work openly and share their secrets with the public, and nobody has the right to decide which secrets the public has a need to know.

Nobody has a right to decide what should be secret?  So who or what handles security classification for the federal government?  That NotMe guy from Family Circus?  A platoon of Shmoo?

I’d stamp this one “Warning Notice – Intelligence Sources and Methods Involved (WNINTEL),” but I don’t have any arms.

Pvt. Bradley Manning, the soldier who is alleged to have illegally obtained the documents, is already behind bars where, if justice is to be served, he will remain for the rest of his life. Assange’s punishment is yet to be determined, but it should be equally as harsh, if indeed he escapes the hangman’s noose, although he should not.

Oh, Michael, that’s your answer for everything.  Seriously.  In 2008 he called for an anti-war activist to be shot for transmitting information — not to our enemies in this case, but to our troops, in the form of DVDs containing some nutty 9/11 Truther documentary:

“Excuse me folks, I’m going to say this. We ought to find the people who are doing this, take them out and shoot them. Really. You take them out, they are traitors to this country, and shoot them. You have a problem with that? Deal with it. You shoot them. You call them traitors, that’s what they are, and you shoot them dead. I’ll pay for the bullets.” Reagan adds, “How about you take Mark Dice out and put him in the middle of a firing range. Tie him to a post, don’t blindfold him, let it rip and have some fun with Mark Dice.”

Meanwhile, back in the present…

According to news reports, the Feds are attempting to learn whether Assange violated any criminal laws

But that doesn’t mean we should wait to execute him for treason.  Or at least transport him to a penal colony on the other side of the world.  I bet he’d hate that.

but there is no question of the serious nature of the crimes committed by Assange and Manning — by their despicable actions they have plunged a dagger into the hearts of the American people

They have stabbed the American people in the head with the Sausage of Knowledge!

It should be kept in mind that Assange and Manning are not the only entities who have put the American people at risk. Those in the media who couldn’t wait to publish the information given them by the pair are equally guilty of endangering the American people.

Exactly — we’re Americans!  You’re better off putting a bullet in our brains than a fact.

My Country Right, Wrong or Decline to State | 26 Comments »

Over at The Corner’s “Ricochet,” (which only sounds like a Western-themed gay bar on Santa Monica Boulevard), Pat Sajak, (whose surname only sounds like the catch phrase of a character from TV’s What’s Happenin’?) has the courage to point out the worm in America’s apple of freedom:  in 1960, the United States Congress passed an amendment to the Communications Act of 1934, making it illegal to “fix” quiz shows, but they have consistently failed since then to apply those same exacting standards to American democracy.

None of my family and friends is allowed to appear on Wheel of Fortune. Same goes for my kids’ teachers or the guys who rotate my tires. If there’s not a real conflict of interest, there is, at least, the appearance of one…So should state workers be able to vote in state elections on matters that would benefit them directly? The same question goes for federal workers in federal elections.

Pat makes a good point.  While the right to appear on a game show is a fundamental liberty enshrined in the Constitution, the right to vote is granted at the sole discretion of Merv Griffin Enterprises, and King World Productions.

I’m not suggesting that public employees should be denied the right to vote, but that there are certain cases in which their stake in the matter may be too great.

…to allow them to vote.

Of course we all have a stake in one way or another in most elections, and many of us tend to vote in favor of our own interests.

Unless we’re working class white people living in a red state and employed in an industry suitable for outsourcing.

However, if, for example, a ballot initiative appears that might cap the benefits of a certain group of state workers, should those workers be able to vote on the matter?

No, they should just lay down and take it.  If we start letting people defend their interests through the ballot box, it might depress ammunition sales.

Plainly, their interests as direct recipients of the benefits are far greater than the interests of others whose taxes support such benefits.

Of course, the workers in Pat’s example also pay taxes, so presumably they ought to have the same right to say how that money is spent as any other citizen — except when they themselves might benefit.  Which is why I recuse myself from voting on bond issues for schools, because I directly benefit from not being surrounded by idiots, and I never vote on gas tax initiatives, because I have a clear conflict of interest, what with how I drive and walk and ride bikes and cross bridges and basically just gorge myself on paved surfaces like a Roman emperor at a decadent feast.  Where they happened to be serving asphalt.  (I probably should have pulled out of that metaphor a little earlier.)

When you think about it, the only voter qualified to render an honest, disinterested judgment on government services is one who doesn’t use them; someone who doesn’t live in a city or unincorporated town, and who doesn’t benefit from sewers, roads, rural electrification, minimum wage laws, food and drug inspections, or national defense.  So basically, the only person who’s really entitled to vote in Pat Sajak’s America is the Unibomber.

I hope he remembered to fill out an absentee ballot, or Western Civilization is screwed.

Other things that annoyed me, since I’ve got a headache and feel crabby today:

The Washington Post hosted an online chat with Dan Savage about the project, and his efforts to decrease the terrible suicide rate of LGBT teens.  I would applaud a major newspaper for giving some much needed exposure to this cause, except nobody pays any attention to WaPo’s online Q&As; and because they want to “cover both sides” of the issue, they gave a column to Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council in which to defend the objectively pro teen suicide position.  For those who’d prefer not to get out of the boat, his argument essentially boils down to this:  ”Bullying has nothing to do with it.  These sodomites are just tormented by thoughts of my manroot — and how they can never have it! — so naturally they go crazy.  I would too, in their place.  Look on my batch, ye homos, and despair!”

And finally, there’s this:

Which a friend of mine says is evidence that the End Times are upon us, but which I regard as a sign that the world is clearly not ending fast enough.

My Country Right, Wrong or Decline to State | 20 Comments »

From The Daily Caller’s teaser email, The DC Morning, which, as we’ve learned from Jim Treacher, is a pun on “D.C.,” and the multiple meanings of “morning”…

I must be getting old, but I gotta tell you, these kids today, with their meth, and their bow ties, and their cozying up to dynasties four or five periods before the Georgian era.  In my day, we renounced independence from the House of Hanover when we didn’t want to pay our taxes, and we liked it that way.  But then the Tudors got that TV series, and it had a slim and buff Henry VIII, and showed a lot of skin, and now all the youngsters think it’s much sexier to renounce them.

I’m a little unclear about that last part, however, because while I’ve admittedly done zero research on the subject, I somehow doubt that it’s “middle class people” who are lining up at our embassy in London to renounce their citizenship for tax purposes. That seems like the sort of thing more characteristic of our dickish home-grown oligarchs, doesn’t it?  But I will stipulate that the middle class is full of feeble, blood-sucking Fabians, because you can’t argue with The Daily Caller, or you’ll wind up looking like a pedant trying to correct a parrot’s grammar.

My Country Right, Wrong or Decline to State | 8 Comments »

From my friend PJ, who feels the picture of Palin, with her dead eyes and tight, Joker-like rictus, is worth a thousand words, marked down to seven if you order now:

“Please Buy My Insane Book. I’m Folksy.”

Half a year away from publication and America by Heart: Reflections on Faith, Family, and Flag has already been marked down nearly half off the cover price? I certainly hope her ghostwriter got a flat fee, or was working hourly.

Anyway, as powerful as the former governor’s vision for America may be, her Faith, Family, and Flag will never beat McDonald’s Food, Folks, and Fun!

(Mudflats has more.)

My Country Right, Wrong or Decline to State | 10 Comments »

RenewAmerica seems to attract more than its share of conspiracy theorists, which is why I love it so, but even I have to admit that regular contributor Chuck Baldwin is a principled, fair-minded man who is careful to degrade neither himself nor his audience with such moonstruck ramblings. Instead, Chuck uses his expertise as a perennial Constitution Party candidate for Vice President and President, the pastor of a self-founded church, and a man who once thought about being a cop, to thoroughly debunk anti-conspiracy theorists, such as Glenn Beck. This week, Chuck examines the case of an Austin, Texas man who deliberately crashed a private plane into an office building, and points out that the real tragedy is the loss of a potential Chuck Baldwin voter.

I wish Joe Stack had not killed himself!

All of us are now aware of the Texas man who yesterday flew his private plane into a 7-story Austin office building. Apparently, he intentionally crashed his plane into the building to target the IRS offices that were housed inside the facility.

As I am writing this column just hours after the event took place, there has not yet been a lot of time for the major news media talking heads to spin the story. By the time this column is released on Friday, however, I’m sure we will all have been inundated with copious references to this man, Joe Stack, as being “off his rocker,” or similar assertions. Perhaps our friends at DHS will label Stack a “right-wing domestic terrorist.”

Chuck, employing the kind of keen deductive logic you’d expect from a man with two honorary degrees, has proven that FEMA is busy constructing a sprawling network of concentration camps, by looking out the window of an airplane: “I was aboard a cross-country flight when the passenger I was sitting next to (a total stranger) asked me to take a look out the window. He asked, ‘Do those look like internment camps to you?’” Q.E.D.

However, Mr. Stack apparently left behind a “suicide manifesto” explaining his actions. After carefully reading Stack’s manifesto, I am quite convinced that he was not crazy, and he was not a “terrorist.”

He just tried to make a political point by flying an airplane into a building.

However, he was angry.

Good thing he wasn’t driving.

“Don’t drive angry!”

A lot of us are angry — and for many of the same reasons that Mr. Stack was angry! While I would certainly take exception to some of the things Stack says in his manifesto, he said things that many of us are feeling.

Thing such as, “Banzai!“

According to Stack’s manifesto, he earned an engineering degree with the goal of becoming an “independent engineer.” He said this about working his way through college: “I was living on peanut butter and bread (or Ritz crackers when I could afford to splurge) for months at a time.”

I know that feeling! My wife and I married between my sophomore and junior years of college, and for months we had a grand total of $15 a week to spend on groceries. And believe me: that did not go very far — not even in 1974. How many politicians on Capitol Hill do you think could even remotely relate to Mr. Stack?

Well, if Mr. Stack wasn’t spending all that money on aviation fuel and a private aircraft he probably could have afforded the crunchy kind of peanut butter.

Stack later said, “I decided that I didn’t trust big business to take care of me, and that I would take responsibility for my own future and myself.”

I know how he feels. It’s late afternoon already and Exxon Mobil still hasn’t brought me a juice box.

Wow! What a revolutionary idea: taking responsibility for yourself!

It’s exactly like those school programs where children spend a week treating an egg as though it were an infant in order to learn about parental responsibility, except with more murder and suicide.

Now I know that practically no one on Capitol Hill can relate to Mr. Stack!

If the Republican leadership replaced the filibuster with kamikaze attacks on the Capitol, we might have a little more accountability in Congress. So Vote Constitution Party! Our ideas are nutty and unworkable, but our frequent suicide attacks on our colleagues makes term limits kind of moot!

In what was obviously a reference to what he was about to do, he wrote, “Nothing changes unless there is a body count.” … Stack wrapped up his manifesto by saying, “Well, Mr. Big Brother IRS man, let’s try something different; take my pound of flesh and sleep well.”

My heart goes out to Joe Stack! … We all share Joe Stack’s pain!

The fact that Chuck doesn’t seem to be sharing the pain of the the thirteen people who were injured — two critically — or the family of the victim who died in the attack leads me to conclude that those people are just being really selfish with their pain.

I really wish Joe Stack had not killed himself, however. We need each other. By taking his life, he reduced our strength. The global elites delight in our demise. As we grow weaker, they grow stronger.

Not to go all Jonah Goldberg, but this lament sounds vaguely reminiscent of that Star Trek episode where William Windom hijacked a shuttlecraft and launched a suicide attack on that planet-killing machine that looked like a giant Bugles corn snack, while Kirk tried to talk him down…

“Matt, you’re a star ship commander, that makes you a valuable commodity. We need you. Your experience, your judgment. Matt — We’re stronger with you than without you!”

Except he was a bit of a wuss and only killed himself.

But the fight is not over; the battle is not lost! Rumblings of freedom’s revival can be felt across the length and breadth of this nation.

Oh, wait — that was just the impact. “It felt like a bomb blew off,” said Peggy Walker, an IRS revenue officer who was sitting at her desk. “The ceiling caved in and windows blew in. We got up and ran.”

The clanging of liberty’s resolve can be heard in hamlets and villages from Montana to South Carolina. There are still millions of us — from virtually every walk of life — who will not surrender our liberties without a fight! And we have not yet begun to fight!

Well, that’s good. Because if you only begin to fight after you’ve died in a fireball of your own devising, then even if they can prop you up in a convertible for the victory parade, all that ticker tape and confetti will probably just stick to your burns.

So, to the rest of us Joe Stacks out there: let’s not fly our planes into buildings. Let’s not end our lives prematurely. Instead, get mad; get organized; get educated; start equipping your heart, mind, and body for the battle ahead. Let’s fight; let’s study; let’s prepare; let’s make every would-be tyrant on Capitol Hill and Wall Street know that we are not going to sit back and let them steal our country. Let’s send a message, in no uncertain terms, that if they want our pound of flesh, they are going to have to come and get it —

Joe’s mistake was that he delivered his pound of flesh, which just made his victims lazy and spoiled.

and if they do, it’s going to cost them a whole lot more than a pound of theirs!

“Dr. Baldwin is Founder-Pastor of Crossroads Baptist Church in Pensacola, Florida, and holds the Charles Whitman Chair at Holy Crosshairs Seminary.”

Oh, Joe! I wish you had not killed yourself.

Why is it we seem to tell the terrorists in our lives how much they mean to us only when it’s too late?

My Country Right, Wrong or Decline to State | 44 Comments »

Poor Hannah Giles.  All she wanted was another excuse to swan about in that hooker outfit she cobbled together for the Pimps ‘n’ Ho’s fraternity mixer, and to prevent ACORN from registering any more black voters.  And what is her reward for preserving the franchise against poor people?  Not only threats of lawsuits from the cashiered subjects of her innocent prank, but also the very real possibility that she and her Mack Daddy James O’Keefe (whose street name is “Superfly,” or “Ichabod Crane” or something like that) could be charged with violating Maryland’s statute on recording a person without their consent.  I ask you, where is the justice?  Do these overreaching prosecutors even care about the child sex slavery ring these two amateur sleuths invented and exposed at the same time?

I think not, and Hannah’s non-Mack Daddy, Doug Giles, feels the same way:

Listen all on the left and the right: Hannah’s motive for doing what she did to ACORN was moral, not political. Her BS detector went off on that organization, and she tackled it. It’s that simple.

In fact, so finely attuned is Hannah’s moral antennae, that she could sense ACORN was engaging in illegal and scandalous practices before she even knew what ACORN did.  Or was.

In her appearance on Hannity last night (9/14/09), Giles revealed that she hatched her plan to go after ACORN’s housing division before she knew anything about it…When asked about the “pattern” of ACORN corruption, Giles offered this “insight” that strongly suggested she hadn’t a clue about the organization beyond her own experience with it. “There’s a pattern and, um,… we knew what we were going into. We’d studied ACORN. We didn’t know about them before we came up with the idea, really. And then we studied them. And we learned what they’re about so the way we approached them was, was what got it.”

It’s a shame law enforcement can’t apply this same positive, results-oriented approach without it being called “entrapment,” or “clairvoyance.”  I mean, it worked perfectly well in Minority Report.  Anyway, back to Doug:

Here’s a little FYI to ACORN and the few media outlets defending ACORN by defaming Giles and O’Keefe’s faith, politics and tactics: You are ticking off the majority of Americans breathing air on our God-blessed United States soil.

Exactly!  Two hundred million people respirating on dirt are outraged that random bloggers have suggested that Hannah inherited the self-promoting dumbass gene from Daddy (I’m leaving out 100 million Americans to allow for the percentage of the population that may be ticked off, but is currently breathing air on our non-sectarian linoleum and blacktop).

Then Doug takes it over the top with the single funniest sentence he has ever written:

If you don’t believe me, just ask Frank Luntz.

Damn, now I owe myself a keyboard.

But it’s not just the paternal instinct that is aroused by attacks on the integrity of the Happily Ignorant Hooker.  Creepy-looking strangers, such as Townhall’s Kevin McCullough, are also aroused by Hannah, and eager to embrace her cause until it becomes uncomfortable, and she can’t stop wondering what that smell is.  Kevin, as you may recall, is an old friend of the blog, going back to the Salon days, and holds the record for the most consecutive uses of the “aptly named World O’ Crap” trope in a single rejoinder.  So naturally, when he speaks, we lend an attentive ear:

Over the last few weeks two courageous young people did the nation a favor by accomplishing something the media establishment, the President, and the people’s servants–Congress, would not. Through the simple act of asking questions, these two twenty-somethings produced perhaps the most effective sting operation ever performed against a crooked organization that seeks to rot society at large through its own diseased corruption…

On the video tapes seen-round-the-world, ACORN workers, literally from sea to shining sea, advised fraud, bragged about murder, and confessed to their own past operations of prostitution agencies. Some of them, including the self proclaimed killer, lauded the current administration as being able to “get things done.”

Like Hannah (I Was A Hooker For The YAF) Giles, and her partner, Pimp Master Melanin-Free, Kevin apparently doesn’t realize that the ACORN staffer who “confessed to murder” was in fact merely fighting Punk’d with punking. Or perhaps he believes that whatever is surreptitiously captured on video, even if it’s not true, becomes true by virtue of being aired on FoxNews, in which cause he should probably hasten to ask Hannah for her rate sheet, and if she takes Discover®.

Speaking of which, thanks to Doug’s latest column, you can get in on the ground floor of Hannah’s lawsuits and indictments, or just tip her for a job well done:

Unrolled dollar bills with a minimum of coke residue preferred.

My Country Right, Wrong or Decline to State | 48 Comments »

Despite the catchy name, Obama’s Tortured History isn’t quite as much fun as one might expect, since it contains quite a bit more torture and abortion than, say, Peabody’ Improbable History.

Obama’s Tortured History by Meredith Turney

President Obama took the occasion of his 100th day in office to publicly denounce the practice of interrogative waterboarding as torture.

I appreciate Meredith specifying which type of waterboarding she’s addressing, because I often get “interrogative” — the style traditionally used as torture — confused with “recreational” waterboarding, which is a popular combination of surfing and auto-erotic asphyxiation.

The “character of a country”—specifically America—is an issue every president grapples with. On the world stage, character—the ability to trust another nation’s integrity—is critical. A country with inconsistent morals is a nation whose character cannot be trusted. Under the Obama Administration, America is perilously close to losing our moral integrity regarding basic human rights

You mean we still had some left after the Bush Administration?  I guess they never found that Sucrets tin full of moral integrity Jimmy Carter hid behind a loose brick in the White House Situation Room on election night in 1980, after he’d had a bit too much Billy Beer.

…especially the right to life.

Sure we tortured people and lied about it, who hasn’t?  But what the other western democracies can‘t forgive is our stubborn refusal to shackle pregnant women to the oars of a trireme, while a sweaty, muscular slave-driver pounds a huge drum to the rhythm of their contractions.

President Obama has taken a seemingly unequivocal moral stand in favor of human rights by banning waterboarding, which he considers a form of torture. But juxtapose his moral outrage over torture with his nomination of Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius to lead the Health and Human Services Department.

“Fine, our people betrayed America’s ideals, traditions, certain laws, a couple of treaties, and the founding charter, but is that really so bad, compared to your crappy taste in bureaucrats?”

During her twenty-plus years as an elected official in Kansas, Sebelius has forged strong ties to infamous abortionist George Tiller. For $5,000, Tiller will perform any abortion, for any reason

That’s why he’s known as the “Earl Scheib of Zygotes.”

It is the height of hypocrisy to ban interrogation techniques on militant enemies of innocent life while refusing to ensure innocent life isn’t carelessly discarded by ruthless abortionists.

But we’re getting valuable, actionable intelligence from these fetuses!  We don’t dare wait for the “smoking gun” to come in the form of a placenta.

Now in a much higher pay grade than when he was last asked about his position on abortion, the reporter asked whether the president still intended to sign the Freedom of Choice Act…Once again, President Obama hemmed and hawed, rambling on about what a difficult decision abortion is for women.

“Why does a man who’s black and white refuse to see things in black and white?!  He’s clearly one of those self-haters.”

Perhaps we walk a thin line in determining the definition of torture and its use in national security, but when it comes to preventing the needless pain and suffering of children, America should hold true to our ideal of protecting all innocent life.

Hewing to the path of righteousness requires sacrifice, moral and intellectual consistency, and rigorous sense of self-denial.  Unless you want to pour water up someone’s nose until they choke; then there’s some wiggle room.

My Country Right, Wrong or Decline to State | 13 Comments »

Now let’s go to David E., our World O’ Crap NYC correspondent, who witnessed nuts — specifically, wingnuts — being openly teabagged in City Hall Park, and filed this report.  David?

….EXCLUSIVE!….BY DAVID E….MUST CREDIT WORLD O’ CRAP….

So, the New York teabag party — I mean, the one the conservatives called, as opposed to the general atmosphere below 14th Street on the weekend — was great fun. Stretching an ENTIRE city block and a half, this intrepid group of angry white stood in the cold for 2 whole hours and listened to about 12 speakers interspersed with that NYC favorite, country/bluegrass music.

Two favorite moments:

1) An hour before the official start time of the protest, about 50 of ‘em were in City Hall Park. At the T-45 minute mark, the cops were shutting the park down and moving everyone onto the street, which is where the stage was set up and where the protest was actually set to happen. The anguish some of these folks experienced at being told they had to move was priceless. “You wouldn’t be doing that if we was ACORN,” one said.

2) Woman holds up a sign that says “Atlas will shrug.” (What the hell does that even mean?) Suddenly another woman, clutching her well-thumbed copy of Atlas Shrugged to her chest rushes up to her, saying in thick Lawn Guyland, “I found my soulmate, I found my soulmate!” She thrusts the book under woman #1′s nose and they both begin gabbling. It’s kind of like how when dogs meet each other and sniff their butts.

Pictures and a video with some audio from one of the songs can be found here.

Scott again:  Definitely check out the photo essay, and many thanks to David for his snappy, one-the-spot reporting.

My Country Right, Wrong or Decline to State | 19 Comments »

Why am I supposed to get upset about all the teabagging going on today?  I live on the border of West Hollywood.  Everyday we stop at 4 PM for High Teabagging.

UPDATE:  Now some strict message discipline!  [via The Bloggess]

My Country Right, Wrong or Decline to State | 4 Comments »

Sadly, No! grazed the ravings of Poster Girl for Overprocessed Hair and secret comic book nerd Debbie Schlussel, who is outraged that “Spider-Man is in the tank for Obama.”  During the campaign, the president-elect named Spider-Man and Batman as his favorite characters, and Marvel has rushed to exploit the endorsement, releasing an issue featuring an Obama cameo less than a week before the inauguration.  But Debbie is appalled by the company’s attempts to dupe direct market aficianados into buying multiple copies of this naked chunk of collector bait, and believes such crass commercialism has no place in an industry that was apparently founded to fight the Nazis.

Once, comic books were against Nazis and Hitler and were very up front in supporting America’s fight against them.  But those days are over.

Once again, Debbie goes where others fear to tread (whether for reasons of cowardice, self-respect, or a restraining order) and exposes Obama’s use of comic book characters to conceal his membership in the Aryan Brotherhood (although, to be fair, they only accepted his white half).

In the plot, the Chameleon tries to kill Barack Obama before he gets inaugurated–feeding into the BS narrative that Obama is a martyr-in-waiting more so than any other President.

This narrative, of course, depends on that old canard about there being a rash of attempted and successful political assassinations within living memory, and — and! — a history of racial violence in this country.  The incredible coincidence of events that would require both those things to be true — at the same time — strains probability until it’s just shy of popping a hernia.  In fact, Obama is less likely to be attacked than previous presidents; as a practicing Muslim, his fellow terrorists would hesitate to martyr him for fear they’d just be dispatching the guy straight to heaven and his 72 virgins.

Boy, I long for the days of Superman, Sgt. Fury, and other comic book superheroes fighting the Nazis . . . not sitting down to talk and eat wienerschnitzel with them or praising Presidents who want to do just that.

Screw that.  I long for the day when our Presidents were fighting the bad guys!  And not just Super-President, either:

From Toonopedia:

The basic idea was to go the 1960s TV cartoon Super President one better, putting presidential incumbent Ronald Reagan himself, along with several top members of his administration, in red, white and blue costumes like Captain America’s or The Shield’s, and sending them out to do superhero work among the rice paddies and sand dunes of America’s most hated enemies. This was accomplished by means of a technological marvel invented by a Professor Cashchaser, that gave the Raiders the bodies of young men (and instantly instilled commando training too, apparently).

The stories were just packed with the visceral thrills of seeing America’s Main Man in action. And that’s not all! They were also packed with amazingly dumb, campy references to Ron’s film career. This comic book version of Reagan seemed to have trouble distinguishing between movies and reality — which, of course, many political pundits would have thought made it true to life, if they’d been aware of the comic’s existence.

Reagan’s Raiders was about as successful as the rest of the Solson comics line. It lasted three issues, all published in 1987, and has since been seen mostly in “Best of the Worst” retrospectives.

It’s a wonder Ben Domenech and other Red White & Blue-diaper babies raised on Red Dawn didn’t use a small part of their allowances or trust funds to snap this title up at the time and make into a 3-color sensation, bigger than Mr. Muscles or even Brides in Love.  But comic books are not solely about presidents gaining superpowers or the support of superpowered partisans; sometimes the medium is used to send our children uplifting, conservative messages in a graphic, but tasteful way.

I saw this in a collectibles shop in Portland, and while I didn’t feel inclined to pony up $18 for the book, the subhead, “THE CASE FOR THE PROSECUTION” makes me think Debbie probably has this one securely bagged in mylar and resting snuggly between her mint copies of The Haunted Tank and Tintin in the Congo.

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